ICG Magazine - June/July 2022 - The Interview Issue

ICG MAGAZINE

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THE INTERVIEW ISSUE

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contents THE INTERVIEW ISSUE June/July 2022 / Vol. 93 No. 05

DEPARTMENTS gear guide ................ 16 zoom in ................ 24 book review ................ 28 exposure ................ 32 on the street ................ 36 production credits ................ 118 stop motion .............. 124

SPECIALS The Interviews ...... 88

42

FEATURE 01

TOP GUN: MAVERICK Claudio Miranda, ASC, soars into the danger zone for Top Gun: Maverick.

FEATURE 02 HE GOT NEXT Guild Director of Photography Zak Mulligan gets his Philly streetball on for the Rocky-esque hoops drama, Hustle.

FEATURE 03 BEHIND THE MASK Generation NEXT standout Rafael Leyva teams up with a large Latinx crewbase for Disney’s new kid-superhero series, Ultra Violet & Black Scorpion.

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president's letter

A Brighter, Stronger Alliance I’m not good at goodbyes.

On the eve of the end of my presidency, I want to point to the people who were instrumental in guiding us through a sixmonth shutdown and a long bargaining battle that ended in a fractious ratification.

National Executive Director Rebecca Rhine, Associate National Director Chaim Kantor and many of our elected leaders showed up when it took courage to make fateful decisions for our ICG. That took brains and heart.

Our broadcast members and publicists never stopped working, and our unscripted members were among the first back to work. They were quickly followed by all other Local 600 members who joined in risking their health and the wellbeing of their families to keep our industry going, even as neighboring giants like airlines, hospitality and live events were shuttered. All that time, our members continued to adapt to new technologies such as those showcased in this magazine, while learning new ways of being at work. I am in awe of your skills, adaptability and perseverance.

I have been asked what it is like to be the president of the ICG. High points include calling the members’ children who have received scholarships in pursuit of their educational goals. At the other end of the spectrum was calling the family of our member who died from a senseless gun incident at work. I am still unable to call it an “accident.”

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There are many crosswinds in our future. When streaming companies lose half their value in a single day, that will inevitably affect our work; and bargaining, which is always challenging, will likely become more difficult. Our greatest strength, and our one hope, is to come together and fight against internal divisions, which only serve to strengthen the forces arrayed against us.

I leave with gratitude for the time I spent among the most gifted film workers and labor professionals I have ever seen, and I have worked with all over this country and around the world.

Despite the passionate debates that occasionally divide us, I believe that you, our working members, want safe working conditions; you want to earn fair wages to support your families; you want to receive benefits that provide health care and meaningful pensions for dignified retirement.

You deserve that daily, and that should always be our focus.

I was criticized once last year for using the words “bright” and “strength” in a letter to members.

Words are not the problem, and those two words don’t deserve banishment. The way forward will include struggle and will require strength to ultimately succeed. I wish every reader the brightest possible present and future.

John Lindley, ASC National President International Cinematographers Guild IATSE Local 600

F O R Y O U R E M M Y® C O N S I D E R A T I O N I N A L L C A T E G O R I E S I N C L U D I N G

OUTSTANDING DR AMA SERIES OUTSTANDING CINEMATOGR APHY FOR A SINGLE-CAMER A SERIES (ONE HOUR) Lee Hyung-deok

THIS YEAR, ONE SERIES CHANGED THE

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“EXQUISITELY CINEMATIC. A visceral experience, but in a way that we’re not used to when it comes to television.”

THE DAILY BEAST

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Publisher Teresa Muñoz Executive Editor David Geffner Art Director Wes Driver

Local

600

International Cinematographers Guild

STAFF WRITER Pauline Rogers

COMMUNICATIONS COORDINATOR

Tyler Bourdeau

COPY EDITORS

Peter Bonilla Maureen Kingsley

CONTRIBUTORS Christina Belle Byron Cohen James Evers Ryan Green Margot Lester Kevin Martin Ray Mickshaw Seacia Pavao

June/July 2022 vol. 93 no. 05

Zac Popik Paul Schiraldi Mike Taing Scott Yamano Tobin Yelland

ACCOUNTING Mark Rubinfield Dominique Gallal

COMMUNICATIONS COMMITTEE

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CIRCULATION OFFICE 7755 Sunset Boulevard Hollywood, CA 90046 Tel: (323) 876-0160 Fax: (323) 878-1180 Email: circulation@icgmagazine.com

ADVERTISING REPRESENTATIVES WEST COAST & CANADA Rombeau, Inc. Sharon Rombeau Tel: (818) 762 – 6020 Fax: (818) 760 – 0860 Email: sharonrombeau@gmail.com EAST COAST, EUROPE, & ASIA Alan Braden, Inc. Alan Braden Tel: (818) 850-9398 Email: alanbradenmedia@gmail.com

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IATSE Local 600 NATIONAL PRESIDENT John Lindley, ASC VICE PRESIDENT Dejan Georgevich, ASC 1ST NATIONAL VICE PRESIDENT Christy Fiers 2ND NATIONAL VICE PRESIDENT Baird Steptoe NATIONAL SECRETARY-TREASURER Stephen Wong NATIONAL ASSISTANT SECRETARY-TREASURER Jamie Silverstein NATIONAL SERGEANT-AT-ARMS Deborah Lipman NATIONAL EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR Rebecca Rhine ASSOCIATE NATIONAL EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR Chaim Kantor

ADVERTISING POLICY: Readers should not assume that any products or services advertised in International Cinematographers Guild Magazine are endorsed by the International Cinematographers Guild. Although the Editorial staff adheres to standard industry practices in requiring advertisers to be “truthful and forthright,” there has been no extensive screening process by either International Cinematographers Guild Magazine or the International Cinematographers Guild.

EDITORIAL POLICY: The International Cinematographers Guild neither implicitly nor explicitly endorses opinions or political statements expressed in International Cinematographers Guild Magazine. ICG Magazine considers unsolicited material via email only, provided all submissions are within current Contributor Guideline standards. All published material is subject to editing for length, style and content, with inclusion at the discretion of the Executive Editor and Art Director.

Local 600, International Cinematographers Guild, retains all ancillary and expressed rights of content and photos published in ICG Magazine and icgmagazine.com, subject to any negotiated prior arrangement. ICG Magazine regrets that it cannot publish letters to the editor.

ICG (ISSN 1527-6007) Ten issues published annually by The International Cinematographers Guild 7755 Sunset Boulevard, Hollywood, CA, 90046, U.S.A. Periodical postage paid at Los Angeles, California.

POSTMASTER: Send address changes to ICG 7755 Sunset Boulevard Hollywood, California 90046 Copyright 2021, 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.

Non-members may purchase an annual subscription for $48.00 (U.S.), $82.00 (Foreign and Canada) surface mail and $117.00 air mail per year. Single Copy: $4.95 The International Cinematographers Guild Magazine has been published monthly since 1929.

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wide angle Photo by Sara Terry

CONTRIBUTORS

K

evin Martin’s cover story on Top Gun: Maverick (page 42) for this June/July Interview Issue centers on the most high-flying (literally) project to come out of Hollywood since, well, Top Gun, 36 years ago. The original, shot by Jeffrey Kