ICG Magazine - February/March 2020 - Awards Season

ICG MAGAZINE

F E B R U A R Y / M A R C H

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CONTENTS AWARDS SEASON February/March 2020 / Vol. 91 No. 02

DEPARTMENTS gear guide ................ 12 master class ................ 20 unscripted ................ 24 replay ................ 28 deep focus ................ 32 exposure ................ 34 production credits ................ 74 stop motion .............. 90

SPECIALS The Attitude of Gratitude ........ 38 Hey, Oscar! ........ 66

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THE MANDALORIAN On-set VFX makes a mighty return via the use of LED wall imagery on the first Star Wars live-action series for television.

BRIARPATCH Briarpatch is hot and dry with violence seething just beneath the ragged blacktop and rural western vistas.

Welcome to Twin Peaks, Texas-style.

THE PHOTOGRAPH Writer/director Stella Meghie’s The Photograph travels from the bayous of period Louisiana to the streets of presentday New York City in a seamless (and sultry) drama.

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P R ESI DE NT 'S L E T TE R

And the Winner Is….

By the time you read this I will have completed my first “Awards Season” in Los Angeles, and, to be honest, I was never a huge fan of award shows. I had many friends who threw big Academy or Emmy Awards parties, but any desire in actually attending one of those shows always escaped me. Of course, I would take a look at the results the following day, to see if anyone I knew had won. But that was the extent of my interest.

Well, just as my opinion of many other things has changed since moving to L.A., so has my opinion of award shows. And I’m proud to say that change had the most reliable of origins – in-the-truck knowledge. In January, I had the pleasure of working as video controller alongside longtime Guild members John D. O’Brien and Stu Wesolik for the E! Entertainment Red Carpet pre- and post-Golden Globes shows. As I walked around during our rehearsal day and saw the many IATSE sisters and brothers employed at this event, I realized just how incredibly valuable this work is to our membership.

Award shows (and similar live-event broadcasts) employ dozens of Local 600 members – camera operators, camera utilities, video controllers, camera assistants, as well as many other union technical and craft positions; I am very proud that Local 600 has been at the forefront of making sure that these shows (as well as other live events) are being worked by union members under union contracts.

Additionally, when I heard so many of the Golden Globe winners sharing their victories with the crews that helped to make the awards possible, I felt a profound sense of gratitude – the work being done in the live-event arena, by our union sisters and brothers, is well-deserved of that kind of big-platform recognition. We know it takes a village to produce these projects, and it fills me with pride that IATSE members are a huge part of that village.

Similarly, when some of the Golden Globe winners took the opportunity to use that platform to speak on important social issues

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(many of which impact working families), I truly understood the power these award shows carry.

We in the entertainment industry can affect social change, and I am happy that we are using all the platforms available to us to make that happen.

I’d like to extend a huge congratulations to all the winners this season.

This was also my first time being invited as a guest to Hollywood-based events like the SOC Awards, the ASC Awards, and the 57th Annual ICG Publicists Awards. I am so proud of all the Local 600 members who were honored at these events.

To be recognized by your peers for excellence in your field is the highest possible form of praise, and it was a wonderful feeling to share this type of craft camaraderie with so many union sisters and brothers.

Lastly, I’d like to acknowledge this issue’s profile on Vince Mata. I met Vince when I became a National Executive Board member in 2007. Those of you who know Vince know he is a veritable encyclopedia of industry knowledge, particularly when it comes to engaging stories from the camera-craft trenches!

After many years as a working member, Vince became a business agent for Local 600, and this entire membership was lucky he made that decision.

Vince retired from Local 600 at the end of 2019, and while it may feel like an irreplaceable loss for the Local, I know everyone wishes him the best in his deserved retirement. Vince is the kind of union member who will always be recognized as a winner (with or without a statuette in his hand).

Lewis Rothenberg National President International Cinematographers Guild IATSE Local 600

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February/March 2020 vol. 91 no. 02

Publisher Teresa Muñoz Executive Editor David Geffner Art Director Wes Driver EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Tyler Bourdeau STAFF WRITER Pauline Rogers ACCOUNTING Glenn Berger Dominique Ibarra COPY EDITORS Peter Bonilla Maureen Kingsley CONTRIBUTORS

Kevin H. Martin Eric McCandless Melinda Sue Gordon, SMPSP Valentina Valentini

INTERNATIONAL CINEMATOGRAPHERS GUILD Local 600 IATSE NATIONAL PRESIDENT Lewis Rothenberg NATIONAL VICE PRESIDENT Dejan Georgevich, ASC 1ST NATIONAL VICE PRESIDENT Christy Fiers 2ND NATIONAL VICE PRESIDENT John Lindley, ASC NATIONAL SECRETARY-TREASURER Stephen Wong NATIONAL ASSISTANT SECRETARY-TREASURER Jamie Silverstein NATIONAL SERGEANT-AT-ARMS Deborah Lipman NATIONAL EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR Rebecca Rhine

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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.

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POSTMASTER: Send address changes to ICG 7755 Sunset Boulevard Hollywood, California 90046 Copyright 2018, by Local 600, International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employes, Moving Picture Technicians, Artists and Allied Crafts of the United States and Canada. Entered as Periodical matter, September 30, 1930, at the Post Office at Los Angeles, California, under the act of March 3, 1879. Subscriptions: $88.00 of each International Cinematographers Guild member’s annual dues is allocated for an annual subscription to International Cinematographers Guild Magazine. Nonmembers may purchase an annual subscription for $48.00 (U.S.), $82.00 (Foreign and Canada) surface mail and $117.00 air mail per year. Single Copy: $4.95 The International Cinematographers Guild Magazine has been published monthly since 1929.

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ur February/March issue themed around Awards Season has always shone a deserved light on Local 600 publicity teams (even if publicists, by nature, prefer that light shine only on their clients and projects). Communications professionals in this Guild wear many different hats – unit publicists and stills photographers who work on set; studio and independent publicists working before, during, and after a project’s release to create momentum in a 24/7 global marketplace; and those who work on awards campaigns, which is a unique sub-branch of the craft.

Just ask Unit Stills Photographer Eric McCandless, whose images are featured in this month’s Stills Gallery (Hey, Oscar! page 66). McCandless has served as ABC TV’s only Guild photographer shooting the red carpet/ backstage at the Academy Awards for the last two years; so, we asked him to provide a self-edited selection of images – inside and outside the world’s most famous live-awards broadcast. McCandless, who worked as a newspaper photojournalist before heading west from his native Pennsylvania, says covering the Oscars is “documenting history.”

His free-floating assignment allows him to roam through the Dolby Theater’s corridors, where, he says, “I take a slightly slower pace at that time because the walls are lined with amazing photography from previous Oscars.

Maybe years from now, another photographer will be heading down that same hallway and take a moment to see one of my photos from Oscars past.”

McCandless still has a long career ahead.

Vince Mata, who joined Local 600 as a Business Representative in 2007, after many years as a camera assistant, working for esteemed cinematographers like Vilmos Zsigmond, ASC; Michael D. O’Shea, ASC; Jeffrey Kimball, ASC and Stephen Goldblatt, ASC; officially put his career in the rear-view mirror when he retired in December 2019. Our profile (The Attitude of Gratitude, page 38) looks back on Mata’s service, providing just a few of the many set memories his friends and colleagues cherish.

Working “both sides of the fence,” as Mata calls

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it, created a wealth of goodwill and street credibility that allowed him to change the union landscape in important ways. He was the first Mexican-American representative for Local 600, and his long-standing presence on the Industry-Wide Labor-Management Safety Committee inspired key safety initiatives for RF and extended camera takes. Mata’s advice to a new generation of union camera teams to “grab and claim” jurisdiction for anything that has a lens or captures an image is prescient, given new technologies like drones and virtual production.

Speaking of virtual production, this issue features two stories in that vein – our cover story on the pioneering filmmakers behind the runaway Disney+ hit The Mandalorian, and a Unit Stills/Unit Publicist team whose work together on eight feature films has redefined set-to-box office marketing.

As Kevin Martin’s feature (A New Hope, page 44) reveals, Greig Fraser, ACS, ASC, and Baz Idoine, under the fearless guidance of Mandalorian creator Jon Favreau, formed an atypically close partnership for, respectively, a Pilot Director of Photography and a Series Director of Photography. That was due to Mandalorian’s complex workflow, which included a virtual capture volume, game engines driving massive LED screen imagery and 3D point matching into physical set builds. Fraser, who used LED screens (in combination with ILM-created background imagery) on the Star Wars anthology feature Rogue One, says he had to “teach traditional filmmaking” to The Mandalorian’s 3D-model-makers, because “these images had to fully integrate with what I did on the live-action side. I had to show them how I would control the lighting in service to the story.”

“In service to the production” is a perfect summation for the longtime partnership of Unit Stills Photographer Phillip Caruso and Unit Publicist Andy Lipschultz (Unscripted, page 24). These Guild members first met on a Ron Howard feature, where their speak-up-and-be-noticed on-set approach meant doing “virtually anything” to benefit the production’s publicity requirements. As Howard, who supplied extensive quotes for the article, noted: “Many photographers and publicists prefer to be invisible, stealthily doing their jobs, but Phil and Andy have an unusual presence on set that I suspect is due to their closeness and the quality of their work. The actors see them as a true team and intuit that what they’re asking them to do is important to me and ultimately for the good of the movie.”

Praise like that, from a filmmaker like Howard, is an award unto itself, no matter the season.

CONTRIBUTORS

Melinda Sue Gordon, SMPSP A New Hope, STOP Motion

“Every project I photograph is a deep dive into another world. I love creating images that tell a story and on occasion offer a peek behind the scenes.”

Eric McCandless Hey, Oscar!

“Years ago, as a photojournalist, I had no clue that a job as a stills photographer on TV and movie sets even existed. It was a leap of faith moving west, from the east coast, as a freelance photographer, and through the years I have been blessed to work on shows with actors I grew up watching. Never in my wildest dreams would I have guessed I would someday be working right next to them. The Oscars is the most prestigious award show there is, and being the official ABC TV Guild photographer to cover it is out of this world.”

ICG MAGAZINE

David Geffner

Executive Editor

Twitter: @DGeffner Email: david@icgmagazine.com

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MASTER CLASS

02/03.2020

Gabriela Gutentag UNIT PUBLICIST

BY PAULINE ROGERS PHOTO COURTESY OF GABRIELA GUTENTAG

GUTENTAG ON THE BILLINGS, MT SET OF JOSH AND S.A.M. (1992), HER F I RS T U N I T P U B L I C I S T J O B A F T E R L E AV I N G PA R A M O U N T PI C T U R E S

When Gabriela Gutentag got started in this industry, there wasn’t any support system. It became “read the trades and talk to people” – and hope there was a connection. After earning a degree in film production, temp work became her on-thejob training. She went from receptionist to a position in promotions to freelance ad copywriting for the sales department at L.A. radio station KIIS-FM, where she recounts, “I met every publicist from every studio who handled promotions. Because of their support, and everyone at KIIS, I was lucky enough to land a job working for Michael Battaglia at the newly formed De Laurentiis Entertainment Group [DEG], and subsequently at Paramount Pictures.”

At that time – the mid-1980s – Gutentag says, “studio executives and publicists

invited one another to screenings and premieres, and it felt like everyone knew one another. It was a smaller world.” In fact, there was a limited number of credible outlets for publicity, and only so much television time or space in print publications. So, it was also very competitive.

“I think Entertainment Tonight was the only game in town in the 1980s, until E!, Extra, Access Hollywood and even Hard Copy popped up in the 1990s,” she adds. “There were the trades, Premiere Magazine, EW, AP, Reuters – and of course all the daily papers in every major city. But there was no Internet and no social media. It wasn’t like the wild, wild west of publicity and promotion that exists today, where the rule book has been thrown out the window.”

Gutentag says during that era, Memorial

Day through July 4th and Thanksgiving to Christmas were the only times franchise movies were released, and every studio fought for the finite time and space.

“Sid Ganis, the late Mardi Marans, Diana Widom, Nancy Goliger and Barry London turned everything upside-down when they decided to release Fatal Attraction in the fall, a heretofore ‘dead zone,’” she recalls.

“Suddenly, September wasn’t boring anymore.”

Today, Gutentag says, there are no promotional dead zones. “Although Memorial Day and Thanksgiving remain release dates for cherry-picked projects, the marketing campaign landscape is what you make of it,” she describes.

“Netflix has single-handedly changed the world of entertainment with every major (cont'd on page 22)

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MASTER CLASS

02/03.2020

“A publicist cannot be on set every minute, so the stills and BTS people are frequently our eyes and ears.”

player following suit. It’s an exciting time to be working in entertainment, where uninhibited creativity can earn massive rewards. You don’t necessarily hit it out of the park every time, but it’s fun breaking all the previously adhered-to rules.”

Ask Gutentag to describe the publicist’s craft, and she says that publicists now wear so many hats it would take a book to detail.

She’s worked two campaigns at NASA (on the space shuttle launch pad for Armageddon and for Transformers: Dark of the Moon). She’s stood on the Great Wall of China, “trying my best to pantomime to the crowd that we were shooting a movie, so please don’t walk in front of the cameras!” (for Transformers: Age of Extinction). “I’ve stood on the side of the most beautiful cliffs in the world, on the Isle of Skye, drenched by rain and sleet falling sideways [for Transformers: The Last Knight],” she remembers. “I’ve climbed 100 feet up the side of an aircraft carrier with video equipment strapped to my back [only to discover there was an elevator on the other side of the ship]. And I’ve had the honor of meeting many of the survivors of Pearl Harbor, a captive witness to the stories they had never told their children until they came to visit our set.”

Publicity, more than many other crafts, Gutentag insists, is a full-time learning experience. It isn’t only about the venue, but the demands of different producers, directors and even actors, many of whom are brands in their own right. She’s worked with Jerry Bruckheimer, the late Tony Scott, J.J. Abrams, Peter Berg, Doug Liman, Barry Levinson, Simon West, Mace Neufeld, Barry Waldman, and the late Richard Zanuck – and a new talent she champions, Travis Knight (ICG Magazine, Exposure, December 2018). But her longest run has been with producer/director Michael Bay, whose passion and caring about the details, in every department, is evident on screen.

“There is a shorthand to the job when you’ve known someone for so many years,” Gutentag describes. “It’s bonded Michael’s crew and even some of the cast. The success of [Bay’s] films also depends heavily on his producer, who is on set every day.

Jerry Bruckheimer, Ian Bryce, and Barry Waldman are the best at what they do. And

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every department head and crew person is at the top of his or her game. You have to be able to think fast on your feet.”

Gutentag says Bay is a reluctant media subject. “There are so many stories about him that have taken on a life of their own,” she offers. “But many are twisted to the point of being blatantly untrue. The journalists who have visited his sets know Michael is a passionate filmmaker who loves what he does. He can’t wait to show them everything he’s working on, and he’s even been known to throw one or two of them into a scene. His enthusiasm is infectious, and when those visitors leave his set, they always comment on how surprised they are at what a good time they’ve had.”

Bay’s recent 6 Underground, for Netflix/ Skydance, was his first departure from years of large studio projects. “It was an eyeopening experience,” Gutentag recalls, “and completely re-energizing. Of course, I love working with the talented professionals at Paramount, Disney and the other majors, but Netflix offered a different model that made going to work an adventure.

“Many of their strategies and approaches are like traditional studios,” she continues, “but others encompass a refreshingly new way of looking at an overall campaign. It took the Bay/Bryce camp a moment to get on board, but Netflix was inclusive, and they took time to explain how and why they make their decisions. It’s been a fascinating ride into a land where the care about member experience and innovation are equally important.”

She says some of the biggest challenges publicists face today include the abundance of smartphone cameras on set. It’s frustrating and aggravating, “but we have to remind ourselves that in today’s world – snapping a shot and posting it on social channels is the norm,” Gutentag notes. “It’s also important to remember that we’re not the policemen of the set when it comes to indiscriminate shooters.”

The other major challenge is the insatiable beast that is the 24/7 global entertainment market and a new landscape dominated by streaming media. “I believe it’s essential to be aware of the blurring of cultural lines but still have respect for

one another’s differences when it comes to promoting and publicizing a movie or program,” she describes. “Years ago, a major studio would release between a dozen to 30 films a year. Now there is so much product being produced by so many companies it’s tough to keep track. Creating a buzz that makes a dent takes a lot of teamwork, but it starts with the person on the ground who is involved from pre-production onward.”

Gutentag is the first to say her success is hardly a solo affair. Beyond trust and understanding from Production, it’s those vital relationships with the Local 600 set photographer and the behind-the-scenes camera people that cement a fruitful campaign.

“We have to be partners, and rely on one another to be effective,” she states. “A publicist cannot be on set every minute, so the stills and BTS people are frequently our eyes and ears. At the same time, publicists hear things and discuss situations with filmmakers that can assist the unit stills and BTS in doing a better job. Working in a vacuum is never ideal; the more we communicate with the studio, and they with us, the better for all concerned.”

Being a publicist in a rapidly changing industry now means no learning on the job.

That’s where she notes that being a part of the Union is so important.

“Now is the time to encourage publicists to reach out and explore what the Union can do for its members,” she states. “The support and direction I receive from my fellow publicists is incomparable. There is no one else who really understands what the job entails or the challenges we face, whether we work at a studio/network, on a specific production or at an agency.”

That’s why, as part of the Publicists’ Guild Executive Committee, Gutentag shares the mission to create a training program for new union members.

“Yet another reason we’d like to get publicists from every corner of the industry to become more active in the Union,” she concludes. “In educating the next generation, we will also educate and inform others about who we are and what we bring to the table when it comes to marketing, branding, and publicizing product in a very crowded marketplace.”

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MAGAZINE

UNSCRIPTED

02/03.2020

“This is going to hurt my neck, all the time,” unit still photographer Phil Caruso (who is five feet, six inches tall) quipped the first time he met his new partner, unit publicist Andy Lipschultz (six feet three inches).

But height hardly mattered, and soon the pair were finishing each other’s sentences. In fact, for three decades (and eight movies), Caruso and Lipschultz have set the standard for what an on-set publicity team can be. Just ask Ron Howard, who once hired them for three consecutive movies (Parenthood, Backdraft, Far and Away).

“While all aspects of marketing are important to me,” Howard reflects, “I never press the actors during production because it’s vital that I only deal with them creatively in terms of their performance. I first worked with Phil and Andy in 1989, and both of them have this fantastic combination of competence and determination that resulted in them rarely taking ‘no’ for an answer, even from the talent.

“Many photographers and publicists prefer to be invisible, stealthily doing their jobs,” Howard goes on to note, “but these guys have an unusual presence on set which works for them, and I suspect part of that is due to their closeness, their hard work and the quality of their work. The actors pick up on that and see them as a true team, and I think they intuit that what they’re asking them to do is important to me and ultimately for the good of the movie.” (Howard has even put them in his movies − Caruso as a photographer in Far and Away and Lipschultz as the launch director in Apollo 13.)

Phil and Andy were eager to expound on their longstanding professional relationship for ICG Magazine, still finishing each other’s thoughts along the way.

PHIL C A R U S O ( L ) A ND A NDY L IP S CH U LT Z ( R ) ON T HE MON TA N A S E T O F FA R A N D AWAY ( 1 9 9 1 ) / PH O T O BY M I C H A E L G A R L A N D

UNIT STILL PHOTOGRAPHER

Phil Caruso UNIT PUBLICIST

Andy Lipschultz

Andy Lipschultz: The truth is that we fully didn’t know how to do our jobs until we were empowered by Ron because he let us know what we did was important to him. Both of us realized that we best accomplished our jobs by not being invisible on set, by being direct and succinct with everyone. It won us fans as well as probably detractors, but most things in life even out, and I figure if you’re going to spend all this time at work you might as well enjoy yourself along the way.

Phil Caruso: We were lucky with Ron. Instead of being ignored… AL: or grudgingly tolerated… PC: He would engage and talk to us. On Far and Away, for example, we were sitting at the table with Ron and the producers for the cast read-through. The fact that he included us in daily interactions sent a different kind of message: these guys are a team and are to be respected.

AL: I can’t imagine anyone has encountered someone like Phil. He is fearless and funny, and the talent and filmmakers all get to know him quickly. Remember our first time with Robert De Niro? PC: Backdraft. It was a test of sorts. There were shots that marketing wanted, (cont'd on page 26)

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UNSCRIPTED

and they emphasized how important it was, but we also understood how De Niro rolled.

AL: And my instinct was to tread lightly, but Phil was undeterred. There was an interesting scene in a small office and Bob didn’t want Phil in there, but Phil decided to roll the dice. He put the camera on a remote and ran a cable back to Video Village. When De Niro looked in the right direction, Phil pressed the remote. He wasn’t in the room, just like Bob asked. PC: Bob came back to Video Village and we talked. The subtext was: “You sneaky little bastard,” but I think he sort of respected what I did. AL: Everything changed that day for Phil, and just like that he was “Bob’s guy.” Bob took you onto Cape Fear and you did, what, like 15 movies or so between him and Scorsese? PC: It was actually 25. Marty stole me away from Ron while you got to continue with him. But I’m still not happy that I missed out on Apollo 13.

PC: We had another issue on Backdraft where Andy had to step in and diffuse a situation where one of the actors restricted the number of people on the set for a dramatic scene. He didn’t even want a soundman. AL: But we needed stills…or at least wanted to try. So, for some reason, which I can’t recall, I went to cinematographer Mikael Salomon [ASC], and the two of us approached the actor. PC: Between Mikael and Ron’s respect for what we do – the matter was settled. I think the actor was Scott Glenn, by the way.

PC: Sometimes it’s a lot of threading the needle when you have high-profile stars, and there are restrictions with what we do.

Working with Tom Cruise on Far and Away is a perfect example. We knew Ron wanted as much photo and video coverage as possible, and Andy had to intervene. AL: Tom was hesitant about EPK coverage – you have to remember that EPK/BTS coverage was rather new back then. So I proposed all the tapes initially go to Tom’s team for review, and we would excise whatever footage he didn’t like before allowing it to go to the studio, and he agreed. PC: Then came the first day Tom took off his shirt for the boxing scene, which, by the way, most actors don’t want you around for. But this was a shot Ron made clear to me that we should have. AL: We came up with a similar solution: Tom would let Phil shoot, but Phil would give the film to Ron and Ron would decide. PC: Another example of Tom being flexible, and the irony of the whole thing is that image ended up on the poster.

AL: It’s also important for a publicist and

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unit stills to think outside the box. We try to see things together that aren’t always in front of the motion-picture camera. PC: You mean like that scene on Far and Away with 500 horses lined up? That shot was scheduled to happen by noon, but we left the hotel at 3 a.m. for the location to see what I could get for stills and you for EPK. We came up with this idea of having a few horses enter the set area just as the sun was rising and the wranglers accommodated us. We had prints made and showed them to Ron, and once Ron saw the shots, he wanted that visual for the movie. So, he had the second unit recreate that shot on another day.

we still have to be able to embrace change because we’re going to be working for some very tech-savvy publicity folks sooner than we think.

PC: We’re also seeing a change in the work of some of the younger stills photographers.

They haven’t shot film and don’t understand the process. Often, I see a loss of creativity − shots are heavily filtered instead of capturing the image in the raw state. AL: I learned a lot watching Phil in terms of searching out that one place the camera should be. But beyond that, he sees stuff others can’t see. And that’s what makes a great unit photographer. You should talk about that series you just jumped AL: We’ve been so fortunate to work with in to cover for a day. PC: You mean The Sinner producers who value what we do. We did (ICG January 2020 issue), which had a very The Next Karate Kid with Pat Morita, and Pat interesting look from cinematographer was resistant to Phil doing a setup with him. Radium Cheung, who was willing to do an PC: But we had Jerry Weintraub on our side, additional set up to mirror what he shot for and he took over. AL: Jerry took me over to certain sequences. I showed him what I’d Pat and facetiously says, “Let me introduce shot, and it was a perfect match for his work. you to our unit publicist. Whatever comes AL: The creatives agreeing to that comes out of his mouth, pretend it’s coming out of from experience and trust. my mouth.” PC: (Laughing) All of a sudden Pat had a change of heart. The truth is there PC: Trust is the single biggest element a aren’t producers like that much anymore. unit still photographer needs to build on AL: Yeah. Jerry and Joel Silver are about the set. In that, I guess, it’s no different than only two producers who actively helped a successful marriage or any long-term make things happen for us. PC: A strong relationship. But a movie can be as short producer who understands the value of as two months of work, so “trust” has to be what a unit publicist/stills team brings to created quickly…and it’s not easy and doesn’t a project is an endangered species. AL: Yes, always happen. AL: Years ago, the numbersome studio features don’t even have a unit one qualification for being a unit publicist publicist, which is short-sighted. PC: And was writing ability, but today the production when it comes to stills, some rely on social notes we turn in seem to hold less and less media, which producers will say the actors value to the studio. I think they’re placing do anyway. more importance on how to navigate the potential landmines of production, as well AL: On the other hand, the streaming as the studios, many of which are owned services have been a boon for unit by larger entities and have overarching publicists. I encounter so many relatively issues we previously never had to consider young people at the streamers who learned during the making of a movie. At times we about cameras and editing software at act more like producers but without profit college, and know what can be captured participation. [Laughs.] PC: And without the on set. PC: My daughter works at PMK, big trailer! But I did hear from my sources and while at college she learned Final Cut on Hillbilly Elegy that Ron Howard never editing and Photoshop, so she knows the used his trailer, but you sure did. AL: I resent realities in completing projects timely to the accuracy of that allegation. deadlines. AL: I think when these younger marketing staffers become VPs, they’re AL: You can’t truly do your job if you’re going to expect a lot more from publicists worried someone is looking over your and photographers. PC: Their issue, and shoulder or you’re worried about what it’s only a function of age, is that they don’t someone is saying about you. I doubt either always understand the political process of of us had the question “Will doing this get what happens on set. AL: But they’re smart us into trouble?” come into our heads if enough to recognize what they don’t know, what we were doing was for the good of the and realize they need an experienced stills movie. PC: Probably why neither of us has and publicity team on their sets. Either way, ever gotten an ulcer.

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REPL AY

2019 MTV VMA Awards A “SUPA DUPA FLY” LIVE SEGMENT

BY PAULINE ROGERS PHOTOS COURTESY OF MTV/VIACOM

Audiences are learning to expect the spectacular when it comes to awards-show performances. And the 2019 MTV Video Music Awards, in New York City, set a very high bar, especially when it came to the Video Vanguard Award winner, Missy Elliott, and her live performance of a medley of greatest hits, including “Throw It Back,” “The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly),” “Get Ur Freak On,” “Work It,” and “Lose Control.”

First given in 1984 as a Lifetime Achievement Award, honoring such stars as David Bowie, Richard Lester, and the Beatles, it was re-named the Video Vanguard Award in 1991 to acknowledge Michael Jackson’s contributions to the music video format. The 15-minute Missy Elliott segment seamlessly blended augmented reality (AR), massive LED floors and walls, and stunning visual projections, all live in real-time. It was a

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complex ask for director Alex Rudzinski, Emmy Award-winning Lighting Designer Bob Barnhart, and the (up-to) 24-person Guild camera team. “The performance started in an infinity box,” Barnhart explains, “which was a box of mirrors to achieve the infinity look.

That made hiding the cameras and lights a real challenge.”

The green screen pre-tape of Missy Elliott flying through the arena during a rainstorm was shot and directed by Steadicam Operator Tore Livia, and also featured Elliott in a mirrored chamber with dancing robots.

“The illusion shifts suddenly to Missy blasting up and out of the chamber,” Livia explains. “From there, she was flying in a puffy suit through space, which was also pre-taped.”

This segment of the performance brought in AR clouds, rain, and Elliott flying, all with live dancers on the stage clad in black and

wearing umbrella hats. “One of the tricky things about AR,” Barnhart shares, “is that the beams of light from our overhead rig [the new Vari-Lite VL2600s and the PRG Icon Edge] can ‘bust’ the AR images as the beams blow through the AR. Lighting the dancers with umbrella hats and protecting the AR were the main goals.”

But it wasn’t just one AR performance the VMA live team had to protect. There was also the massive spaceship that flies into the room.

“At that point, we had to pull back the overhead, however I still needed some strong backlight for the dancers,” Barnhart continues.

“We relied heavily on a long continuous line of sidelight to help solve this part of the puzzle.

Another element that came into play was that the entire stage was a custom video floor, as well as two LED walls, one mid-stage and then a giant one all the way upstage.” (Screen

02/03.2020

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REPL AY

content created by Gravity and screen control

by Visual Noise.)

Barnhart says the video floor can “be your best friend” as it does a great job with imagery and color. “But it can also fight you like your older brother,” he laughs. “If I put the amount of backlight on the dancer as I would have liked, I would sometimes blow out the image. Likewise, if the image is overbearing, it can up-light the talent in an unflattering way.

“The most difficult problem with large LED walls,” he adds, “is that the beams of light can’t compete with bright content. It’s not critical that the lighting is seen in terms of beams and color. However, performers, producers, and of course, lighting designers like to help tell the story with all the elements, and that would include how lighting helps enhance the story. Lighting a performance like this does more than properly illuminate the choreography, it also enhances the

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music’s dynamics, with energy from beams worked to align their positions with the of light and tempo-driven strobe pops.”

AR software “so that the effect would be able to interact precisely with our camera movement,” explains camera operator So how exactly did the Guild camera team Andrew Waruszewski. “AR images could capture all the tempo, dynamics, and energy then be superimposed into our image. The of Elliot’s performance? Although there were superimposition is in three dimensions, so – up to 24 cameras (mainly Sony 4300s and with the SpiderCam, for example – we were studio lenses, mostly Fujinon) shooting at one able to fly into and around the AR elements, time – either standard performance cameras which added a sense of realism for the effects.” or an “augmented reality” source – the use of Waruszewski’s biggest challenge was an SpiderCam was probably the most dynamic 18-bar shot that featured the return of Alyson element.

Stoner in Elliott’s performance. “The shot Director Rudzinski brought in a called for an eye-level profile of Alyson, which SpiderCam Field Dolly Plus system that would need to rotate around her, fly 25 feet features a gyro-stabilized Newton head up and directly overhead, and then continue from ACE that can fly anywhere in three- back down to stage level to a frontal wide,” he dimensional space by using four motorized explains. “Then, on a certain beat, the camera winches and cable. It could fly anywhere in would track upstage with a dancer and then the entire auditorium – from two feet off the up and out to a high wide. It’s challenging ground up into the rafters and bleachers. because the timing of the camera move needs With the AR elements, the camera team to be motivated by the choreography.”

02/03.2020

It’s also a challenge flying rigs in front of spotlights without creating distracting shadows.

“That is one of the hardest parts of having the option to fly anywhere in space,” Waruszewski adds. “It introduces the inevitability of flying directly through keylights, fill, and backlights. Often, even on a repo between shots, we would notice a distinct shadow fly across the talent’s face and have to reconfigure our trajectory to try to beat the shadows. Nevertheless, by the time of the live performance, we had the move down perfect.

Even though audience cutaways were taken during the live show, the shot was amazing as one long take.”

Livia adds that director Rudzinski flawlessly guided the team through dance sequences on every single part of the stage – from each song of the medley. “I found myself with [the other Steadicam Operator] Ron Lehman trading off shots during the complex

choreography. Alex scripted a lot of movement to complement the dancers’ actions,” Livia shares, “so Ron and I would have back-to-back shots and, because of the shape of the stage and the exposure we had being on the lit floor, we would have to dive down the steps so we wouldn’t be seen on the wider shots. Without exaggeration, it was the most difficult stage I’ve ever worked on.”

Still, the veteran unscripted operator says all the many moving parts it took to capture Elliott’s performance managed to come seamlessly together.

“Lighting. Choreography. Camerawork.

Direction. AR. Talent and Aerial Stunt Team,” Livia adds. “There was incredible teamwork with a myriad of specialty departments creating the illusion of dancers getting sucked into a giant spaceship. It was amazing – one for TV history.”

“I would echo what Tore has said about bringing all the elements together,” Barnhart

observes, “and add that there was an extreme lack of time, typical in awards shows, designated to pull this performance off. The dancers are rehearsing offsite for a week or more, while the producers, Jesse Ignjatovic and Paul Caslin, Alex, myself, the screens, and AR departments, all will sit down to decide what’s required.

“But when it comes to programming the lighting and working out the cameras, AR and screen elements,” he concludes, “we have the same time as the dancers have on stage. It’s literally a few hours to find all the problems and discover the solutions. The next time we see this performance will be the dress rehearsal, which is just hours before everyone at home sees it. The choreography on stage is impressive, but the ‘dance’ that is happening off-camera is the true testament to the [combined] hundreds of years of experience and honed skill sets coming together to make one memorable moment.”

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DEEP FOCUS

Sports is the best live shooting because you

can freeze the action. But you need to understand the sport. When I shot the New York Giants, for example, I had to understand the situation. When the quarterback dropped back, I had to think fast, anticipate who he might pass to, and adjust quickly if the shot isn’t what I expected.

The other challenge on sports – in fact, even on other live events – is getting enough light for

your shots. This is where a good understanding of shutter and aperture comes in.

I use two Canon 1DX Mark IIs with 24-70 and 70-200mm lenses and/or a Sony a7R III

Bennett Raglin UNIT STILL PHOTOGRAPHER PHOTO BY EMILY ARAGONES

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mirrorless with prime lenses. Most of my work is for editorial purposes, so I don’t want to do any retouching. Lots of times for big events (Grammy Awards, et cetera) you are assigned an editor who works on your images in real time on site. This allows the images to be delivered to the client as it is happening.

People see red carpet shooting as easy or boring, but that’s not the case. The lighting

setups are always very challenging, so you have to get your color temperature right. Then there is the flash situation. I have seen photographers show

02/03.2020

up without a flash – and they are drowned out. Your attention and focus must be on all the time so you can catch those interesting candid shots.

I typically show up two hours before an awards show to scope

out the situation and placement.

The anxiety level builds, until the A-list talent shows up, then, suddenly, 30 photographers are screaming for Nicole Kidman’s attention. They want to know what she’s wearing. Everyone wants eye contact with the lens.

On awards shows I have seen still photographers band

together to scream louder – not only to get the picture but also to dominate the star’s time. They fight for the actors’ attention, so people to their right and left don’t get the shot. It’s an extremely competitive job.

I’ve shot Missy Elliot in concert at least seven times

and at least three times in 2019. So when she hit the stage at the VMAs [see Replay, page 28], I thought I knew what to expect. I used a Canon 100-400 lens to get wide hero shots and some tight full-length photos.

But I found myself adjusting my color temperature settings for each performance because the lighting was very different.

actors on stage, who are the hardest working performers I’ve ever seen.

The big thing now is photo approvals. Many of the artists who attend events require photo approval. For a photographer, that’s always stressful. What you like, the performer’s talent rep may not like.

Still photographers on live events are usually not hired by the

production company putting on the show or the venue. They are hired by marketing, internal or external PR. Their sole mission is creating buzz for the event. The large photo agencies (Getty, AP or Shutterstock) offer distribution to the media in real time.

When I’m on a live event, I often talk to the camera crew,

and I know they aren’t going to do the show unless it’s a Union job. But, because we’re hired by Getty, AP or other distribution agencies – we aren’t under a Union contract. They may pay well, but we get no benefits.

I think it’s important we find a way for these large companies to pay into the Union benefits so that we can all get our healthcare coverage.

Being “inside” to shoot a Broadway show provides

plenty of access, and, in theory, you can get more interesting images – even though you are shooting the dress rehearsal, you are still in the back of the theater. But there’s a lot of pressure because if you blink, or look down from the camera, you can miss a moment. It’s a good idea to discuss the elements of the show and what is going to happen on stage before you start to shoot.

“I have seen still photographers band together to scream louder – not only to get the picture but also to dominate the star’s time. ”

“Outside” coverage on a Broadway shoot probably means

editorial work, with your images gaining higher visibility. You also might get a chance to do curtain calls, or the last big musical number.

Here you won’t be distractting to the

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EXPOSURE

Don Mischer

BY DAVID GEFFNER PHOTO COURTESY OF DON MISCHER PRODUCTIONS

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How appropriate that our Exposure subject for this Awards Season issue has won nearly as many awards as the many different awards shows he has overseen as a producer/director. At last count, Don Mischer has won fifteen Emmy Awards, 10 Directors Guild of America Awards (including a DGA Lifetime Achievement Award in 2019), two NAACP Image Awards, a Peabody Award for excellence in broadcasting, the 2012 Norman Lear Achievement Award in Television from the Producers Guild of America, the Governors Award from the National Association of Choreographers, a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame; and, just this month, Mischer was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award from ICG Publicists at their annual luncheon the Friday before the Oscars.

The San Antonio, Texas native has produced and/or directed live events ranging from The Kennedy Center Honors and the 100th Anniversary of Carnegie Hall to numerous Super Bowl Halftime Shows, and the opening ceremonies of the Olympic Games. When it comes to industry awards shows – Emmys, Tonys, Billboard, Oscars, etc. – Mischer is in an elite class, having earned Emmy nominations almost across the board. He’s also had a front-row seat to history, as in the opening ceremonies of the 1996 Atlanta Centennial Olympic Games prior to that event’s disruption, producing and directing the We Are One: The Obama Inaugural Celebration at the Lincoln Memorial, or (for the last 18 consecutive years) directing the 9/11 Memorial Commemoration at Ground Zero in lower Manhattan. ICG Executive Editor David Geffner spoke with Mischer to learn why a life in a genre with “no retakes” continues to hold so much allure.

ICG: This issue coincides with ICG publicists presenting you with a Lifetime Achievement Award. How key are publicists to live-event production? DM: The popularity of television, particularly in the live-event world, is inextricably linked with talent. And as a producer, whether it’s the Oscars or the Super Bowl Halftime Show, you’re never in a position to offer

the talent what they deserve to receive for performing. [Laughs.] We’re basically on our knees every time begging publicists to book their clients for little or no pay and asking for things that are tough for the publicist to deliver, in terms of their clients’ best interests. Put more succinctly: we could not do these shows without publicists. Period.

We didn’t cover air transportation, hair/ makeup, and it was two nights in a standard hotel room for everyone.

Your craft has provided you with a front seat to some major historical events, including the Opening Ceremonies for the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, which were disrupted by a domestic Do you have any stories to illustrate that terrorist attack. What’s been the most point? Too many to recount – every Super memorable? The Salt Lake City Winter Bowl Halftime Show – Michael Jackson, Paul Olympics, in 2002, were five months after McCartney, The Rolling Stones, Prince, Tom 9/11, and it was the first gathering of the Petty, Bruce Springsteen – those artists world’s nations in one location since that were never paid to appear on the show. The terrible event. What would normally be Kennedy Center Honors, which I did for 24 predictable and, basically, protocol, like years with George Stevens Jr., was always the Olympic flag coming in, the Olympic challenging as we were asking performers Hymn, the torch coming in, the singing to travel to Washington D.C., to be paid of our National Anthem, resonated much scale – a few hundred dollars at that time more deeply. I remember thinking at the – and it was the publicists who saved us time: “I’ve never seen a stadium of 80,000 every time. Part of our job was to create a people respond this way.” Stadiums are program where the artists and publicists basically irreverent environments – people would see value beyond just the monetary are talking, eating hot dogs, having a beer, aspect. To answer your question in another watching sports – rarely are they quiet. But way, every now and then an event comes when we had members of the NYPD, the along, like the Obama Inaugural Concert at NYFD, and other first responders from 9/11 the Lincoln Memorial, where it’s not a big carry in the flag that was atop the North sell on our side. That was two days before Tower of the World Trade Center, that entire the inauguration, and everyone wanted to place went silent. I still get goosebumps be involved. I remember Bono was going to recalling that moment. [Pause.] You know, come solo, and after he heard our pitch he the Olympic Charter says there has to be a said, “I’m going to bring my boys, as well.” symbolic release of doves after the athletes’

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EXPOSURE

oath. And we did that with Sting and Yo-Yo Ma singing “Fragile,” which took on meaning that exceeded our expectations.

In this business, we produce spectacle, with pyrotechnics, lasers, illusions, and technology that’s just incredible. But in the end, it comes down to moving people emotionally. That night in Salt Lake we did.

Last year you received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Directors Guild of America, one of only four it has given to TV directors in its history, with you being the only director who specializes in live events. Talk about the connection between the director and the many members of this Guild, most notably camera operators, who you work with in live TV. Live-event directors definitely like to handpick their operators, but not for the reasons you might think. For me, it’s as much about attitude as it is about skill. Skill is important – handheld, pedestal, remote camerawork, et cetera – to be sure.

But knowing how the director is trying to tell the story, and then suggesting things that may help her or him, is extremely helpful. What these camera operators give you is the heart of the program. So, you need to pick wisely.

How did you pick television as a career path? [Laughs.] I wanted to be a camera operator! Growing up in Texas, in junior high, I built television cameras out of cardboard boxes, with empty paper-towel spools to create lenses. In those days, the TV cameras did not have huge zoom lenses – there were three separate fixed lenses, of course. I would hang up curtains and pretend to be a camera operator. My biggest dream was to become an operator on a show that was seen across the country.

I imagined what it would be like to have a shot I had framed up – whether it was from camera eight or ten or whatever – be seen by millions of people. I thought: “Life could not get much better than that.”

Did you get the opportunity to fulfill your dream? Not to that degree. But, learning the craft of television, in Austin, I did get opportunities to run camera, and

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it was so rewarding. Camera operators in live-event work have such unique skills. It’s not like a feature film where everything’s centered around single camera and set up as such. A Super Bowl Halftime Show will have, maybe, 32 cameras, so the director is also acting as a live editor as he or she tells the story by choosing which camera at which moment to cut to. The audience at the event can look wherever they want, but the audience at home is dependent on the director’s choices. That’s why we feel such a great responsibility to represent the performances in front of us. Most of the time you choose right; sometimes you don’t.

A nice lead into my next question.

Things go wrong in live TV, as they famously did for you at the 2004 Democratic Convention. Yet every live TV professional I’ve interviewed thrives on the adrenaline of a world with “no retakes.” There is something addictive about live television. As you noted, it’s an adrenaline-filled world, where every time you count down to air, it’s a roll of the dice.

I liken it to The Deer Hunter, where the Russian roulette became addictive. Or The Hurt Locker, where the characters defuse live explosives on a daily basis. But when they finish their tours of duty and go back home, life is missing that adrenaline rush.

I remember an uncle who was a helicopter pilot in Vietnam, a colonel, who talked to me about this very thing. After he completed his first tour, he went back on his own four times to Vietnam! Obviously, what we do in live TV is not of that consequence, but it is like a high-stakes game, where you know it’s very unlikely to be perfect, but you can’t resist the challenge to try and make it perfect.

So it’s a feeling you can’t replicate in other areas of production? I don’t think so. There’s nothing like being in the [mobile truck] just before a live broadcast – the Olympics, or the Oscars, which you know will be some three-and-a-half hours long.

There are 25 different circuits going, with everyone talking on every channel. But when the AD says: “20 seconds to air,” it suddenly gets eerily quiet. Then the AD

starts counting down 10, 9, 8, 7…[pause] I remember this happening right before the Opening Ceremonies of the Atlanta Olympics, and thinking, “My God. Eighty percent of the planet is about to see this.

Please don’t let me fall on my face.” [Laughs.]

You’ve been recognized with 42 different award nominations and 27 wins. Has that impacted how you direct or produce awards shows? Not at all. I remember producing the Emmys and winning that same year, and it was the furthest thing from my mind. What’s unique about awards shows is who wins and what do they say

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– two things producers and directors of awards shows have absolutely no control over. We find out like everyone else – when the envelope is opened. I remember my dear friend, Gil Cates [who holds the record for most consecutive Oscar shows produced at 14], telling me once: “Either the awards show gods will smile on you, or not.” You can’t produce a good acceptance speech – heartfelt, emotional, perhaps representing the apex of that person’s career. They just happen.

In live sports, the losers are very much a part of the story – does that apply with

awards shows? I’ve actually looked out over the room right before an Oscar broadcast and thought to myself: “Most of the people in this room will not win anything tonight.”

Yes, viewers at home are interested in that part of the story, and we have gone that route from time to time. But, generally, I feel uncomfortable with that approach because it feels like you’re rubbing in the fact they did not receive the award. In sports, it’s much more accepted.

lighting director – who shares your point of view with regard to lighting concepts. For example, single-source lighting can often be more effective than racks of moving lights – a person walking into a shaft of light, backlit on the stage before the key light fades up can be an incredibly powerful way to focus the audience’s attention. The problem with the current trend of many lighting changes, lots of screen content on LED walls, backgrounds, special effects, et cetera, as I see it, is that it can take the focus off the Talk about your partnership with the performer. Some performers need all that lighting designer. You want to hire a visual support, and others can command lighting designer – who in turn hires a the moment with a single light. You want a lighting designer who can find a happy medium throughout the show that may need to combine both of those approaches.

“In this business, we produce spectacle, with pyrotechnics, lasers, illusions, and technology that’s just incredible. But in the end, it comes down to moving people emotionally.”

Tell us about the 9/11 Memorial event, which you’ve directed every year since its inception. We were asked by thenmayor Bloomberg to get involved in the first anniversary, in 2002. The World Trade Center was still a big hole in the ground, with a long ramp for debris removal.

Bloomberg promised the families that [9/11] would never be forgotten, and he’s delivered on that promise. Every year on 9/11 the World Trade Center site is closed down from 4 a.m. to 3 p.m., with only the families allowed on the grounds, and the names of all 2,977 people who perished are read aloud, including those at the Pentagon and the downed plane in Shanksville. We have drums and bagpipes to begin the program, and moments of silence and a single bell ring for each location. It’s very simple by live-event production standards.

But for those of us involved it’s been quite an emotional experience, as these families never had the chance to bury their loved ones. We’ve seen them grow from being kids in 2002, holding up signs about missing their fathers or mothers, to returning with their own families. The names are now all engraved on the memorial around the fountains, but we continue to read them aloud each year as that’s what the families want. It’s more than entertainment – the program has a tangible impact on people’s lives.

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A stellar career working with (and in support of) union camera departments draws to a close with the retirement of Local 600 Business Representative Vincent Mata.

by Pauline Rogers portrait by Isabella Vosmikova photos courtesy of Vince Mata

The Attitude Of Gratitude

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UPPER LEFT AND RIGHT: MATA AS A CHILD IN SOUTH CENTRAL LOS ANGELES, CIRCA EARLY 1950’S

BELOW: MATA ENLISTED IN THE U.S. NAVY IN THE EARLY 1960’S TO ESCAPE THE GANG LIFE THAT BECKONED WHEN HIS FAMILY MOVED TO EAST LOS ANGELES

Collecting shopping carts at a Southern California supermarket earned a young Vince Mata enough money to buy a Super 8 camera.

Unfortunately, when the family moved to East L.A. – the draw of the camera wasn’t nearly as strong as the draw of the streets, and Mata, as he describes, “started rolling with the gangs.”

And serious trouble followed.

“I joined the Navy, hoping for something better,” recounts Mata, whose 30-plus years in the film and television industry draw to a close with his retirement as a Local 600 Business Representative. “I remember standing on the deck of the USS Kearsarge, thinking: ‘I wish I had a camera.’”

Unfortunately, he didn’t have a camera to record his ship’s anti-submarine protection assignment during the Vietnam War. But Mata did bring back two memories: a medal for his bravery and a constant ringing in his ears from the gun blasts.

After the conflict, Mata returned to L.A., where he says, “I got into more trouble once I was home.” Fortunately, he adds, “I saw what happened to my brother, and I tried to find a way out.” A visit to Art Center College of Design to see the photography and a year at Camarillo State Hospital helped him kick one addiction and soon get hooked on another – cameras.

Mata’s entry into the industry was on the engineering/mechanical side. As he recalls: “It was a time when the 65mm negative/70mm print motion picture format was getting a lot of attention as a way to keep audiences coming to theaters – in competition to the growth of HD television.

Most of the optical work was shot on a large optical printer originally built at MGM for the 65mm work on Ben Hur,” he explains.

“My job as the machinist/designer was to set up the printer so that both the cameras and the printer heads could be easily changed from vertical, running 65mm to horizontal, running IMAX.” As good as he was, mechanical work wasn’t a fit for Mata. So Steve Rogers, who ran the loading room at Lorimar, at MGM Studios, brought Mata in, where he met the union ACs from Dallas and Knots Landing, and sitcoms like Perfect Strangers and Step

by Step. “The teamsters brought in the film every day (Kodak 5247 and 5295) to use,” Mata says, “and we would separate the film and

label it – making sure everything that came in went out.

“I also remember another loading room,” he adds, “when we were getting cans ready for Deluxe to pick up. The desks were cleared at night. But when Dick Barlow [Head of the Camera Department at Warner Bros.] came in at 7 a.m., there was a can with black tape [exposed film] on the table. Back then, you had to hand-cut a piece and check for ‘purple.’ When Dick went into the darkroom and put his hand in the ‘bag’ – he didn’t get film because someone had put [excrement] in the bag!”

Such antics were not without precedent in Mata’s time as a camera assistant, particularly after he met up with cinematographer Michael D. O’Shea, ASC, on Doogie Howser, MD – and the two hit it off.

“When O’ Shea got Robin Hood: Men in Tights, he asked me to do it with him,” Mata continues. “Mike liked me to set marks with different colors so that each actor would know their color and he could light with the standins. I remember doing inside-the-castle shots at Warner Hollywood for Robin Hood, and we had to move lights around and set things up.

[Director] Mel [Brooks] was always looking at his watch. ‘Mike?’ he would ask. ‘Yes, sir, five minutes, sir,’ Mike would answer with a straight face. This went on for a while. Finally, Mel looked at him – ‘Every time you say, ‘Yes, sir’ – I think you are saying f-you.’ Mike’s last ‘yes sir’ had all of us – Mel included – laughing and falling off our chairs.”

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DAVE STUMP, ASC, SAYS MATA’S “ATTITUDE OF GRATITUDE,” INSPIRED EVERY INDUSTRY PEER AND COLLEAGUE HE WORKED WITH OVER THE YEARS. SNAPSHOTS FROM A HOLLYWOOD LIFE: UPPER LEFT: WITH JAMES CAMERON ON THE IMAX PROJECT, ALIENS OF THE DEEP (2005) UPPER RIGHT: WITH JOHN FRANKENHEIMER ON THE DIRECTOR’S LAST FILM, PATH TO WAR (2002)

LOWER LEFT: ON THE SAN JUAN, PR SET OF ASSASSINS (1995) WITH (L TO R) DIRECTOR RICHARD DONNER, SYLVESTER STALLONE, AND VILMOS ZSIGMOND, ASC LOWER RIGHT: ON THE DOWNTOWN L.A. SET OF WHEN A MAN LOVES A WOMAN (1994), SHOT BY LAJOS KOLTAI, ASC, HSC. (L TO R) A-CAMERA 1ST AC KENNY NISHINO, DOLLY GRIP SCOTT JUDGE, A-CAMERA OPERATOR MICHAEL ST. HILLAIRE, SOC, AND B-CAMERA 1ST AC DENNIS SEAWRIGHT

Mata’s upbeat, can-do personality also resonated with First AC Kenny Nishino, who brought him in on several jobs as a second AC. And when Dennis Seawright moved up, Nishino needed a proven second, so Mata became a part of the team. “Until Mike Chavez stole Vince and he became part of Mike’s crew,” Nishino laughs ruefully. “Of course, we’re still great friends. Who can get or stay mad at Vince?”

Working on When A Man Loves A Woman, shot by Lajos Koltai, ASC, HSC, was an important moment as well, as Mata received the additional credit of Technical Advisor. “They were trying to figure out how to bring Andy Garcia and Meg Ryan together in a realistic fashion,” Mata explains. “So, they asked me about my work with AA [Alcoholics Anonymous].

It was simple – every AA meeting has a 10-minute coffee break. It was natural to have them meet over coffee.” (TwelveStep programs have played a key part in Mata’s life. Once he became clean and sober, his enthusiasm for staying that way was infectious. Meetings at lunch – which

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often included big-name directors like John Frankenheimer – were the norm.)

Mata says the Batman movies with Stephen Goldblatt, ASC, were another highwater mark.

“Stephen was innovative,” Mata remembers. “For Batman Forever, he had Bob Ulland put a 4-to-1 Primo Panavision zoom lens on the Steadicam. There were no focus gears for the lens, so we put a fat rubber band on it, and got a great shot as the camera crossed a bridge in the Bat Cave and zoomed in for a close-up of Val Kilmer.”

Working with Oscar-winner Vilmos Zsigmond, ASC, was equally memorable.

“I got to work extra camera when Maverick came back into town at Warner Bros,” Mata recalls. “Vilmos was so busy he just nodded to me.” Then Kenny Nishino brought Mata in for [the Zsigmond-shot] The Crossing Guard, and the relationship blossomed – carrying on through many commercials and more. “What I remember most is the way Vilmos treated his crew,” Mata recalls. “After each movie, he would cook a Hungarian dinner at his house in

the Hollywood Hills. You rang the doorbell, and you heard the theme song to Close Encounters,” he smiles. “In his dining room, the walls were filled with photographs, and I felt so good when I saw the photo I’d given him when we wrapped a commercial at the Santa Monica pier. I loved pulling focus for Vilmos on extra camera days. He loved the 4-to-1 Primo Panavision Zoom lenses and Black Pro-Mist filters that, at that time, were great for close-ups shooting wide open.”

One of Mata’s longest working relationships has been with Dave Stump, ASC, who recalls that when they met, he was shooting a lot of VistaVision, “and Vince understood the camera really well,” Stump recalls. “We went on to do second units and VFX units and continued on. Vince was great at figuring out new cameras and coming up to speed on them very quickly.

We shot the first Thomson Viper movie(s) in L.A. with Luther boxes for applying LUTs for viewing and later added HDcam SRW decks for recording. Add to that the complexity of viewing on Cinetal gutted monitors and working with HD lenses that required back-

UPPER LEFT: MATA “EATING DUST” WITH B-CAMERA OPERATOR JOE DI GENNARO ON THE MOROCCO SET OF HOME OF THE BRAVE (2006) / COURTESY OF JOE DI GENNARO UPPER RIGHT” BOXING WITH “SLY” ON THE SET OF ASSASSINS. LOWER LEFT: ON THE HAWAII SET OF JOHN WOO’S WINDTALKERS (2002), SHOT BY JEFFREY KIMBALL, ASC. LOWER RIGHT: PULLING FOCUS FOR B-CAMERA OPERATOR JERRY LANE ON THE L.A. SET OF WALKOUT (2006), DIRECTED

BY EDWARD JAMES OLMOS AND SHOT BY DONALD M. MORGAN, ASC

focus adjustment every day, and Vince became the leader of the camera team.”

Given his engineering background and determined nature, Mata easily conquered this new filmmaking style. “When we were working with Dave Stump on Red Riding Hood, we were experimenting with virtual sets,” recalls then A-Camera operator Joe di Gennaro. “We had a huge array of encoding cables trailing behind the camera. This was besides the usual video harness that fed all the on-set monitors and recording deck, and a Technocrane. Vince managed to keep both this Medusa-like bundle and his sense of humor intact.”

Everyone who has worked with Mata mentions his sense of humor and adventure – and never-say-die attitude, including pulling focus on two lenses for James Cameron’s IMAX project Aliens of the Deep. As Mata recalls about that impactful assignment: “It was 2005 and the first question they asked was do I get sea sick. I said, ‘No. I was in typhoons in

the South China Seas during the Vietnam war.’ The second question was if I knew anything about 3D, and my answer was that I helped build the 65mm 3D camera rig for the Captain EO ride at Disneyland when I was a camera machinist at the Walt Disney Studios.”

A few days later, Mata was in Mexico boarding the R/V Akademik Mstislav Keldysh, a 6,240-ton Russian scientific research vessel that also housed two submarines. “I went straight to the camera room,” he continues, “and it was a mess. I broke out my camera tape and Marks-a-Lot and started labeling shelves and cabinets like it was a camera truck. The next day James Cameron came down and told me he liked my résumé and asked if he could call me ‘Vinny’ because there was already a Vince on the ship [cinematographer Vince Pace, ASC]. We used a Sony F900, and I had to line up and match the two Fujinon lenses for 3D at different focal lengths and distances at the same time.”

Mata says his machinist background came in handy. “I kept the left eye lens

alone and placed a cross on the left eye lens chart, then matched the right eye lens chart with shims at either 12, 6, 9 or 3 o’clock. The shims were anywhere from .004 to .0005 millimeter thick – by comparison, a Post-it Note is .001 millimeter thick. ND filters were held in the camera with Allen screws, which were an ordeal to change. The camera was tethered to a cable that went to the control room two stories down.

“I can still remember attending the screening a year later at Universal Studios’ IMAX,” Mata continues. “When it was over and the lights came up, James Cameron was two rows in front, and he turned and said: ‘Nice focus, Vinny.’”

Stump says Mata’s frequent reminders, “the attitude of gratitude,” were helpful.

“I remember shooting a scene where our actress was supposed to slide down a banister while singing a song,” Stump explains. “When that turned out to be physically impossible to stage, we went to Plan B and covered the set with as much blue screen cloth as we could find. We staged the actress at the bottom of the stair where

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TOP: LABOR DAY MARCH IN DOWNTOWN L.A., WITH HIS WIFE OF MORE THAN 40 YEARS, SARA MIDDLE: INSIDE THE ASC CLUBHOUSE (2015) BOTTOM: MEETING WITH GAME OF THRONES SHOWRUNNERS DAVID BENIOFF (L) AND D.B. WEISS INSIDE MATA’S L.A.-BASED LOCAL 600 OFFICE (2019).

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she would land, with the idea that we could separate her from the background and slide her into that position in a separate plate of the staircase in post. Take one, she hit a big note in the song and threw her arms out wide, putting her right hand well off of the hastily rigged blue screen.

I grabbed a 4-by-4 blue card and jumped in to Hollywood the blue card into place behind her hand and arm during take two to finish the matte.

Vince and Joe [di Gennaro] had forgotten that everything outside the blue screen area would be replaced. After take two, they began urgently gesturing to me from behind the camera. ‘Dave, you’re in the shot!’ I nodded yes and readied myself for take three. They became more and more insistent. ‘Dave! You’re in the shot!’ I nodded and they increased their urgency.

Finally, I set the card down and leaned into the camera view, licked the end of my pinky, and started to groom and smooth my eyebrows as if making myself ready for my close-up. Everyone on the crew and the actress burst into laughter. They all realized at the same instant that it wouldn’t matter that I was in the shot as I would be garbagematted out in post anyway!”

Di Gennaro’s favorite story was in Morocco for Home of the Brave.

“Vince convinced me to join him sightseeing by saying, ‘Come with me to the Kasbah,’” he recalls, “which was an ancient citadel right near our hotel.

The first person we met there was a man named Mohammad, who claimed to have been a location manager on Kingdom of Heaven. I was skeptical at first, but Vince was full of trust. We ended up spending the entire day with Mohammad, who gave us a personal tour of the Kasbah, culminating in an invitation to dinner at his home, where we feasted on Chicken Tagine prepared by his wife. It was right out of a Hemingway novel. I would never have experienced one of the most thrilling episodes in my life if it weren’t for Vince’s bravery and trust in a stranger.”

That same generous spirit has never flagged for Mata. In 2007, after he’d had enough of traveling the world to pull focus, load magazines, and detangle cables (and with his wife’s prodding), he started a second career as a business representative for Local 600. Mata’s union affiliation first began as a camera machinist with IATSE Local 695 (Sound, Video, Projection), before he joined Local 659 in 1989.

“It was great when I walked onto a set,” he remembers about his early days as a union rep, “because there were so many people I knew or had worked with. I quickly

ON THE HEADHSOP PICKET LINE AT RED STUDIOS (2019)

“It was great when I walked onto a set [as a Union rep], because there were so many people I knew or had worked with. I quickly became the guy they called at the Local when they needed to talk to someone about a contract.”

became the guy they called at the Local when they needed to talk to someone about a contract – the Basic Agreement, Commercial, Low Budget Agreement, or Videotape Agreement. I also handled sports contracts at that time – Dodger Stadium and Angel Stadium. I had already worked on low-budget movies, commercials, episodic, optical effects at MGM, optical printers – and at labs.”

Milestones for Mata’s union work included organizing Home of the Brave, an Iraqi war movie shot in Morocco. Directed

by Irwin Winkler and shot by Tony PierceRoberts, ASC, on the Viper, Mata came back early to prep cameras for the U.S. shoot in Spokane, WA. “I called the Local to report this nonunion movie, and [IATSE International Business Representative] Steve Aredas showed up a few days later,” he says. “Irwin Winkler wanted to sign the contract, but his co-producers said no. So we picketed the movie. They tried to move to Canada, but no one there would cross the picket line, so they signed a contract and finished the show in Spokane with benefits and a term deal.”

Having worked both “sides of the fence” has earned Mata much respect over the years,

and he’s changed the union landscape in more ways than one. He was the first MexicanAmerican representative for Local 600; his long-standing presence on the IndustryWide Labor-Management Safety Committee – where he has worked on safety initiatives for Radio waves (RF) and extended handheld takes – has never faltered. “An important part of this job has been giving back,” Mata stresses. “Like to the MPTF [Motion Picture Television Fund], which has helped so many members, and myself, in all IATSE locals. The MPTF is there when you need them. Now we have Day at The Lanes to raise money for the MPTF.” Mata, who leaves some very big footprints, advises those coming after to keep abreast of the rapid changes in technology and “to grab it and claim it” if it has a lens and records an image. “That all belongs to us, be it a drone or helicopter. It is ours,” he concludes.

Of course, Local 600 members are sorry to see him leave their circle – but as his long-time partner in crime, First AC Dennis Seawright, offers: “May your new beginning bring you as much joy as you have given to so many, Vince. You will be missed.”

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PHOTO BY FRANÇOIS DUHAMEL, SMPSP

A NEW HOPE On-set VFX makes a mighty return via the use of LED

wall imagery on The Mandalorian , the first Star Wars live-action series for television.

by Kevin H. Martin

photos by Franรงois Duhamel, SMPSP & Melinda Sue Gordon, SMPSP framegrabs courtesy of Disney

While working on the Star Wars film Rogue One, director of photography Greig Fraser, ACS, ASC, proposed shooting cockpit scenes using an LED screen that displayed the exterior space environments. When implemented, the process would allow the cinematographer to capture in-camera interactive light and reflection effects from the background visual effects created ahead of shooting

by Industrial Light & Magic (ILM).

T

hat pioneering work initiated by Fraser became a jumping-off point for the Disney+ series The Mandalorian. ILM, along with several other vendors, collaborated on the creation of a virtual, largely in-camera workflow, which employed a screen-based capture volume that successfully matched the look and feel of the original Star Wars features. Taking place after the events depicted in Return of the Jedi, the eightepisode first season chronicles the exploits of a bounty hunter (Pedro Pascal) as he roams the stellar backroads of a galaxy far, far away. However, before The Mandalorian could go to space, ILM VFX supervisor Richard Bluff, along with associate Kim Libreri and ILM creative director Rob

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Bredow, met with Fraser to talk about a virtual production approach with LucasFilm staffers. “And,” as Fraser explains, “it turned out that [ILM chief creative officer] John Knoll had been looking at building technology that would let us expand that Rogue approach to whole environments.”

Bluff, who was on board ten years earlier when George Lucas was exploring the possibility of a live-action Star Wars TV series, picks up the narrative.

“Jon [Mandalorian showrunner Jon Favreau] was adamant that due to the scope and scale of what would be expected from a live action Star Wars TV show, we needed a game-changing approach to the existing TV production mold. It was the same conclusion George [Lucas] had arrived at more than 10 years ago during his TV explorations, however, at that time the technology wasn’t around to spur any visionary approaches.

“Jon already had extensive experience in immersive film and multimedia workflows directing The Jungle Book and The Lion King,” Bluff continues. “And he knew that any breakthrough was likely to involve real-time game technology. He challenged me and other key creatives to fully explore how we could crack the obvious production challenges of a sprawling live action Star Wars TV show.”

Bluff says Libreri had been pursuing game-engine technology to support animated or live-action productions, and that became a component of what was pitched to Favreau.

“ILM then partnered with Epic [Games] to make their Unreal Engine for gaming into a robust production tool,” Bluff adds, “allowing for real-time display on LED screen walls.” (In June 2018, a 35-foot-wide

capture volume was built to test the screen’s potential.)

Nine-millimeter pixel resolution LED panels had been used on Rogue One, a limitation Fraser now sees as archaic compared to the 2.8-millimeter panels currently deployed.

“The results on screen have a lot less moire, which is the trickiest part of working out the shooting of LED screens,” Fraser reveals. “If the screen is in very sharp focus, the moire can come through. That factored into my decision to shoot as large a format as possible, to ensure the lowest possible depth of field.” Fraser chose the ARRI ALEXA LF, adding that “Panavision was just building the Ultra Vista lenses, so we may have been the first to use them. They have a fast fall-off, so we duck the moire issue.

And the anamorphic aspect is very pleasing, keeping with the established softer analog look going back to 1977. I took them along while shooting Dune, but now they’re back for season two.”

Rogue One’s 2nd Unit director of photography, Barry “Baz” Idoine, was chosen to follow Fraser’s work on the pilot and complete the first season. “Prepping in May and June, we wanted to see what lens worked best for the volume and gave us the aesthetic,” Idoine elaborates. “Panavision’s Dan Sasaki gave us prototypes for the 75 and 100mm. We asked for two full sets [T2.5 50mm, 65mm, 75mm, 100mm, 135mm, 150mm and 180mm], based on our desired focal lengths. Combining the LF sensor with the 1.65 squeeze on the Ultra Vistas, you get a native 2.37 [ aspect ratio]. Those lenses have a handmade feel in addition to being large format, and a great sense of character.

We didn’t use any diffusion filtration at all.”

While details of the virtual production process were being ironed out, production designer Andrew Jones relied heavily on LucasFilm’s brain trust in conceptualizing the look of the show. “There was a clear aesthetic coming from their art department in San Francisco, led by Doug Chiang,” Jones reports. “That team contributes massively to every Star Wars project and was central to our show, creating concept art for every set. We tried to interpret and reproduce their concepts faithfully, including as much production value within the scope of this series as we could on this crazy schedule.

We tried not to let the process influence the concepts – initially, at least. Getting deeper into things, we realized what was possible with these [LED] screens within the capture volume. So, we began offering up more ideas for the environments through a concept artist of our own in Los Angeles. Doug was in contact with Jon throughout, providing weekly reviews.”

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PHOTO BY FRANÇOIS DUHAMEL, SMPSP

OF THE INNOVATIVE LED TECHNOLOGY USED IN THE “CAPTURE VOLUME,” FRASER SAYS THE TRICKIEST PART WAS WORKING OUT THE MOIRE. “IF THE SCREEN IS IN VERY SHARP FOCUS, THE MOIRE CAN COME THROUGH,” HE REVEALS. “THAT FACTORED INTO MY DECISION TO SHOOT AS LARGE A FORMAT AS POSSIBLE, TO ENSURE THE LOWEST POSSIBLE DEPTH OF FIELD.”

PHOTOS BY FRANÇOIS DUHAMEL, SMPSP

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Conceptual designs were built out as 3D models. Jones says the virtual art department would put those into an Unreal Engine scene, texturing and lighting, and then bring in the director of photography.

“That gave us an idea of how much should be built practically,” he shares. “Previs artists at The Third Floor – which provided previs for the whole series – started designing shots based on where we had placed the volume.

If they blocked a scene and ran into a wall of the volume, that would flag a problem, causing us to rethink how the set was laid out or how to restage the action.”

Halon virtual art department supervisor Kenny DiGiordano and his team became an extension of Jones’ production art department. “We worked with the creatives, not only from an aesthetic point of view but also with troubleshooting and testing tech,” DiGiordano recalls. “We set up lighting scenarios in Unreal that the DP wanted to see on screen. We would dial-in lighting, then render out a 360 VR image prior to sending it to ILM. Up on screen, we could see how the light affected things on the stage, namely the reflections in Mando’s helmet.

We added custom lightboxes and bounce lights, implementing virtual lighting as you would do [conventionally] on an actual set.”

“If some element in the scene needed to transition from being a physical presence on stage to part of the volume image, then ILM would have to scan it in advance to generate appropriate screen imagery,” notes Bluff. “Visual effects had to learn very quickly to play with all these other traditional production departments, some of which had jurisdiction to a degree how VFX placed set decoration in their CG environments.”

By June 2018, getting the project greenlit was the principal concern.

“Andrew Jones was producing material

to try out in the volume,” recounts Bluff. “I thought about falling back on an old VFX technique for the projected backgrounds – photography. To test whether a projected landscape would look convincing, don’t begin with CG, just do a 360-degree wraparound photo of the desert and test subjects against that. I pulled in digital supervisor Enrico Damm, known at ILM as one of the most talented environment artists we’d ever had. I asked him to build me a fully 3D environment purely from location photography. He shot thousands of stills at a building on Angel Island, using the images to generate geometry through photogrammetry, and then mapped the pictures back onto the geometry. When we put this up in the volume, it looked amazing – photoreal. Greig Fraser went to Jon – I followed him over – and said, ‘I always believed this technology would work. But I never thought it would be this convincing!’”

Blending the different processes for an in-camera solution required many vendors. Profile Studios provided camera tracking, lens (FIZ) data, and alignment of the physical and virtual worlds.

“The camera tracking and lens data were streamed simultaneously to three Unreal Engine [UE4] workstations and a StageCraft workstation, each operated by the ILM stage [Brain Bar] team,” reports Profile president and creative director Matt Madden, who served as The Mandalorian’s virtual production super visor. “UE machines handled all content rendering on the LED walls, including real-time lighting and effects, and projection mapping to orient the rendered content on each LED panel, deforming content to match ALEXA’S perspective. For each take, the StageCraft operator was responsible for

recording the slate and associated metadata that would be leveraged by ILM in their postproduction pipeline.

“ILM developed a low-res scanning tool for live set integration within StageCraft,” Madden continues, “taking advantage of Profile’s capture system to calculate the 3D location of a special iPhone rig, recording the live positions of a specific point on the rig to generate 3D points on live set pieces.

The Razor Crest set, a partial set build, used this approach, with the rest of the ship a virtual extension into the LED wall.

Controls on an iPad triggered background animation, giving the impression the physical Razor Crest set was moving. Once imagery had been rendered for each section of LED wall, the content was streamed to the Lux Machina team, which QC’d both the live video stream and the re-mapping of content onto walls, [which] Fuse Technical Group operated and maintained.”

Madden says a typical shoot would involve the Brain Bar loading a 3D environment matching the physical set build into Unreal. “I used an iPad containing a UE4 interface that allowed us to remotely update the LED wall imagery. Under the guidance of the DP, I would start by dialing-in the position and orientation of the virtual world for the first camera setup. After the virtual background location was approved, we would move on to any wall lighting adjustments for either virtual or physical sets. I would use the iPad for lighting changes requested by the DP to enhance the physical set and actors, and the Brain Bar team would make any final adjustments to the 3D scene itself based on input from the VFX super, such as colorcorrecting the dirt on the virtual ground to match the dirt on the physical set.”

The Brain Bar team took input from camera as well, with gaffer Jeff Webster

“Jon Favreau knew that any breakthrough was likely to involve real-time game technology. He challenged me and other key creatives to fully explore how we could crack the obvious production challenges.”

ILM VFX SUPERVISOR RICHARD BLUFF

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“Seeing this 3D rear-projection of a dynamic realtime photoreal background through the viewfinder is tremendously empowering. It’s phenomenal because it gives so much power back to the cinematographer on set.”

BARRY “BAZ” IDOINE

directing the setting of virtual flags to light the set through his iPad. “The Brain Bar didn’t just drive the ship on the volume work,” Jones states.

“In addition to lining up the virtual and physical, they triggered any animation.

“The on-set ILM VFX team adjusted the wall of LEDs locally to match it with our adjacent physical build,” Jones continues. “ When time allowed, we did some repainting to match the physical set piece to the virtual one. And we have other practical elements on set to help sell the illusion, like traditional wind-machine effects. If some of the more experimental screen loads didn’t work, we could always turn the screen green and shoot it that way, or even bring in a hard green surface. In those cases, we still got great lighting on the characters, because you only need to see the green right behind Mando to pull a matte.”

a land-grab.” (Virtual production supervisor Clint Spillers headed up the process for LucasFilm.)

Fraser says the process was light-years apart from a typical feature workflow.

“I worked with guys who built 3D models, and to some degree, I had to teach them filmmaking,” he explains. “These images were not just created for a movie; they were going up on a screen that had to fully integrate with what I did on the liveaction side. That meant showing them how I would light something and also why it was important to me that the light be controlled in that fashion, and how it was in service to the story.”

Another part of the learning process involved understanding the limitations of the gaming engine for real-time applications. “There’s no point in doing a complicated 3D forest when the gaming engine – at present anyway – isn’t capable of properly rendering a forest,” Fraser adds.

With the virtual workflow tied to so many “That might result in a compromise to use partners and departments, it fell to Richard a sparse background with a few trees, or to Bluff to keep everyone in the loop. “It was look in a different direction.” my responsibility to make sure [Production] Idoine says there was also the tricky saw all the changes during development, issue of matching foreground contrast to as often as possible,” he recounts. “Landis the LED backgrounds. “We are talking about Fields is one of the best at modeling, painting different qualities of light,” he notes. “If it and technical animation I’ve seen, a real isn’t done right, it can look ‘off ’ in a very Swiss Army Knife of a guy. I brought him distracting way. When we resolved that, the in early as virtual production visualization differences between what we saw on set and supervisor, and he crafted elaborate our final in the DI were quite minor in most breakdowns as you’d see in promo pieces. instances.”

That was instrumental in demonstrating to A single- camera approach was people in various disciplines how the work considered for the volume, but Fraser of all these companies fit together. It was an and Idoine quickly learned the rules of informative and visual way to let everyone the system and were able to add a second know how collaborative VFX would be and camera to the mix in most instances, and reassure them nobody here was going to try multiples for action scenes.

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“A-Camera is tracked by a motion system, which knows the height and distance from the screen,” Idoine explains. “Within what is called the frustum – a plane that intersects that field of view – is the 6K image. Outside of that field, the image is low-res, basically just for ambient lighting to provide an accurate reflection in the lead character’s shiny metallic helmet. If the frustum intersected with the frameline of B-Cam, we’d have to change that camera to find an angle that showed the 6K. If A-Camera moved up or tracked back significantly during a take, that perspective change would also mean the frustum altered and would impact the ability to use a second camera.”

Both Fraser and Idoine are quick to note their partnership was unprecedented in their past television experience. “In traditional series work, a DP might ‘take over’ a series, or ‘continue’ with alternating episodes,” Fraser explains. “But the workflow for [The Mandalorian] was basically created from scratch, and Baz was working beside me during preproduction to help develop and overall approach. That meant while I was ‘lighting’ or ‘building’ 3D backgrounds for multiple episodes across the series [including episodes that Idoine would shoot], Baz was working with the directors at pre-vis, or in physical preproduction, even for episodes I may ultimately DP. This blurring of the lines was very exciting and even extended into when I was starting to prep Dune in Budapest. With the longer lead times of building the backgrounds, the first time I may have seen the ‘load’ was over a secure video link from Baz in Manhattan Beach. I could suggest changes to Baz, or the episode’s director, if it was different from what we had originally planned.”

SERIES DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY BAZ IDOINE / PHOTO BY MELINDA SUE GORDON, SMPSP

PHOTO BY MELINDA SUE GORDON, SMPSP

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After The Jungle Book and The Lion King, do you see The Mandalorian as the next step forward in virtual production, or something more representing the summit of what is possible?

Jon Favreau: We combined aspects of both The Lion King and The Jungle Book as the basis for the specific needs of this production.

When CGI first started supplanting traditional VFX, there was a tendency of filmmakers to keep “pulling back to infinity,” more because they could than to make story points. Do you

see traditional film language as an anchor for the Stagecraft approach you used on The Mandalorian? Each filmmaker creates parameters for how digital tools are used. It has less to do with the technology and more to do with the limitations we choose to impose.

[Star Trek writer/director] invoked the “art thrives approach when saddled with line budgets – did the size of the capture volume limit

Nicholas Meyer on constraint” small, below-theand possibilities your storytelling

choices for The Mandalorian? Knowing the limitations and strengths of the technology we were innovating definitely informed creative choices I made while writing. Fortunately, these parameters aligned with the scale of the subgenre of Star Wars stories that we wanted to tell.

Do you think your use of practical effects, like the puppeteered characters and mo-con spaceship miniature, is going to continue going forward? Mixing techniques and tech levels in storytelling served these projects well, but there was also an excitement that was quite contagious when we began exploring the old techniques.

Sometimes enthusiasm is more important than pragmatism.

Will the shorter runtimes on some of these installments, as opposed to a series that spends ten hours adapting a novel, spark a new trend? It’s hard for me to handicap what others might do. I think the contrast of our format to the mainstream helped our project stand out while harkening back to the way stories used to be told.

We found that the lack of constraints in streaming allowed us to vary in length and format.

PHOTO BY FRANÇOIS DUHAMEL, SMPSP

A Galaxy Not So Far Away…

DIRECTOR/PRODUCER JON FAVREAU LEADS A BRAVE TEAM OF PRODUCTION PROS INTO UNCHARTED TECH TERRITORY FOR THE MANDALORIAN .

BY KEVIN H. MARTIN

Idoine says shooting with LED screens was a challenging but immensely positive experience. “Seeing this 3D rearprojection of a dynamic real-time photoreal background through the viewfinder is tremendously empowering,” he declares.

“It’s phenomenal because it gives so much power back to the cinematographer on set, as opposed to shooting in a green screen environment where things can get changed drastically in post.”

A-Camera operator Craig Cockerill, SOC, found the thought that went into the technology as impressive as the results seen through the viewfinder.

“Everything always remained in the proper 3D perspective, relative to the camera,” he describes. “While operating, you see this scene in its entirety and can

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get lost in it very quickly. The shots have been designed to keep the limitations of the system from revealing themselves, which says a lot about the level of preparation. We did shoot sets outside the capture volume as well. In some of those cases they put up a green screen, so an extension looking outside or down a hallway could be added later. That was fairly conventional and in keeping with other projects I’d done.”

Fraser and Idoine relied primarily on LED’s to easily vary the color and intensity of light. “Occasionally we used HMI’s for a harder quality of light,” Idoine says, noting that “Digital Sputniks, which were Greig’s go-to on the pilot and other projects, were useful, especially as hard sources. During the series we had roughly 800 modules [one beast – 40 modules, four beams – 72

Will new education systems need to be put in place to make sure crews can adapt to Stagecraft? And, just as importantly, to ensure that education process builds on what has gone before to reassure production teams that their existing skill sets are still valued? Our production has served as an opportunity to innovate new techniques and technologies. All of the directors, vendor partners [and crews] who participated in this process have become educated in its use and have had the opportunity to build upon these innovations.

modules, 66-DS6 – 396 modules, 100 DS3 – 300 modules, six DSI – modules].”

Interactive lighting also helped link practical on-set effects with the post effort.

“We created a lot of interactives on set for flames and blaster fire,” Idoine continues. “Jeff and his crew built a trigger incorporated into the guns so a red LED diode would flash when the weapon fired, cueing visual effects for their beam animation.” The trigger rigging did double duty, also triggering interactive light gags around the set at the same time.

Bluff, along with Jason Porter, was responsible for dividing up the 4,000 VFX shots between ILM and fourteen other vendors, including Hybride Technologies, Pixomondo, Base FX, El Ranchito, Important Looking Pirates, Creation Consultants,

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Ghost, MPC and Image Engine Design.

“There has been an enormous number of practical elements shot for previous Star Wars films, so we leveraged as much as possible from ILM’s asset library,” Bluff explains. “For example, there’s a scene in Episode Five when Mando sees two Banthas off in the distance. I was adamant we shouldn’t build a fully animated and rigged furry Bantha for just two shots and suggested we pull out the plates from A New Hope’s dailies. I knew I could come up with a shot design to leverage the Banthas from that.”

Bluff says his team took a trip to the ILM archives and reshot some old matte paintings.

“When Mando flies toward Tatooine, we are actually seeing the [Ralph McQuarrie] matte painting seen early in the original film,” he recounts. “We reused another painting of Mos Eisley for a fly-in; in that case, I sent a photographer out to the exact spot George shot his original plate, capturing high-res elements so we could up-res as necessary.”

Jones sees further refinements to the shooting methodology in Season Two, increasing the potential for StageCraft. “The limitations of the gaming engine that are still with us relate to heavy animation and deep rows of characters,” Jones explains. “I don’t see us being able to pull those off now; although we continue looking at potential

remedies, so it would be a mistake to think of [StageCraft] as a one-stop solution – but it is getting better all the time. Another consideration is that some directors might take issue with having to lock themselves into baked-in materials months in advance of shooting. That kind of lead time to create the screen content isn’t going to be a good fit for everyone.”

Fraser points out that “The Mandalorian is being viewed on small screens rather than in theaters, so we have to take into account how it will look on an iPhone or iPad.” (Company 3 supervising finishing artist Steven J. Scott handled DI duties on the series.)

Justifiably proud of the end results of this multi-team effort, Fraser seems cognizant of how StageCraft potentially marks an epoch in the annals of virtual production.

“Technology serves us; we don’t serve it,” the Oscar nominee concludes. “So, it doesn’t make sense, to me, to embrace something just because it is new. But if it can help us do things as well as if we were doing it for real, but more economically, that makes good sense. Every day we were making decisions on how to go forward with this process, so it was like history evolving as we worked. Each of the various departments works independently, but at the end of the day, they had to stand together.”

LOCAL 600 CREW Directors of Photography Greig Fraser, ACS, ASC Barry “Baz” Idoine Additional Director of Photography Ryley Brown A-Camera Operator Craig Cockerill, SOC A-Camera 1st AC Paul Metcalf A-Camera 2nd AC Amanda Levy B-Camera Operators Karina Silva Chris Murphy Simon Jayes, SOC B-Camera 1st AC Niranjan Martin B-Camera 2nd AC Jeremy Cannon DIT Eduardo Eguia Digital Utility Robby Marino Still Photographers Francois Duhamel, SMPSP Melinda Sue Gordon, SMPSP Unit Publicist Greg Brilliant 2ND UNIT & ADDITIONAL CREW Operator Greg Daniels 1st ACs David Parson Bill Coe 2nd ACs Peter Parson Trevor Coe DIT Luis Hernandez

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SOUTHERN DISCOMFORT Briarpatch is hot and dry with violence seething just

beneath the ragged blacktop and rural western vistas.

Welcome to Twin Peaks , Texas-style.

by Kevin H. Martin photos by John Britt and Scott McDermott framegrabs courtesy of USA Nertwork

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PHOTO BY JOHN BRITT

anamorphics to make sure the look was not too pristine. “The image on those lenses breaks up a little on the edges,” he adds. “So there was softness and a kind of oddness that put a layer between the viewer and the visuals. It suggested a depth to scenes that was beyond what was visible on the surface.”

A-Camera 1st AC Sarah Brandes says the style Campbell and Amirpour embraced was a natural fit with the organic C-series lenses. “You might have a dead spot on the right side of the lens, and they’d elect to use that defect to their advantage when framing up,” Brandes recalls. “[Amirpour] had used a Macro Auto Panatar 55mm on The Bad Batch, and she thought this MAP55 would be perfect for Briarpatch. There’s some crazy distortion with that lens; it even came with a giant P-touch label on it reading ‘eye focus only.’”

Brandes remembers during lens testing that “somebody asked [Panavision’s] Dan Sasaki, ‘What have you got that looks really crazy?’ Dan handed us anamorphic flare adapters that were literally hunks of glass that obliterated the top and bottom of the view, especially when you shone lights into it to create these crazy flares,” she explains.

“The original idea with these adapters was to put them on spherical lenses to create an anamorphic feel. But we used them with anamorphic lenses, which messed the image up in interesting ways. Somebody even tried it cocked to one side, so instead Pilot director of photography Tod indie feature Piercing, shot by Galler, which of a linear flare side to side, it went on a Campbell, an Emmy-winner for Esmail’s featured surreal aspects while using strange diagonal, which nobody’s ever gotten from Mr. Robot, was working on Homecoming lighting and camera angles. an anamorphic lens. We didn’t end up using when he caught word of the project. “What “They wanted a look that was hyper- them often, because the look would have got me fired up about it was hearing from real,” Galler recalls. “Heightened and at been too much, but they saw action on some Sam that they had decided on Ana Lily times absurd. And while some parts are very Steadicam POV shots.”

Amirpour [A Girl Walks Home Alone at serious, it’s not so much dark as just plain Another of the flare adapters, which Night] to direct,” Campbell recalls. “I’m a bizarre. [David] Lynch was a big reference were dubbed ‘hunks of meat,’ saw use in huge fan and went out to L.A. to meet her. for us, though we were all careful not to hit just one special shot. “We needed it in a It was clear she was going for something that nail on the head too hard.” casing that would clear the 25 millimeters unique and that shooting in New Mexico The network granted Campbell’s request on a DXL2 in 6K mode,” Brandes adds.

– which we’d also done for Mr. Robot – to shoot in 2.40:1 aspect ratio, which he says “Panavision counter-to-countered it from could supply the rural-Texas-town vibe.” “let us showcase these great vistas. I also Woodland Hills to New Mexico so we could [NBC/Universal ultimately bought the wanted to pound the light into scenes with use it on our last pilot shot, which featured 100,000-square-foot Albuquerque Studios hard shadows – when I could get them – a fake time-lapse.” where the pilot was shot.] leaning into this tremendous feeling of “That came about because [Amirpour] Campbell found a kindred spirit in heat. The show even starts with a shot of a didn’t really like VFX and wanted to do Amirpour, who, along with Greenwald, thermometer. this transition from day to night handled was excited by a different visual approach.

Since we were doing that rich-color look, in camera and without motion control,” “Everywhere I look these days, I see shows Fotokem built me a LUT based on Kodak 5245 Campbell explains. “We tented off an entire that are desaturated and blue,” laments [Eastman EXR 50D] emulsion [introduced house – which was a historic location, so there Campbell. “So I started thinking back to in 1989 and discontinued in 2006], with was a concern we’d break something, because films from the 1980’s and ‘90s, and features a saturated feel of that beautiful daylight of all the rigging above this beautiful stained like Joel Schumacher’s Falling Down [Andrzej stock. Everyone laughed when I asked if we glass – then built this massive grid. We put Bartkowiak, ASC] and Tony Scott’s Top Gun could shoot film, so this was at least one step lights on remote control and slid them around [Jeffrey L. Kimball, ASC.] The reference I could take in that direction.” (Campbell for thirteen seconds to make it seem like the images I pulled for the studio show-and-tell shot with Panavision’s Millennium DXL- sun was in motion. With the changing light were 95 percent from Top Gun.” 2, which he carried over from his use on coming through that stained glass, the effect Series cinematographer Zachary Galler Homecoming.) was pronounced. Then we dimmed those mirrored Campbell’s hard-light period Panavision Woodland Hills and Camera out as night came and went to a candlelight feel for the rest of the season. A Briarpatch World supplied the show, with Campbell effect. Everybody on the shoot was involved, producer had seen the 2018 Sundance electing to use Panavision’s vintage C-series and they all rose to the challenge.”

It has been nearly three decades since the quirky David Lynch/Mark Frost program Twin Peaks first exploded onto the airwaves.

Mixing scares with laughs and often verging on surrealism, the short-lived ABC series drew on Lynch’s unique styling as a departure from network norms. With the arrival of UCP and Paramount Television’s Briarpatch, an Anonymous Content production based on a Ross Thomas novel, its creators are hoping to tap into similar themes. Written by Andy Greenwald, who co-produced with Sam Esmail, the NBC/Universal series tells of investigator Allegra Dill (Rosario Dawson), who is drawn back to her hometown after her sister is killed in a car bombing. Dill arrives to find zoo animals roaming the streets, and a tiger prowling the halls of her hotel – our (twisted) town, Texas-style.

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“They wanted a look that was hyper-real. Heightened and at times absurd. And while some parts are very serious, it’s not so much dark as just plain bizarre.”

ZACHARY GALLER

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Crewing up Briarpatch involved a mix of talent. Campbell says, “Locally, we got a fantastic grip in Andy Simmons, while I brought Sarah and A-Camera operator James Goldman [SOC] from Los Angeles.

I wanted more local hires, but things were busy and people were locking into series rather than investing in a short-term pilot gig.” (The state’s rebate cap more than doubled before Briarpatch was green-lit.)

Near the end of the pilot, the tiger makes his appearance in the hallway, a shot that features a warping perspective. “I call that a ‘zolly’ – combining a zoom and a dolly,” Campbell laughs. “I hadn’t lit for a zoom lens, so we had to dig in deep to pull it off, with the anamorphic aspect magnifying the effect. Production told me that we would only be shooting locations for the pilot, so I was thinking, ‘A hotel hallway with a tiger – an easy build for the art department.’ But Ana Lily had scouted everything by herself and found these locations, including this hallway. She’s a real force, making good decisions down the line, and we made it work for her.”

Brandes had dealt with a similar shot – sans wildlife – on Homecoming. She practiced that with the Homecoming crew over seventy times, only to find it was impossible to be perfect.

“You try to fix four organic aspects of

a move with a team of people, but getting all those to work in tandem is so hard,” she describes. “Then you look at the famous shots in Goodfellas and Jaws and realize those weren’t perfect, but they still worked great. With this hotel hallway, which was not very shallow, we used a 4:1 zoom, with B-Camera First AC John J. Ellingwood on that zoom, while I was on the focus, and A-Camera operator James Goldman was on the Butterfly mount. We just went for it and got it in a few takes.” (The tiger was added later in post.)

Campbell says he was careful while shooting the pilot to not implement anything that would be too troublesome when the production went to series.

“In other shows for Sam, I’d known the full story in advance,” he reflects. “So, I could plan for my lighting to fit into a bigger picture. Since we didn’t know where Briarpatch was going, I concentrated on the script at hand as best I could, trying to establish a framework for this odd, hot world. But I didn’t want to paint Zach into some weird place, and told him, ‘Do whatever you feel is right – the story drives the look.’”

Galler says he wanted the series to look like the Alan Parker feature Angel Heart [shot by Michael Seresin, ONZM, BSC], with hard light and real blacks, “not

flarey under-lit, underexposed stuff,” he describes. “I wanted the sharpest lenses and cameras, with only a black diffusion filter to knock things down, to serve the story. I also liked the challenge of not always having everything super-dark, so that when we did need to go that route, it would carry a lot of weight. Classical lighting worked great on Rosario Dawson. I liked making all the actors look right, and it was fun and challenging to not light everybody with soft bounce light.”

Since later episodes featured many night scenes with the potential to eat a lot of light on the DXL, Galler elected to shoot on the RED RANGER with Master Prime anamorphics.

“The Ranger and DXL have the same sensor, and at [Panavision] Light Iron, [former global senior vice president of innovation] Michael Cioni and [senior colorist] Ian Vertovec gave us a great LUT with a film curve,” Galler continues. “It stayed true to Tod’s raw sunlight look but was a bit more responsive in lower light and slightly less contrasty. That LUT provided flexibility; I think we maybe had to go to higher ISO only when shooting 60 fps on a night exterior. I had never shot a narrative project on RED before, and it worked great for the heightened look of Briarpatch – the camera gave us that pulpiness.”

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Galler also carried over Campbell’s use of wide lenses for closeups. “Director Steven Piet did four episodes and didn’t like to bring in a second camera, so we would get as close to the eyeline and as wide as possible on close-ups,” Galler adds. “Going with the wide lenses provided great depth of field and showed us something of the environment around these faces. I may not have gone that way on my own, but we discovered it could say a lot visually by going so wide and so close. One actor always got a 35mm, another a 28mm for the close-up.

Depending on how grotesque we wanted to go for a moment, we might put that 28mm right up in his/her face.”

Camera operator Matt Harshbarger, SOC, who shot just two weeks as B-Camera operator for the pilot due to other commitments and then returned as series A-Camera/Steadicam operator, says Galler’s team never felt beholden to any standard approach. “I’m not a fan of coverage,” Harshbarger shares. “So it’s always fun to feel free from that network-style of wide/ wide/medium/over/over/reverse-master.

Andy Greenwald had a great playlist on Spotify that was all over the map, and that was true of the series, as well, pulling from things we’d seen before, but combined in new ways; almost standing certain aspects on their head at times.

“We did a lot of Steadicam, and also didn’t pull a lot of walls on stage, because most of our directors wanted to tell the story using that specific kind of movement through space,” Harshbarger continues.

“If you can do something unusual with one sustained take, pulling that challenge off is rewarding. I owe a lot of that to my collaborators, including [1st AC] Gabriel [Pfeiffer] and [dolly grip David] “Jaxx” [Nagro], who were both amazing.” (Aerial views of Briarpatch and its surroundings were captured with DJI Inspire drones, deployed to shoot transitions and provide scope, with most of the drone work handled by 2nd unit.)

Galler also notes the series team did a lot with color, “and that ramps up as the season goes on, using a lot of LEDs to facilitate that manipulation,” he reveals. “Gaffer Jeremy Oliver and I agreed early on about how much we wanted to push the look, which included burning the highlights. We used 24K Fresnels for the interior sets, which was Jeremy’s idea, and it gave a little extra push with that clean Fresnel shadow, beyond what we’d get with a 20K. I like to keep as much lighting off the set as possible. The less equipment and crew, the better for the actors.”

When practicals were called for, Galler often employed a mix of incandescents

and CFL, though LED bars also saw duty in locations where the use of such fixtures was appropriate.

“When Allegra discovers drones being kept in a warehouse space, I used sixteen green Astera Titans, placed vertically,” Galler explains. “That light drew the viewers’ eyes ahead as we knew she was headed toward something in the near total darkness, building suspense till she finds this corral of drones. Later in the series, there are more LED fixtures built into sets – often light ribbon or under-cabinet fixtures. It was nice to be able to tweak colors easily when shooting with those units.”

At one point, the town is struck by a blackout. Galler says the team hadn’t done much moonlight, intentionally keeping a gritty sodium-vapor feel.

“To cue viewers to the visual change when switching to blackout conditions, we used a Bebee light,” he describes. “To illuminate the desert with moonlight, we used big units; this was fun because on this series, we didn’t feel the need to motivate every light source all the time. The surreal quality meant we could add an edge light or splash of color when it felt right.”

The series team also rebuilt Allegra’s hotel room and hallway, and the police

PHOTO BY SCOTT MCDERMOTT

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station, on stage, used two to three days out of every eight. “Our grips came up with a good solution for the stage windows, using a light-blue grid cloth for the sky,” Galler informs. “It was supposed to be this burning Texas sky, but I wanted to hold some blue, so that came through just enough even though we were overexposing a bit at the very top of the camera’s dynamic range, so that little bit of blue didn’t feel like a translight or a backing. We used that in any scenes set up on a third or fourth floor, like her hotel room and the upper floors of the police station.”

Galler’s work on the DI would extend to supervising color on five of his episodes, while Campbell reports spending three days with Fotokem’s senior colorist, Kostas Theodosiou. “I was just so jazzed with the results,” Campbell exclaims. “Sam called and told me, ‘This looks insane!’ So I told him that we should do something different like this on our next job together.

“Back when I first read the script, the part with the zoo animals roaming the town and Rosario meeting a giraffe hooked me,” Campbell concludes. “It had that offbeat Fargo kind of vibe, surprising, like anything can happen, and no idea where it was going to go. I went into work the next morning and told Sam that the script was really good.’ And he just looked at me and said, ‘Dude, I don’t produce bad stuff.’ Man, he really doesn’t.”

LOCAL 600 CREW PILOT

SEASON 1

Director of Photography Tod Campbell

Director of Photography Zachary Galler

A-Camera Operator James Goldman, SOC

A-Camera Operator/Steadicam Matt Harshbarger, SOC

A-Camera 1st AC Sarah Brandes

A-Camera/Steadicam 1st AC Gabe Pfeiffer

A-Camera 2nd AC Liza Bambenek

A-Camera 2nd AC John Hamilton

B-Camera Operator Matt Harshbarger, SOC

B-Camera Operator Korey Robinson

B-Camera 1st AC Jared Jordan

B-Camera 1st AC Kingslea Bueltel

B-Camera 2nd AC Dan Baas

B-Camera 2nd AC Taylor Hilburn

DIT Robert Howie

Digital Utility Diana De Aguinaga

Loaders Jasmine Harvey Danny Park

Loader Katy Jones

SERIES DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY ZACHARY GALLER / PHOTO BY JOHN BRITT

Utility Julian Quiambao Still Photographers Scott McDermott Karen Kuehn

Still Photographers John Britt Ursula Coyote Richard Foreman, SMPSP

PILOT DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY TOD CAMPBELL / PHOTO BY SCOTT MCDERMOTT

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PICTURE THIS...

Writer/director Stella Meghie’s The Photograph travels from the bayous of period Louisiana to the streets of presentday New York City in a seamless (and sultry) drama.

by Valentina Valentini photos by Sabrina Lantos / Universal Pictures

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From the first read of Stella Meghie’s script for The Photograph, Guild cinematographer Mark Schwartzbard knew it was going to be a complicated shoot. The film is a love story that encompasses two different time periods and two very different places, two women and two men, and stockpiles of passion.

But what love story worth telling isn’t complicated?

The Photograph is Meghie’s fourth feature and stars Issa Rae as Mae and Lakeith Stanfield as Michael. The story follows after the death of Mae’s mother, a famous self-made photographer, on whom Michael is doing a story, which leads to his meeting Mae. The narrative dives into the past of Mae’s mother in both the bayous of Louisiana and the streets of New York City, and is juxtaposed with the possible future of Mae and Michael in both locations while jumping back and forth from the 1980s to the present day.

Having stuck her feet firmly in the romance (comedy and drama) genre with films like Everything, Everything (making Meghie the only black woman director to helm a studio feature in 2017) and The Weekend (released in 2018 while she was already in production on The Photograph), Meghie doesn’t feel visually boxed-in by her chosen genre.

“With romances and comedies there’s a tendency to think ‘super bright or poppy,’” she says. “And I would say visually, my style is kind of the opposite of that.” Her references were Carrie Mae Weems’ The Kitchen Table series and Saul Leiter’s 1950s New York City photographs.

Meghie – who originally had a career in fashion publicity and switched gears in 2009 to get a Masters degree in Screenwriting from the University of Westminster in London – usually aims for a warm, saturated feeling, and with The Photograph, specifically, she was working within a dark palette. She wanted the story to feel rich and moody, which is where Production Designer Loren Weeks came in handy with helping to find as many jewel tones and masculinefeeling colors in location scouting as

possible. “You’ve got these two different locales,” says Weeks, who has recently finished up the first season of Dickinson for Apple TV+ (ICG Magazine, Poetry in Motion, January 2020), “New York, which can be such an incredibly seductive and sexy city. And then you’ve got coastal Louisiana and New Orleans, which have their own vibe that’s also sexy.”

On the other end of the movie-making machine, Meghie had her colorist, Mitch Paulson from EFilm, who had colored her previous two films and had homed in on her aesthetic. “I loved that they weren’t afraid to go darker,” shares Paulson. “We were very careful to make sure that we were able to see what was important in the shot. We did a lot with windows to help shape the image more. That helped us darken just the areas we wanted without losing our characters.”

who reflects me and the friends that I have.

It means a lot when I see Issa fill up the screen; her skin tones are so beautiful. The majority of the time, it’s a light-skinned or biracial woman playing the lead in these movies, if it’s not a white woman, and when the trailer dropped and the chatter started, it was such beautiful feedback [from African-American women] of being able to see themselves in this kind of [romance] movie. I think it’s striking because we’re not used to seeing it on the big screen.”

As the conversations between Schwartzbard, Weeks and Stella went, so too were they similar with Paulson for his coloring, which included key words like “sexy,” “seduction” and “empathy.” With those ideas in mind, Paulson wanted to make sure he was helping to differentiate the looks for the scenes in the South and the North. “We went with a warmer look for New Orleans and cooler for New York, and Meghie hired Schwartzbard, who warm skin tones throughout,” he recalls. “I won an ECA in 2004 for the short film thought that keeping things warmer and a Psychoanalysis Changed My Life, specifically bit on the darker side helped make it feel because she felt he could maintain the sexier and seductive.” beautiful and nuanced visual identity the The location- and period-hopping cinematographer had achieved on the within the story challenged Schwartzbard hit Netflix series Master of None, despite to maintain visual fidelity and consistency, numerous directors over its two seasons. as Meghie wanted, without resorting Meghie’s visual direction for The Photograph to traditional tropes like strong colorwas to have Schwartzbard make it feel saturation switches to cue the audience. sumptuous, while never shying away from Instead, they opted for a subtler approach: dim rooms and dark backgrounds (even shifting lenses from spherical to with the darker complexions of the leads, anamorphic, and pairing the ALEXA MINI Rae and Stanfield). with a variety of older Panavision lenses.

“There is not often a dark-skinned “It’s a pretty uncontroversial choice woman in the lead of a studio film, or that always works and always looks good any film,” Meghie observers. “So, it was – I find that older glass ‘likes people,’” notes important to me that Mae be played by a Schwartzbard, who tested a handful of brown-skinned African-American woman lenses at Panavision New York and chose

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the Panavision P-vintage lenses – rehoused old ultra-speeds from the 1970s – for their spherical workhorses. “They’re a little softer, a little more flattering. I feel more of a connection with the characters when I am using them,” he adds.

Schwartzbard and his Guild camera team, which included operators Rod Calarco, SOC, and Rob Pagliaro, First Assistants Zach Rubin and Paul Colangelo, Second Assistants Chris Cafaro and Derrick Dawkins, and loader Christina Carmody, had considered shooting large format or anamorphic, but those tools were in high demand at the time, so the universe pointed them toward a widescreen format with spherical lenses matting out to 2.39:1 aspect ratio. And then, miraculously, says Schwartzbard, the guys at Panavision New York were able to work with their shooting schedule to rent out the C-series Anamorphics for flashback days. “ They ended up being the perfect series for us because they’re one of the oldest series with the most character,” he continues. “The first thing we shot was a funeral parlor flashback, and as soon as we put those anamorphics on and changed the camera to anamorphic mode, we knew that we wanted to do that for all the flashback scenes.” Rubin also prepped spherical zooms for Schwart zbard: Panavision 11:1, a go-to for a long lens, and Panavision 20-100, which is an old Cooke rehoused and expanded to fit their format, as well as some Angénieux lightweight zooms, 15-40 and 28-76, always handy for Steadicam and cranes.

Key to translating Meghie’s story from script to screen was the collaboration between Schwartzbard and Weeks – both of whom had similar takes on how to support the romance across time and space.

“When you’re doing a lot of location work – as we were on this project,” Weeks shares, “I can help the cinematographer by giving them practicals to choose from and flexibility and options to work with. But I think a lot of collaboration comes in with us when we’re building scenery. There, I really incorporate the cinematographer’s vision into the design of the set. I love lighting, so I love to work closely with cinematographers.”

One particular scene that epitomized the team’s collaboration was Mae and Michael’s first date, shot in the venerable Vietnamese restaurant Indochine, a fixture in New York City’s NoHo neighborhood since the 1980s, and replete with palm-frond and mirrored décor.

“I think Stella had written the scene based on a date she had,” offers Schwartzbard, “where she was in the back booth of some bar with her person, and it’s

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this very sexy situation in real life, but when you’re filming, maybe not so sexy to shoot two people with their backs to the wall in a corner. Cinematographers and production designers are always trying to force people in restaurants to the middle of the dining room so we can have all the depth behind them.”

In fact, Weeks and Schwartzbard were driving around in the scout van looking for a location that had mirrors above the banquettes, since that would give them both depth and that first-date-in-a-booth feeling. Many spots were too masculine or too feminine, too bright or too dark for what Meghie had in her head, and, at some point, Weeks suggested Indochine. They headed straight there on a cold scout, and that ended up being the location for the first date.

“For all this talk about the cameras and lenses,” adds Schwartzbard, “a lot of the best scenes in the film are just when the camera gets out of the way. This movie lives and dies on the charisma of these actors. When they’re in the booth on a first date, the chemistry is amazing. Shooting at Indochine let them be in the corner privately, but it also let us have some sparkly light bouncing off the mirrors behind them – even though mirrors are always a pain in the ass.” [Two mirrors meeting at 90 degrees is optically something called a corner reflector, and you’ll always see

yourself back at the apex when looking at two mirrors in the corner.]

Gaffer Bill Newell, who recently worked on Motherless Brooklyn with Dick Pope, ASC, hid soft lights where he could, using Chimera Pancakes overhead for some base exposure and adding small Fresnel lights scattered about to accent some of the flora and other set dressing. They had to make up some flags with the same pattern as the wallpaper in the restaurant so Schwartzbard’s camera team could hide themselves and their lighting behind them to make it look like they were columns. “I wish someone in film school had told me what percentage of cinematography would be about dodging reflections,” Schwartzbard laughs.

Newell says reflections were a constant challenge throughout the shoot. In Mae’s apartment, where a pivotal love scene happens during a Hurricane Sandy-like storm, there were 60 feet of floor-to-ceiling windows across one side. And while they wanted to see the storm going on outside, the focal point was to be the couple on the couch. The whole sequence takes place over the course of one day and in several locations, so it was complicated to pull off, considering they were creating a storm from scratch.

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY MARK SCHWARTZBARD (LEFT) OBSERVES THAT “FOR ALL THE TALK ABOUT CAMERAS AND LENSES, THE BEST SCENES IN THE FILM ARE JUST WHEN THE CAMERA GETS OUT OF THE WAY. THIS MOVIE LIVES AND DIES ON THE CHARISMA OF THESE ACTORS.”

“First AD Mark Anthony Little was phenomenal,” Schwartzbard describes.

“We’re all over New York City throwing water around, and Mark has it all in a scheduling grid. Camera and Art needed to make sure there were various levels of the storm at various times of the day and night and with different characters. These locations – for Mae’s apartment, for Michael’s brother’s apartment where Mae and Michael end up the night of the storm and for Christina’s Eames Soho loft – were all selected so that we would feel the storm happening outside.

That meant massive amounts of windows and having to really shoot at night instead of being able to tent.”

Five lifts were positioned on the darkened street: two Condors with Rain Spiders on them, two Condors with backlights, one at the north end of the block and one at the south end of the block, along with a scissor lift for Ritter fans to blow all the water at the windows (which also meant they had to be careful of the locations they chose because they’d need to withstand the water pressure).

“It was definitely a challenge,” Newell imparts. “Those windows [were there] by design to really feel the storm rain and wind, but it was tricky to find a way to backlight the rain without polluting the

apartment with stray light. We used a few lifts as lighting platforms to get the right angles and also lit from the street at the fourth-floor level. Also, all that glass made for a reflection nightmare, so we had to carefully hide the interior lighting with some well-placed practicals; Mark’s batterypowered Quasars came in handy.”

Newell helped to keep the interior tonally warm against the cold storm outside with what Schwartzbard calls their “go-to interior light,” a booklight with a SkyPanel S60 off muslin and diffusing through an 8-by-8-foot or 6-by-6-foot grid cloth.

Beyond the complex technical aspects was the central goal of everyone eager to help Meghie bring these characters to life with empathy – with hopes and dreams, loves and losses, portrayed by actors shown in a new light. “This is a drama,” Meghie concludes, “and Issa and Lakeith are both more known for their comedy work.

Sometimes it can be jarring to see them together, so it was important to create a world that felt uniquely theirs. [I think this film] feels fresh [and sexy], you know? Like they’re meant to be in that timeframe [with a] deep attraction, and how connected they are through the movie. Everything we did was to push that story forward – of them falling for each other despite themselves.”

LOCAL 600 CREW Director of Photography Mark Schwartzbard A-Camera Operator/Steadicam Rod Calarco, SOC A-Camera 1st AC Zach Rubin A-Camera 2nd AC Chris Cafaro B-Camera Operator Rob Pagliaro B-Camera 1st AC Paul Colangelo B-Camera 2nd AC Derrick Dawkins Loader Christina Carmody Still Photographer Sabrina Lantos

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Eric McCandless, who joined the ICG in 2003, Guild member Eric

says his lifelong passion for photojournalism has

McCandless has been the

prepared him well for working the Oscars, a job he

only still photographer

describes as “documenting history.” And history,

covering ABC TV’s broadcast of the Academy Awards for the last two years – here’s his picks from red carpet to backstage.

specifically a school field trip to the Washington Monument, is where the Pennsylvania native remembers first falling in love with his craft.

“I couldn’t get all of [the monument] in one frame because of where we were dropped off,” he recounts, “so I shot three photos – top, middle and base – to put together in a photo album. My parents saw [photography] as a waste of money, but I saw it as inspiration.”

No doubt. After graduating with a Bachelor’s degree in Photojournalism from Western Kentucky University, McCandless came home to find a message on his answering machine about becoming a full-time photojournalist for The Tribune-Review, in Greensburg, PA (where he stayed six years). “When I moved to California in 2000 for the weather, I didn’t even know about the unit photographer’s job until a producer at a party asked if I would be interested in shooting stills on his upcoming movie,” he adds. “I jumped at the chance, and 19 years later I’m backstage shooting Lady Gaga and Barbra Streisand at the Oscars! It’s crazy.”

Career shock aside, McCandless’s unfettered access inside the Dolby Theater (instead of being fixed in one camera position) allows him to roam through the corridors that connect all the floors and rooms. “I take a slightly slower pace at that time,” he shares, “because the walls are lined with amazing photography from previous Oscars. Who knows? Maybe years from now, another photographer will be heading down that same hallway and take a moment to see one of my photos from Oscars past.”

Hey, Oscar!

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Barbra Streisand Barbra Streisand introduced Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman, and while she had already been photographed in the theater, a portrait was also needed. The backstage hallway doesn’t have much light, is crowded with working crew, and I couldn’t use a flash with the winners coming off the stage with awards in hand, so I was very limited. But I knew an Oscar statue was available, and there were plenty of black curtains and one light source from above. Photo approval was needed immediately, so Barbra invited me and one other photographer to her dressing room, where she chose to go with my portrait [even though the other photographer said he could shoot the portrait alone and share his images with me]!

John Lewis Shooting backstage in a photojournalistic style is what I was trained to do. So, when Congressman John Lewis was preparing to go on stage as a presenter, I knew I only had a few moments. There is so much happening around you backstage that you have to account for – props, set pieces, and actors all coming and going. The key is to remain acutely focused on your subject and what is required.

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Lady Gaga There are times when being in the right place at the right time goes a long way. I was shooting a portrait of Julia Roberts [who did not walk the red carpet] in the hallway when “Shallow� won for Best Original Song. Heading toward the backstage wings, I saw Lady Gaga emerge into the hallway in front of me, her fellow Oscar winners in tow. I knew I had to get the photo right then, so I stayed ahead of them as they walked. For a short time, I was the only photographer with them. Lady Gaga paused to compose herself, and then collapsed to the ground in utter elation, as I shot a burst of images. At that same moment, a pack of photographers emerged looking for Gaga.

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Spike Lee Wins Best Adapted Screenplay for BlacKkKlansman Spike Lee had been nominated so many times for Oscars, I knew it was a big deal when his name was called for BlacKkKlansman.

Sometimes the Oscar envelope itself can define a single image, given the subject’s history.

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Jimmy Chin Wins Best Feature Documentary for Free Solo As winners come backstage one after another through the night, you can’t help but feel their excitement and joy. But your job is to just keep shooting! Like when Jimmy Chin got a celebratory hug from presenter Jason Momoa, with producer Shannon Dill all smiles, award in hand, behind them. Whether it’s a few winners emerging backstage, or a large group, you have to be prepared for whatever comes your way.

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Regina King & Danny Glover

Elaine Welteroth & Maria Menounos 72

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My day starts four hours before the live show, and I have to be making my way into the Dolby Theater 15 minutes before we go live due to the many security checkpoints. As the roaming red-carpet photographer, my job is to be everywhere at all times – I probably walk a couple of miles in the uncomfortable shiny dress shoes we are required to wear! The energy on the red carpet is palpable as the media outlets vie for a moment with the stars, but the stars are also reveling in the moment. Regina King and Danny Glover were having such a warm moment with one another, even with a wall of cameras watching their every move. I was on my way to another section as I saw what was going on and took a moment to capture it. One of the benefits of roaming is just turning around to find another great shot. And we must not forget to shoot the fashion, as that can get more attention than the awards show. “Who are you wearing?” is one of the most frequently uttered phrases you will hear on the red carpet.

People love to pose for photos when they are dressed to the nines!

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PRODUCTION CREDITS COMPILED BY TERESA MUÑOZ – AS OF JANUARY 1, 2020 The input of Local 600 members is of the utmost importance, and we rely on our membership as the prime (and often the only) source of information. In order for us to continue to provide this service, we ask that Guild members submitting information take note of the following requests: Please provide up-to-date and complete crew information (including that the deadline for the Production Credits is on the first of the preceding cover month (excluding weekends & holidays).

Submit your jobs online by visiting: www.icg600.com/MY600/Report-Your-Job Any questions regarding the Production Credits should be addressed to Teresa Muñoz at teresa@icgmagazine.com 74

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First Man / Photo by Daniel McFadden

Still Photographers, Publicists, Additional Units, etc.). Please note

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“FREAKY FRIDAY THE 13TH” DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: LAURIE ROSE OPERATORS: GREG BUBB, SPENCER HUTCHINS ASSISTANTS: MARY STANKIEWICZ, LAURA OSTAPIEJ, JASON LANCOUR, DWAYNE GREEN DIGITAL UTILITY: ANNA-MARIE ALOIA DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: NICK HILTGEN STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: RICHARD BAKER

CBB PRODUCTIONS

“AUNTY DONNA’S HOUSE” SEASON 1 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: DAN ALDERSTEIN OPERATOR: CHRIS HAMILTON

76

FEB/MAR 2020 PRODUCTION CREDITS

ASSISTANTS: PAYAM YAZDANDOOST, ERICK AGUILAR, MATT TAYLOR, BOBBY PAVLOVSKY DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: ANDY REYNOLDS

CBS

“BROKE” SEASON 1 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: PETER SMOKLER OPERATORS: CANDY EDWARDS, DEBORAH O’BRIEN, JACK CHISHOLM ASSISTANTS: MARK JOHNSON, BRADLEY TRAVER UTILITIES: JEFF AMARAL, KEVIN MENTEER, MONICA SCHAD DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: ELENA GOMEZ VIDEO CONTROLLER: CLIFF JONES STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: RON JAFFE

“BULL” SEASON 4 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: DERICK UNDERSCHULTZ OPERATORS: BARNABY SHAPIRO, MALCOLM PURNELL ASSISTANTS: ROMAN LUKIW, SOREN NASH, MICHAEL LOBB, TREVOR WOLFSON DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: THOMAS WONG LOADERS: QUINN MURPHY, NIALANEY RODRIGUEZ

“CAROL’S SECOND ACT” SEASON 1 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: CHRIS LA FOUNTAINE OPERATORS: BRUCE REUTLINGER, GEORGE LA FOUNTAINE, CHRIS WILCOX, KRIS CONDE ASSISTANTS: CHRIS WORKMAN, BRIAN LYNCH, JEFF ROTH, JOHN WEISS, CRAIG LA FOUNTAINE CAMERA UTILITIES: CHRIS TODD, VICKI BECK DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: SHAUN WHEELER VIDEO CONTROLLER: ANDY DICKERMAN

“ENTERTAINMENT TONIGHT” SEASON 39

LIGHTING DESIGNER: DARREN LANGER DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: KURT BRAUN OPERATORS: JAMES B. PATRICK, ALLEN VOSS, ED SARTORI, HENRY ZINMAN, BOB CAMPI, RODNEY MCMAHON, ANTHONY SALERNO JIB OPERATOR: JAIMIE CANTRELL CAMERA UTILITY: TERRY AHERN VIDEO CONTROLLERS: MIKE DOYLE, PETER STENDAL

“MAN WITH A PLAN” SEASON 4 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: GARY BAUM, ASC OPERATORS: GLENN SHIMADA, TRAVERS HILL, LANCE BILLITZER, ED FINE ASSISTANTS: ADRIAN LICCIARDI, JEFF GOLDENBERG, ALEC ELIZONDO, CLINT PALMER, JASON HERRING UTILITIES: DANNY LORENZE, SEAN ASKINS DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: DEREK LANTZ VIDEO CONTROLLER: JOHN O’BRIEN

“NCIS” SEASON 17 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: WILLIAM WEBB, ASC OPERATORS: GREGORY PAUL COLLIER, CHAD ERICKSON, DOUG FROEBE (VIDEO) ASSISTANTS: JAMES TROOST, HELEN TADESSE, NATHAN LOPEZ, YUSEF EDMONDS LOADER: ANNA FERRARIE STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: MIKE KUBEISY

“NCIS: LOS ANGELES” SEASON 11 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: VICTOR HAMMER OPERATORS: TERENCE NIGHTINGALL, TIM BEAVERS ASSISTANTS: KEITH BANKS, RICHIE HUGHES, PETER CARONIA, JACQUELINE NIVENS STEADICAM OPERATORS: TERENCE NIGHTINGALL, TIM BEAVERS STEADICAM ASSISTANTS: KEITH BANKS, RICHIE HUGHES DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: JOHN MILLS DIGITAL UTILITY: CAROLINE MILLS STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: RON JAFFE PUBLICIST: KATHLEEN TANJI

“SEAL TEAM” SEASON 3 DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: J. MICHAEL MURO, ALAN JACOBY OPERATORS: DOMINIC BARTOLONE, MATT VALENTINE ASSISTANTS: TODD AVERY, ANDREW DEGNAN, ARTURO ROJAS, RYAN JACKSON STEADICAM OPERATOR: DOMINIC BARTOLONE STEADICAM ASSISTANT: TODD AVERY DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: RAUL RIVEROS LOADER: NOAH MURO STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: RON JAFFE

“THE GOOD FIGHT” SEASON 4

“THE UNICORN” SEASON 1

DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: FRED MURPHY, ASC, PETR HLINOMAZ, TIM GUINESS OPERATORS: ALEC JARNAGIN, PETER NOLAN ASSISTANTS: RENE CROUT, DANIEL FIORITO, ELIZABETH HEDGES, JULIA LEACH, EMILY DEBLASI STEADICAM OPERATOR: ALEC JARNAGIN LOADERS: SANCHEEV RAVICHANDRAN, BRIAN CARDENAS

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: CRAIG KIEF OPERATORS: HASSAN ABDUL-WAHID, ERIC ZIMMERMAN, ROCKER MEADOWS ASSISTANTS: JARROD OSWALD, RICHARD AVALON, JOE SOLARI, LORNA LESLIE DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: AARON BILLER CAMERA UTILITY: JASON FAUST

“THE NEIGHBORHOOD” SEASON 2 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: CHRIS LA FOUNTAINE OPERATORS: BRUCE RUETLINGER, KRIS CONDE, GEORGE LA FOUNTAINE, CHRIS WILCOX ASSISTANTS: JEFF ROTH, BRIAN LYNCH, CRAIG LA FOUNTAINE CAMERA UTILITIES: CHRIS TODD, VICKI BECK, TREVOR LA FOUNTAINE DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: RYNE NINER VIDEO CONTROLLER: ANDY DICKERMAN STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: RON JAFFE

“THE TALK” SEASON 10 LIGHTING DIRECTOR: MARISA DAVIS PED OPERATORS: ART TAYLOR, MARK GONZALES, ED STAEBLER HANDHELD OPERATORS: RON BARNES, KEVIN MICHEL, JEFF JOHNSON JIB OPERATOR: RANDY GOMEZ HEAD UTILITY: CHARLES FERNANDEZ UTILITIES: MIKE BUSHNER, DOUG BAIN, DEAN FRIZZEL, BILL GREINER, JON ZUCCARO VIDEO CONTROLLER: RICHARD STROCK STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: RON JAFFE

“TOMMY” SEASON 1 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: CRAIG DIBONA OPERATORS: DAVID TAICHER, ERIC TRAMP ASSISTANTS: EDWIN EFFREIN, JAMES BELLETIER, DEREK DIBONA, JAMES MCEVOY STEADICAM OPERATOR: DAVID TAICHER LOADERS: CHRIS MENDEZ, TREVOR BARCUS STILL PHOTOGRAPHERS: CARA HOWE, ALYSSA LONGCHAMP, JEFFREY NEIRA, MICHAEL PARMELEE

CETERI, LLC

“UNTITLED KINBERG WEIL SERIES AKA RAY JAMES” DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: TIMOTHY IVES OPERATORS: MARK SCHMIDT, WYLDA BAYRON ASSISTANTS: ADRIANA BRUNETTO-LIPMAN, ROSSANA RIZZO, AMBER ROSALES, MIKE SWEARINGEN DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: J. ERIC CAMP LOADER: BRITTANY JELINSKI STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: MACALL POLAY

CMS PRODUCTIONS

“AT HOME WITH AMY SEDARIS” SEASON 3 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: ROBERT BAROCCI OPERATORS: CHARLES BEYER, CLINT LITTON, MICHAEL DRUCKER ASSISTANTS: GORDON ARKENBERG, SARAH HENDRICK, STEPHEN KOZLOWSKI, CASEY JOHNSON, KATIE GREAVES LOADER: MATHEW MARTIN STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: PHIL CARUSO

CONFESSION THE FILM, LLC “CONFESSION”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: BENJAMIN GOODMAN OPERATOR: JUSTIN MARZELLA ASSISTANT: DAVID MASLYN LOADER: JOSIAH WEINHOLD STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: BRETT ROEDEL

DAYLIGHT DAYCARE, INC.

“DAYLIGHT DAYCARE” SEASON 1 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: ANETTE HAELLMIGK OPERATORS: RACHAEL LEVINE, WILLIAM GREEN ASSISTANTS: ANDREW HAMILTON, JAMES DALY, COREY LICAMELI, ANDREA BIAS DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: TED VIOLA LOADERS: ANJELA COVIAUX, BILLY HOLMAN STILL PHOTOGRAPHERS: CRAIG BLANKENHORN, BARBARA NITKE

FEB/MAR 2020 PRODUCTION CREDITS

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“SWAGGER” SEASON 1 DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: RODNEY TAYLOR, ASC CLIFFORD CHARLES OPERATORS: KERWIN DEVONISH, GARY HATFIELD ASSISTANTS: CHRISTOPHER GLEATON, NICHOLAS HAHN, ZAKIYA LUCAS-MURRAY, DERRICK DAWKINS LOADERS: BRITTANY WILSON, XAVIER VENOSTA STILL PHOTOGRAPHERS: PATRICK HARBRON, FRANK MCPARTLAND, ANTONY PLATT

FUQUA FILMS

“THE RESIDENT” SEASON 3 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: BART TAU OPERATORS: MATT DOLL, ANDY FISHER, CHRISTIAN SATRAZEMIS ASSISTANTS: JUSTIN DEGUIRE, TAYLOR CASE, APRIL RUANE CROWLEY, MIKE FISHER, JENNIFER RANKINE, GRACE PRELLER CHAMBERS STEADICAM OPERATOR: MATT DOLL STEADICAM ASSISTANT: JUSTIN DEGUIRE LOADER: TREY VOLPE DIGITAL UTILITY: RYAN ST CLAIR STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: GUY DE’ALEMA 2ND UNIT DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: ANDY FISHER OPERATORS: CHRISTIAN SATRAZEMIS, MICHAEL GFELNER, COOPER DUNN ASSISTANTS: JACKSON MCDONALD, CLAIRE PAPEVIES, TAYLOR CASE, MATT EVANS, STERLING WIGGINS, TRISHA SOLYN STEADICAM OPERATOR: CHRISTIAN SATRAZEMIS DIGITAL UTILITY: TREY VOLPE UTILITY: ERIC GAVLINSKI

DEPUTY PRODUCTIONS “DEPUTY” SEASON 1

DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: SIDNEY SIDELL, ASC, ALAN CAUDILLO OPERATORS: JUSTIN BROWNE, BROOKS ROBINSON, KRIS KROSSKOVE ASSISTANTS: KEVIN POTTER, ROB SALVIOTTI, RYAN BUSHMAN, TAYLOR HILBURN DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: RAFEL MONTOYA LOADER: OSCAR MONTEZ DIGITAL UTILITY: GENESIS HERNANDEZ STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: RICHARD FOREMAN, KAREN KUEHN

DICKINSON 1, LLC

“DICKINSON” SEASON 2 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: TIM ORR OPERATORS: JEFFREY DUTEMPLE, GREGORY FINKEL ASSISTANTS: BRADLEY GRANT, EMMA REES-SCANLON, SUREN KARAPETYAN, KATHERYN IUELE DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: JESSICA TA LOADERS: JYE-EN JENG, MICHAEL POMORSKI STILL PHOTOGRAPHERS: MICHAEL PARMELEE, JON PACK

EYE PRODUCTIONS, INC.

“BLUE BLOODS” SEASON 10 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: GENE ENGELS OPERATORS: STEPHEN CONSENTINO, GEOFFREY FROST

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FEB/MAR 2020 PRODUCTION CREDITS

ASSISTANTS: GRAHAM BURT, JACOB STAHLMAN, MARTIN PETERSON, KENNETH MARTELL DIGITAL IMAGING TECHS: RYAN HEIDE, STEVE CALALANG LOADERS: MICHAEL FULLER, JOHN KEELER STILL PHOTOGRAPHERS: CRAIG BLANKENHORN, PATRICK HARBRON

“DYNASTY” SEASON 3 DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: STAR BARRY, ROGER CHINGIRIAN OPERATORS: BRETT MAYFIELD, BROWN COOPER ASSISTANTS: COLIN DURAN, RYAN ABRAMS, ALEXA ROMERO STEADICAM OPERATOR: BRETT MAYFIELD STEADICAM ASSISTANT: COLIN DURAN DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: ERIC HENSON DIGITAL UTILITY: JIMARI JONES

“MACGYVER” SEASON 4 DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: MICHAEL MARTINEZ, CHRISTOPHER DUDDY OPERATORS: IAN FORSYTH, PAUL KRUMPER, GREG BALDI ASSISTANTS: AL COHEN, TREVOR RIOS, MICHAEL TORINO, STEFAN VINO-FIGUEROA, EASTON HARPER, TYLER BASTIANSON STEADICAM OPERATOR: IAN FORSYTH STEADICAM ASSISTANT: AL COHEN DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: GREG VANZYCK DIGITAL UTILITY: BRIAN FREDERICK

MAIN GATE PRODUCTIONS, LLC “GOD FRIENDED ME” SEASON 2

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: JON DELGADO OPERATORS: THOMAS SCHNAIDT, DANIEL HERSEY ASSISTANTS: BLACKFORD SHELTON, III, MARCOS RODRIGUEZ QUIJANO, BEHNOOD DADFAR, ALFONSO DIAZ DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: CHANDLER TUCKER LOADERS: ANGEL VASQUEZ, MIGUEL GONZALEZ STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: MICHAEL PARMELEE

MESQUITE PRODUCTIONS

“FOR ALL MANKIND” SEASON 2 DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: STEPHEN MCNUTT, ROSS BERRYMAN OPERATORS: TIM SPENCER, MIKE MCEVEETY ASSISTANTS: STEPHEN PAZANTI, JORGE PALLARES, DARIN KRASK, ARTHUR ZAJAC STEADICAM OPERATOR: TIM SPENCER DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: MIKE DEGRAZZIO DIGITAL UTILITY: ROBERT RUELAS STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: JONNY COURMOYER

NBC

“BLUFF CITY LAW” SEASON 1 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: MIKE SPRAGG, BSC OPERATORS: MATTHEW PEARCE, BRENT SHREWSBURY ASSISTANTS: DAVID LEB, BETTY CHOW, MATTHEW CABINUM, JARRETT RAWLINGS STEADICAM OPERATOR: MATTHEW PEARCE LOADER: CONNOR KING

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DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: JACOB LAGUARDIA STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: KATHERINE BOMBOY

“BROOKLYN NINE-NINE” SEASON 7 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: RICK PAGE OPERATORS: PHIL MASTRELLA, LAUREN GADD, JOEL TALLBUT ASSISTANTS: JAY LEVY, BILL GERARDO, DUSTIN MILLER, WILLIAM SCHMIDT, CHRIS CARLSON LOADER: NICK GILBERT DIGITAL UTILITY: KURT LEVY STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: JOHN P. FLEENOR

“CHICAGO MED” SEASON 5 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: LEX DUPONT, ASC OPERATORS: FAIRES ANDERSON SEKIYA, JOE TOLITANO, BENJAMIN SPEK ASSISTANTS: GEORGE OLSON, KEITH HUEFFMEIER, SAM KNAPP, LAURA DIFIGLIO, PATRICK DOOLEY, JOEY RICHARDSON STEADICAM OPERATOR: FAIRES ANDERSON SEKIYA LOADER: MATTHEW BROWN UTILITY: EMMANUEL BANSA STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: ELIZABETH SISSON

“CHICAGO PD” SEASON 7 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: JAMES ZUCAL OPERATORS: VICTOR MACIAS, DARRYL MILLER, SETH THOMAS ASSISTANTS: JOHN YOUNG, JAMISON ACKER, DON CARLSON, KYLE BELOUSEK, DAVID WIGHTMAN, NICK WILSON

14/01/2020 10:33

STEADICAM OPERATOR: SCOTT DROPKIN, SOC LOADER: MARION TUCKER DIGITAL UTILITIES: CHRIS POLMANSKI, STEVE CLAY

STEADICAM ASSISTANT: DOUGLAS FOOTE LOADER: KATHERINE RIVERA STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: BARBARA NITKE

“F.B.I.” SEASON 2

“NEW AMSTERDAM” SEASON 2

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: TARI SEGAL OPERATORS: AFTON GRANT, CHARLES ANDERSON ASSISTANTS: LEE VICKERY, NIKNAZ TAVAKOLIAN, GEORGE LOOKSHIRE, YURI INOUE STEADICAM OPERATOR: AFTON GRANT LOADERS: CONNOR LYNCH, NKEM UMENYI STILL PHOTOGRAPHERS: MICHAEL PARMELEE, ELIZABETH FISHER

“GOOD GIRLS” SEASON 3 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: JASON OLDAK OPERATORS: GARY CAMP, BRIAN OUTLAND, NICOLE LOBELL ASSISTANTS: JOHN RUIZ, JASON KNOLL, PATRICK BLANCHET, ROBYN BUCHANAN, EM GONZALES, CARTER SMITH STEADICAM OPERATOR: GARY CAMP STEADICAM ASSISTANT: JOHN RUIZ LOADER: MATT SCHOUTEN DIGITAL UTILITY: JONNIE MENTZER

“LINCOLN” SEASON 1 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: DAVID HENNINGS OPERATORS: MICHAEL F. O’SHEA, SOC, LISA SENE ASSISTANTS: DOUGLAS FOOTE, KYLE BLACKMAN, RODRIGO MILLAN GARCE, PATRICK J. O’SHEA STEADICAM OPERATOR: MICHAEL F. O’SHEA, SOC

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: ANDREW VOEGELI OPERATORS: JULIAN DELACRUZ, SCOTT TINSLEY ASSISTANTS: PEDRO CORCEGA, JAMES MADRID, MATTHEW MONTALTO, ROBERT WRASE LOADERS: JEFFREY MAKARAUSKAS, ANABEL CAICEDO

“SUPERSTORE” SEASON 5 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: JAY HUNTER OPERATORS: ADAM TASH, DANNY NICHOLS, MIGUEL PASK ASSISTANTS: JASON ZAKRZEWSKI, BRANDON MARGULIES, ERIC JENKINSON, RYAN SULLIVAN, ESTA GARCIA, RIKKI ALARIAN JONES LOADER: GRACE THOMAS

NETFLIX PRODUCTIONS, LLC “BEAUTY”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: BENOIT DELHOMME OPERATOR: VICTOR LAZARO ASSISTANT: TIMOTHY METIVIER, JENNIFER LEAVITT LOADER: AUSTIN MULHERN STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: STEPHANIE WALLACE

FEB/MAR 2020 PRODUCTION CREDITS

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“HOLLYWOOD” SEASON 1

PUBLICIST: BROOKE ENSIGN

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: SIMON DENNIS, BSC OPERATORS: DAVE CHAMEIDES, BRIAN BARGELLIN, MARK LASKOWSKI ASSISTANTS: DAVID LEB, BETTY CHOW, BRYAN HAIGH, NATE LEWIS, ROB MONROY, JARED WILSON STEADICAM OPERATOR: DAVE CHAMEIDES CAMERA UTILITY: SPENCER SHWETZ DIGITAL UTILITY: SHANNON VAN METRE STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: JAMES CLARK

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: BILL BERNER OPERATORS: ALAIN ONESTO, MARK RENAUDIN, JIMMY O’DONNELL, MIGUEL ARMSTRONG ASSISTANTS: JASON KNOBLOCH, KYLE GORJANC DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: DAVE SATIN LOADER: SHAUN JOYE CAMERA UTILITY: JAMES ABAMONT DIGITAL UTILITY: ANTHONHY BENEDITTI STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: ERIC LIEBOWITZ

“MOXIE” DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: TOM MAGILL OPERATORS: ARI ROBBINS, SOC, JOSH HARRISON ASSISTANTS: IAN T. BARBELLA, ADAM COWAN, GISELLE GONZALEZ, DUSTIN FRUGE STEADICAM OPERATOR: ARI ROBBINS, SOC STEADICAM ASSISTANT: IAN T. BARBELLA CAMERA UTILITY: JEREMY HILL STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: COLLEEN HAYES PUBLICIST: WILLIAM CASEY

“THE CREW” SEASON 1

“UNTITLED VIGILANTE PROJECT AKA SLUTTY TEENAGE BOUNTY HUNTERS” SEASON 1 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: MICHAEL BERLUCCHI OPERATORS: THOM VALKO, SPENCER HUTCHINS (2ND UNIT DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY) ASSISTANTS: JOSH GREER, JOSH GILBERT, KANE PEARSON, AUSTIN RYAN TAYLOR, CAMERON SCHWARTZ DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: NICK HILTGEN DIGIAL UTILITY: ANNA-MARIE ALOIA STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: TINA ROWDEN

ASSISTANTS: YOGI NEELY, TYLER DETARSIO, DAVE OSTERBERG, THOR FRIDLEIFSSON, NICK MILLER, JAY STRAMM, JEN CHMIELEWSKI, TAYLOR GILMARTIN CAMERA UTILITIES: APPLE SCHLOSSER, MICHAEL WILLIAMSON JIB OPERATOR: RANDY GOMEZ, JR. VIDEO CONTROLLERS: RICHARD STROCK, MARC SURETTE

NORTHERN ENTERTAINMENT PRODUCTIONS, INC. “THE BAKER AND THE BEAUTY” SEASON 1 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: BRIAN REYNOLDS OPERATORS: EDGAR COLON, RAPHY MOLINARY-MACHADO ASSISTANTS: CESAR MARRERO, MARAYDA CABRERA DAVILA, ABNER MEDINA, WILLIAM MONTANEZ STEADICAM OPERATOR: EDGAR COLON LOADER: ALEX RAMIREZ CRANE TECH: MIGUEL BAERGA STILL PHOTOGRAPHERS: LAURA MAGRUDER, FRANCISCO ROMAN SANCHEZ, JEFF DALY

“SWEET GIRL” DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: BARRY ACKROYD OPERATOR: WILL ARNOT, MARKUS MENTZER ASSISTANTS: JIMMY JENSEN, TRISTAN CHAVEZ, BRIAN BRESNEHAN, JASON CIANELLA, COLIN SHEEHY DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: KYO MOON LOADER: KIMBERLY HERMAN STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: CLAY ENOS

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NKZ PRODUCTIONS, INC.

“THE BACHELOR” SEASON 24 DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: DENNIS WEILER, CHAD GRIEPENTROG, ANDRE MARTINEZ OPERATORS: DOUG HENNING, MARK JUNGJOHANN, IVAN DURAN, MARTIN MOURINO, TIM STAHL, ANDREW RAKOW, EZRA EPWELL, NICK TULLY, ERICA SHUSHA, JEREMY GUY, SUZIE WEIS

OLD PRINT PRODUCTIONS “DEEP WATER”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: EIGIL BRYLD OPERATOR: FEDERICO VERARDI ASSISTANTS: GLENN KAPLAN, LOUI LEROY, ZANDER WHITE, JOHN WILLIAMS DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: NATE BORCK LOADER: MARY CASTEEL DIGITAL UTILITY: BEN MANER STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: CLAIRE FOLGER

OJB, LLC

PARAMOUNT

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: KEITH L. SMITH OPERATORS: CHRIS WALLING, SAM LAW ASSISTANTS: STEPHEN BRANAGAN, ISAAC DOWELL, JONATHAN MEDINA STEADICAM OPERATOR: SAM LAW

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: DAVID MORRISON OPERATORS: BRANDON THOMPSON, SIDARTH KANTAMNENI ASSISTANTS: AUSTIN LEWIS, ALEX HOOPER, OREN MALIK DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: JAZZ PIERCE DIGITAL UTILITY: TRENT WALKER STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: CURTIS BAKER

“THE OUTLAW JOHNNY BLACK”

OLIVE AVENUE PRODUCTIONS, LLC

“BOOMERANG” SEASON 2

“DOOM PATROL” SEASON 2

DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: SCOTT WINING, SCOTT PECK OPERATORS: TIM FABRIZIO, RYAN WEISEN ASSISTANTS: JOSH HANCHER, CRISTIAN TROVA, KYLER DENNIS, MIKE FISHER STEADICAM OPERATOR: TIM FABRIZIO STEADICAM ASSISTANT: JOSH HANCHER DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: JOE ELROM LOADER: NICK YOUNG DIGITAL UTILITY: ALESSANDRA MACI

PACIFIC 2.1 ENTERTAINMENT GROUP, INC. “THE POLITICIAN” SEASON 2

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: TIMOTHY NORMAN OPERATORS: MATTHEW PEBLER, JENNIE JEDDRY ASSISTANTS: MICHAEL BURKE, ANDREW JUHL, VINCENT TUTHS, ADAM DEREZENDES DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: LUKE TAYLOR LOADERS: MICHAEL POMORSKI, SYDNEY BALLESTEROS STILL PHOTOGRAPHERS: JOHN LOPEZ, GIOVANNI RUFINO, NICOLE RIVELLI, DAVID LEE

PICROW STREAMING “PANIC” SEASON 1

DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: TODD MCMULLEN, ASC, BOBBY LA BONGE OPERATORS: KIRK GARDNER, PK MUNSON, IAN ELLIS ASSISTANTS: ROBERT RENDON, KELLY BOGDAN, THEDA CUNNINGHAM, RIGNEY SACKLEY, JACK LEWANDOWSKI, AMANDA PARKER STEADICAM OPERATOR: KIRK GARDNER STEADICAM ASSISTANT: ROBERT RENDON LOADER: NICOLE TUREGANO DIGITAL UTILITY: ERIN MAINWARING REMOTE HEAD TECH/OPERATOR: CHRIS SMITH

PROP INC.

“LISEY’S STORY AKA FACES” DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: DARIUS KHONDJI, ASC OPERATORS: JIM MCCONKEY, ZEUS MORAND ASSISTANTS: A. CHRISTOPHER SILANO,

OLGA ABRAMSON, TROY SOLA, EDDIE GOLDBLATT DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: GABE KOLODNY LIBRA HEAD TECH: LANCE MAYER LOADER: PETER PERLMAN STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: PETER KRAMER

PROXIMITY PRODUCTIONS, LLC “KATY KEENE” SEASON 1

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: BRENDAN UEGAMA OPERATOR: DAVID ISERN ASSISTANTS: LISA LONG, RORY HANRAHAN, NOLAN MALONEY, SUNIL DEVADANAM LOADERS: MIGUEL GONZALEZ, MARION SANNUTI STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: BARBARA NITKE

REDHAWK PRODUCTIONS, IV, LLC “FARGO” SEASON 4

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: DANA GONZALES, ASC OPERATORS: MITCH DUBIN, SOC, JOHN CONNOR ASSISTANTS: CHRIS WITTENBORN, HUNTER WHALEN, ERIC ARNDT, SHANNON DEWOLFE, ERIC HINGST DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: RYAN MCGREGOR LOADER: CHRIS SUMMERS DIGITAL UTILITY: EVA JUNE

RESPECT PRODUCTIONS, LLC “RESPECT”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: KRAMER MORGENTHAU, ASC OPERATORS: MIKE HEATHCOTE, JAN RUONA ASSISTANTS: MATT HEATH, DWIGHT CAMPBELL,

FEB/MAR 2020 PRODUCTION CREDITS

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SEARCH PARTY PRODUCTIONS, LLC “SEARCH PARTY” SEASON 4

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: JONATHAN FURMANSKI OPERATORS: PETER VIETRO-HANNUM, CHRIS ARAN ASSISTANTS: TIMOTHY TROTMAN, CAROLYN PENDER, ZACHARY GRACE, KYLE PARSONS LOADER: YAYO VANG STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: JON PACK

SHOWTIME PICTURES

“BILLIONS” SEASON 5 DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: GIORGIO SCALI, ASC, J.B. SMITH OPERATORS: JONATHAN BECK, ERIN HENNING ASSISTANTS: CAI HALL, LEONARDO GOMEZ, II, PATRICK BRACEY, SEAN MCNAMARA LOADERS: DONALD GAMBLE, ARIEL WATSON STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: JEFF NEUMAN

SONY

“JEOPARDY!” SEASON 36 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: JEFF ENGEL OPERATORS: DIANE L. FARRELL, SOC, MIKE TRIBBLE, JEFF SCHUSTER, L. DAVID IRETE JIB ARM OPERATOR: MARC HUNTER HEAD UTILITY: TINO MARQUEZ CAMERA UTILITY: RAY THOMPSON VIDEO CONTROLLER: GARY TAILLON STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: CAROL KAELSON

“WHEEL OF FORTUNE” SEASON 37

JONNY QUINTANA, GRIFFIN MCCANN DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: JOSEPH DARE LOADER: ERIN STRICKLAND STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: QUANTRELL COLBERT PUBLICIST: AMY LEIGH JOHNSON

REUNION 2017, LLC

“THE CONNERS” SEASON 2 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: DONALD A. MORGAN, ASC OPERATORS: RANDY BAER, VITO GIAMBALVO, JOHN DECHENE, JOHN BOYD ASSISTANTS: STEVE LUND, KENNETH WILLIAMS DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: VON THOMAS CAMERA UTILITIES: MARIANNE FRANCO, ERINN BELL

ROCART, INC.

“FOR LIFE” SEASON 1

SOUNDVIEW PRODUCTONS

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: NIELS ALPERT OPERATORS: ELI ARONONFF, JAY SILVER ASSISTANTS: ERIC ROBINSON, JOHN REEVES, MARCOS HERRERA, QUINN MURPHY, SARAH SCRIVENER, WILLIAM POWELL DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: JEFFREY HAGERMAN LOADERS: MAX COLLINS, JOHN CONQUY STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: PATRICK HARBRON

DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: KEVIN THOMPSON, TOMMY LOHMANN OPERATOR: STEPHEN BUCKINGHAM ASSISTANTS: JASON GARCIA, SAM LINO, TIM GUFFIN, ANNE LEE DIGITAL LOADER: ANTHONY ROSARIO STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: DAVID MOIR

“ALL THAT” SEASON 11

“THE BLACKLIST” SEASON 7

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: MICHAEL FRANKS OPERATORS: VANCE BRANDON, JIM ORR, ROBERT MCCALL TECHNOJIB OPERATOR: ELI FRANKS ASSISTANT: MONICA SCHAD UTILITIES: JOSE GOMEZ, KEVIN MENTEER TECHNOJIB TECH: COREY GIBBONS VIDEO CONTROLLER: BARRY LONG

DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: MICHAEL CARACCIOLO, SAADE MUSTAFA OPERATORS: DEREK WALKER, DEVIN LADD, PETER RAMOS ASSISTANTS: DANIEL CASEY, GARETH MANWARING, MIKE GUASPARI, JAMES GOURLEY, EDWIN HERRERA, EDGAR VELEZ LOADERS: JAMES PARSONS, CHARLES GRUNDER JR., ALYSSA LONGCHAMP STILL PHOTOGRAPHERS: JOJO WHILDEN, WILL HART, DAVID GIESBRECHT

SAN VICENTE PRODUCTIONS, INC. “FBI: MOST WANTED” SEASON 1

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DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: MANUEL BILLETER, LUDOVIC LITTEE OPERATORS: CHRISTOPHER MOONE, REBECCA ARNDT ASSISTANTS: JASON RIHALY, MARC HILLYGUS, DYLAN ENDYKE, CHRISTOPHER CAFARO LOADERS: RYAN HADDON, DONALD GRAHAMER, III STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: MARK SCHAFER

FEB/MAR 2020 PRODUCTION CREDITS

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: JEFF ENGEL OPERATORS: DIANE L. FARRELL, SOC, JEFF SCHUSTER, RAY GONZALES, STEVE SIMMONS, L. DAVID IRETE, MIKE CORWIN CAMERA UTILITY: RAY THOMPSON HEAD UTILITY: TINO MARQUEZ VIDEO CONTROLLER: GARY TAILLON JIB ARM OPERATOR: RANDY GOMEZ, SR. STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: CAROL KAELSON

“13 REASONS WHY” SEASON 4

THIMBLE PEA PICTURES, LLC

“UNTITLED ANNA DELVEY ART PROJECT” SEASON 1 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: MARYSE ALBERTI OPERATORS: GEORGE BIANCHINI, JOHN PIROZZI ASSISTANTS: JAMIESON FITZPATRICK, KEITT, CORNELIA KLAPPER, EVE STRICKMAN DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: DOUGLAS HORTON LOADER: JONATHAN PERALTA STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: PETER KRAMER

INNOVATION. WORLDWIDE.

Warner Bros.

Joker

20th Century Fox

Ford v Ferrari

BOX OFFICE HITS

Netflix

The Irishman

Avengers: Endgame

Marvel Studios

Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood

Sony Pictures Entertainment

TECHNICAL FABRICS | LED LIGHTING SOLUTIONS | RIGGING EQUIPMENT TURNER NORTH CENTER “GUMSHOE” PILOT

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: GLENN BROWN OPERATORS: ALAN JACOBY, CALEB EINHORN ASSISTANTS: MARK FIGUEROA, CHRIS GARLAND, ERIC WHEELER, JP RODRIGUEZ DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: JORDAN HARRIMAN UTILITY: SPENCER ROBINS STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: NICOLE WILDER

UNIVERSAL

“LAW & ORDER: SVU” SEASON 21 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: MICHAEL GREEN OPERATORS: JONATHAN HERRON, MICHAEL LATINO ASSISTANTS: CHRISTOPHER DEL SORDO, MATTHEW BALZARINI, JUSTIN ZVERIN, EMILY DUMBRILL LOADERS: JASON RASWANT, JASON GAINES STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: MICHAEL PARMELEE

WARNER BROS

“ALL AMERICAN” SEASON 2 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: NIKHIL PANIZ OPERATORS: CARLOS ARGUELLO, ERIC LAUDADIO ASSISTANTS: JON JUNG, BLAKE COLLINS, JON LINDSAY, MEL KOBRAN DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: URBAN OLSSON STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: KEVIN ESTRADA

“ALL RISE” SEASON 1 DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: DAVID HARP, CYBEL MARTIN OPERATORS: TIM ROARKE, STEPHEN CLANCY, SHANELE ALVAREZ ASSISTANTS: MATT GUIZA, KRISTI ARNDS, RANDY SHANOFSKY, ADAM TSANG, ANTHONY HART, BENNY BAILEY STEADICAM OPERATOR: STEPHEN CLANCY STEADICAM ASSISTANT: KRISTI ARNDS DIGITAL UTILITY: MORGAN JENKINS LOADER: JOHANNA SALO TECHNOCRANE OPERATORS: NAZARIY HATAK, BRIAN LOVE REMOTE HEAD TECH/OPERATOR: JAY SHEVECK

“BOB HEARTS ABISHOLA” SEASON 1 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: PATTI LEE, ASC OPERATORS: MARK DAVISON, CHRIS HINOJOSA, JON PURDY, MICHELLE CRENSHAW ASSISTANTS: JEFF JOHNSON, VITO DE PALMA, MARIANNE FRANCO, ADAN TORRES, LISA ANDERSON, ALICIA BRAUNS, LANCE MITCHELL, JORDAN HRISTOV VIDEO CONTROLLER: JOHN O’BRIEN DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: T. BRETT FEENEY STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: MICHAEL YARISH PUBLICISTS: KATHLEEN TANJI, MARC KLEIN

“LUCIFER” SEASON 5 DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: TOM CAMARDA, KEN GLASSING

OPERATORS: DAVE CHAMEIDES, PAUL THERIAULT ASSISTANTS: SIMON JARVIS, CLAIRE STONE, CHRIS MACK, TIM SHERIDAN STEADICAM OPERATOR: DAVID CHAMEIDES DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: GREG GABRIO DIGITAL UTILITY: TYLER ERNST STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: JOHN P. FLEENOR

“MOM” SEASON 7 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: STEVEN V. SILVER, ASC OPERATORS: CARY MCCRYSTAL, JAMIE HITCHCOCK, SOC, DAMIAN DELLA SANTINA, CANDY EDWARDS ASSISTANTS: MEGGINS MOORE, NIGEL STEWART, SEAN ASKINS, MARK JOHNSON, WHITNEY JONES CAMERA UTILITIES: ALICIA BRAUNS, COLIN BROWN, JEANNETTE HJORTH VIDEO CONTROLLER: KEVIN FAUST DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: BENJAMIN STEEPLES STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: ROBERT VOETS PUBLICIST: MARC KLEIN

“YOUNG SHELDON” SEASON 3 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: BUZZ FEITSHANS, IV OPERATORS: NEIL TOUSSAINT, SOC, AARON SCHUH ASSISTANTS: MATTHEW DEL RUTH, GRANT YELLEN, BRAD GILSON, JR., JAMES COBB STEADICAM OPERATOR: AARON SCHUH STEADICAM ASSISTANT: GRANT YELLEN DIGITAL LOADER: BAILEY SOFTNESS DIGITAL UTILITY: IAN DOOLEY STILL PHOTOGRAPHERS: ROBERT VOETS, MICHAEL DESMOND, DARREN MICHAELS

FEB/MAR 2020 PRODUCTION CREDITS

83

CREW PHOTO: ON THE ROCKS

L TO R, BOTTOM ROW FIRST JOJO WHILDEN (STILL PHOTOGRAPHER), SOFIA COPPOLA (FILM DIRECTOR - DGA), PHILIPPE LE SOURD (DP), JORDAN LEVIE (2ND AC), RICK GIOIA (FOCUS PULLER), BILLY HOLMAN (FILM LOADER), WES BATTLE (DOLLY GRIP - 52).

WOODBRIDGE PRODUCTIONS “S.W.A.T.” SEASON 3

DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: FRANCIS KENNY, ASC, CRAIG FIKSE OPERATORS: TIM DOLAN, BRIAN PITTS, MICHAEL OTIS ROPERT ASSISTANTS: RYAN PARKS, LOGAN TURNER, THANE CHARACKY, RILEY PADELFORD, JUSTNI QUACH, MIKE FAUNTLEROY CAMERA UTILITY: CARL LAMMI LOADER: TREVOR BEELER

WORLD PRODUCTIONS, INC. “RUN THE WORLD” PILOT

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: MAURICIO RUBINSTEIN OPERATORS: PATRICK QUINN, ALAN MEHLBRECH ASSISTANTS: JUSTIN WHITACRE, ANTHONY DEFRANCESCO, JOSHUA WATERMAN, ADAM RUSSELL DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: ROSS CITRIN LOADER: MICHAEL WILLIAMS STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: CHRSTOPHER SAUNDERS

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COMMERCIALS

CAP GUN COLLECTIVE “LEPRECASHIER”

AL MEDIA

OPERATOR: ROD HASSLER ASSISTANT: CHRIS LYMBERIS

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: JOSEPH FITZGERALD ASSISTANT: ROBBIE CLINE

CAVIAR

“JACKIE GORDON FOR CONGRESS”

“SPRITE”

ANORAK “AUDI”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: ADAM NEWPORT-BERRA OPERATOR: BROOKS GUYER ASSISTANTS: JOHN RUIZ, LORENZO PORRAS, LUCAS DEANS, ROBYN BUCHANAN, CAMERON KEIDEL DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: KYLE HOLLAR UTILITY: JONNIE MENTZER

BISCUIT

“AUDIBLE” DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: JAKOB IHRE, FSF ASSISTANTS: DANIEL HANYCH, JORDAN MARTIN DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: TAMAS HARANGI

OPERATOR: CHRIS CUNNINGHAM ASSISTANTS: NICOLAS MARTIN, ALAN CERTEZA, JOSEPH SORIA DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: CJ MILLER

CMS PRODUCTIONS “SABRA”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: ERIC SCHMIDT ASSISTANTS: LILA BYALL, GAVIN GROSSI DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: JOHN SPELLMAN

NEW FreeStyle T44 LED System Exclusive Camera prooile matching Gamut selection, 709, P3, 2020 Gels on any Kelvin setting CIE XY and RGB color selection

Kinoolo.com Shop.Kinoolo.com COMMUNITY FILMS

FARM LEAGUE

ICONOCLAST

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: DARKO SUVAK ASSISTANTS: REED KOPPEN, ROB REAVES DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: KYLE HOEKSTRA REMOTE HEAD TECH/OPERATOR: JAY SHEVECK

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: LAURA MERIANS OPERATOR: DANNY NICHOLS ASSISTANTS: ETHAN MCDONALD, ADAM SCHWARTZ, RYAN BOOTH STEADICAM OPERATOR: LIAM CLARK DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: DAVID GLEASON PHANTOM TECH: CALVIN BLUE

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: POLLY MORGAN, ASC OPERATORS: BRIAN BERNSTEIN, GABE CAMACHO ASSISTANTS: CHELI CLAYTON SAMARAS, MATT BLEA, ROBIN BURSEY, JEREMY HILL STEADICAM OPERATOR: CHRIS CUNNINGHAM STEADICAM ASSISTANT: CHELI CLAYTON SAMARAS DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: CHRIS CAVANAUGH

FICTITIOUS

“ROCK”

“XFINITY”

DANGART

“PURINA” DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: TRISTAN NYBY ASSISTANT: JASON ALEGRE DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: RAFFAELE VESCO

EAGLE ELEVEN PRODUCTIONS, INC.

“MICROSOFT, BRING IT TO THE SURFACE” DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: ROBBY BAUMGARTNER OPERATOR: REID MURPHY ASSISTANTS: STEVE CUEVA, HAYDN PAZANTI, BRENDAN DEVANIE DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: TIM ERICKSON TECHNOCRANE OPERATORS: BRIAN MCPERSON REMOTE HEAD TECH/OPERATOR: DAVID HAEUSSLER

“VERIZON” DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: TOBIAS SCHLIESSLER, ASC OPERATORS: KENT HARVEY, JEFF TOMCHO ASSISTANTS: PAUL SANTONI, THOMAS BARRIOS, JACK ELLINGWOOD, NOAH THOMSON, MARK CONNELLY STEADICAM OPERATOR: CHRIS CUEVAS DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: MATTHEW LOVE

“FORD TRUCK MONTH”

“NOOM”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: ERIC SCHMIDT OPERATOR: JOHN PINGRY ASSISTANTS: ETHAN MCDONALD, DANIEL HANYCH, TIM CLARKE, MARCUS DEL NEGRO DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: JOHN SPELLMAN

FIRSTMAN

“COOPER TIRES” DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: PATRICK RUTH ASSISTANTS: MARY ANNE JANKE, MICHAEL RODRIGUEZ TORRENT

GNET AGENCY

“CYBERPUNK 2077 R6TV SPOT” DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: DALLAS STERLING ASSISTANTS: CHRIS CUNNINGHAM, MARC WIERCIOCH, COLLEEN MARSHALL DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: MICHELE DELORIMIER

“FACEBOOK SUPERBOWL”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: ARNAUD POTIER OPERATOR: CHONG PAK ASSISTANTS: JIM MAYFIELD, MICHAEL LEONARD, JIM MCCANN, SEAN GALCZYK DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: KAZIM KARAISMAILOGLU TECHNOCRANE TECHS: JOE FUGALLO, KEVIN GILLIGAN, JASON CORTAZZO 2ND UNIT DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: ALLISON ANDERSON ASSISTANTS: LEON SANGINITI, DUSTIN RAYSIK

LANDIA

“WHOLE FOODS” DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: POLLY MORGAN, ASC ASSISTANTS: CHELI CLAYTON SAMARAS, RAFIEL CHAIT, ROBIN BURSEY, CLAYTON DAILY DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: CHRIS CAVANAUGH

FEB/MAR 2020 PRODUCTION CREDITS

85

CREW PHOTO: MAKING IT SEASON 2 BACK ROW LEFT TO RIGHT: ROBERT LOWELL (AC) , BRIAN GRIFFO (AC), JOHN BURT (LEAD AC), DAVID ORTKIESE (DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY), ALEX ZOLAD (STEADICAM AC), RICKY PONCE (AC), VINNY CERONE (CAMERA OPERATOR), BRANDON BENNING (CAMERA OPERATOR), CHRIS SOULES (CAMERA OPERATOR), ARMANDO MUNOZ (TECH ASSISTANT), BRAM WEINKSENLBAUM (AC), DAVID SHAWL (STEADICAM OPERATOR) FRONT ROW LEFT TO RIGHT: RONNEN HOROVITZ (JIB AC), GRETCHEN WARTHEN (CAMERA OPERATOR), STEPHEN COLEMAN (CAMERA OPERATOR), ANDRES CUEVAS (AC), RUBEN AVENDANO (CAMERA OPERATOR), DANIEL HAGOUEL (JIB OPERATOR), PAUL STARKMAN (DIRECTOR) PHOTO BY: EVANS VESTAL WARD

MJZ

“DAIRY QUEEN” DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: JEANNE VIENNE ASSISTANTS: CHELI CLAYTON SAMARAS, TRIGG FERRANO DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: ISIDRO PINEDA

“VOLKSWAGEN” DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: KHALID MOHTASEB OPERATOR: RICHARD MORIARTY ASSISTANTS: JONAS STEADMAN, JOE PROVENZANO, OLIVIA MONTANO, TRAVIS DAKING DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: ISIDRO PINEDA TECHNOCRANE OPERATOR: CHAD ESHBAUGH TECHNOCRANE TECH: NAZARIY HATAK REMOTE HEAD TECH/OPERATOR: JAY SHEVECK

MONUMENT CONTENT “CADILLAC”

DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: MICHAEL FITZMAURICE, JASON LA FARGO (2ND UNIT)

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FEB/MAR 2020 PRODUCTION CREDITS

ASSISTANTS: JOSEPH CANON, EDGAR GONZALEZ DANIEL FERRELL, MATT BERBANO DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: STEVE HARNELL RONIN TECH: MARCEL MELANSON DRONE PILOT: CAMERON FITZMAURICE CRANE OPERATORS: JOHN CARONE, ROCKY BABCOCK

PARK PICTURES “BUDWEISER”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: KATE ARIZMENDI OPERATOR: STEW CANTRELL ASSISTANTS: CHEVY ANDERSON, RYAN NOCELLA, GREG PACE, WILL POWELL DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: KAZIM KARAISMAILOGLU

“DAIRY QUEEN” DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: MICHAEL PESCASIO ASSISTANTS: ROB SAGASER, CAMERON OWEN, KELSEY JUDDO DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: ANDY CORDOS

O POSITIVE

“BEST BUY” DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: SEBASTIAN PFAFFENBICHLER OPERATOR: GREG JOHNSON ASSISTANTS: DAVID PARSON, PAUL SANTONI, PETER PARSON, NOAH THOMSON DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: KEVIN ZANIT

PRETTYBIRD “PEACOCK”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: DON DAVIS OPERATOR: TOM LEMBCKE ASSISTANTS: DANIEL HANYCH, SCOTT KASSENOFF, SETH KOTOK, MARCUS DEL NEGRO, JORDAN PELLEGRINI DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: FELIX ARCENEAUX

RATTLING STICK “VICE”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: RYLEY BROWN OPERATOR: DAVE ANGLIN ASSISTANTS: JOSEPH CANON, EDGAR GONZALEZ-LEON,

CREW PHOTO: GRACE & FRANKIE SEASON 6 FROM LEFT TO RIGHT: DAWN NAKAMURA (B CAMERA 2ND AC), NICOLA CARUSO (LOADER), BEN SPEK (B CAMERA OPERATOR), NAOMI VILLANUEVA (B CAMERA 1ST AC), DAN URBAIN (A CAMERA 2ND AC), DAN GOLD (A CAMERA OPERATOR) RETIRED WHEN SHOW WRAPPED, GALE TATTERSALL (DP) UP FRONT, JOSH BLECKNER (A CAMERA DOLLY GRIP), DAVE EGERSTROM (A CAMERA 1ST AC), DANNY DOUGHERTY (B CAMERA DOLLY GRIP), LUKE MILLER (ALTERNATING DP).

PHOTO BY: SAEED ADYANI

LUCAS DEANS, MATT BERBANO DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: DINO GEORGOPOULOS PHANTOM TECH: PATRICK MCGRAW 2ND UNIT DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: DANIEL BOMBELL ASSISTANTS: NICK BIANCHI, ADAM NEWELL

RSA

“OPPO” DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: JONATHAN FREEMAN ASSISTANTS: RICK GIOIA, JOHN CLEMENS, LIZ CAVANAUGH, MITCH MALPICA STEADICAM OPERATOR: YOUSHENG TANG DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: TOM WONG

SLIM PICTURES

STATION FILM

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: TRISTAN SHERIDAN OPERATORS: LUKE MCCOUBREY, PETER MORELLO ASSISTANTS: WALTER RODRIGUEZ, ED SHIMKO, INES PORTUGAL, SARA BOARDMAN DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: KAZIM KARAISMAILOGLU

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: BENN MARTENSON ASSISTANTS: LEO ABRAHAM, NOAH GLAZER DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: FRANCESCO SAUTA

“NUTRISH”

SMUGGLER “AT&T”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: JEFF KIM ASSISTANTS: PETER MORELLO, JEFF TAYLOR DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: JOE BELACK

STATE BIRD CREATIVE “WALMART”

“TORO 60V”

STUN

“NFL SHOP” DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: ERIC HAASE ASSISTANT: ETHAN MCDONALD DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: DANIEL APPLEGATE

“NFL SHOP” DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: ERIC HAASE ASSISTANTS: ETHAN MCDONALD, MARCUS DEL NEGRO DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: ELI BERG

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: MATT EGAN ASSISTANTS: ALEX CASON, LACEY JOY CATES DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: MICHAEL BORENSTEIN

FEB/MAR 2020 PRODUCTION CREDITS

87

CREW PHOTO: CRIMINAL MINDS SEASON 15 TOP ROW A CAM OPERATOR: GARY TACHELL, C CAM OPERATOR: BRIAN GARBELLINI, UTILITY: SPENCER ROBINS, C CAM 1ST AC: TOBY WHITE, A CAM 2ND AC : TODD DURBAROW, GAFFER: DAVID GHEGAN, LOADER: ALEX MARMALICI, B CAM 2ND AC: ROBBIE FORREST, B CAM/STEADICAM OPERATOR: KEITH PETERS, C CAM 2ND AC: ARTURO ROJAS BOTTOM ROW.. SCRIPT SUPERVISOR: PAM LEONTE, DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: DARCY SPIRES, DIRECTOR: GLENN KERSHAW ASC, A CAM DOLLY GRIP: CORY BEAIRD, A CAMERA/STEADICAM 1ST AC: BRYAN DELORENZO PHOTO BY: CLIFF LIPSON

TRAVELLER FILMS

WE THE PEOPLE

MUSIC VIDEOS

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: DARKO SUVAK OPERATOR: DANA MORRIS ASSISTANTS: DANIEL HANYCH, CHRIS SLANY, JASON ADLER STEADICAM OPERATOR: DANA MORRIS

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: MICHAEL P. JONES OPERATORS: DENNIS DWYER, MIKE SVITAK ASSISTANTS: LUCAS DEANS, JOSH KNIGHT, CAMERON KEIDEL DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: FRANCESCO SAUTA

MAD RUK

WASHINGTON SQUARE

WORLD WAR 7

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: JULIA LIU ASSISTANTS: JILL TUFTS, TALIA KROHMAL

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: JAKE BIANCO ASSISTANTS: COLE ELLETT, GREG FRANC, DANNY LUCIO STEADICAM OPERATOR: OSVALDO SILVERA, SOC STEADICAM ASSISTANT: GREG FRANK DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: JON MCARDLE PHANTOM TECH: CAMILO JARQUIN

“FOX PROMO SHOOT”

“BOSE”

88

FEB/MAR 2020 PRODUCTION CREDITS

“CHEVY REUNION”

“XFINITY”

“CHRISTINA AGUILERA” DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: KAI SAUL ASSISTANTS: NICOLAS MARTIN, JACK NITZ DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: BRANDON BAUDIER TECHNOCRANE OPERATOR: JAMES FAVAZZO TECHNOCRANE TECH: JAMES DELATORRE VIDEO CONTROLLER: JACOB BAAS

®

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2-15AMP Circuits

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FEB/MAR 2020 PRODUCTION CREDITS

89

STOP MOTI ON

Melinda Sue Gordon, SMPSP UNIT STILL PHOTOGRAPHER THE MANDALORIAN

This shot is from a scene inside “The Volume” set on The Mandalorian, with Kuiil holding The Child (also known as Baby Yoda) and Karina Silva operating. The LED panels serve as both the background environment and a light source. As the camera pans, the background shifts to maintain the proper perspective. At wrap, when the panels are shut down and the work lights come on, it’s like being teleported back to an ordinary shooting stage.

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F EB/M ARCH 2020

AWARD S SEA S ON

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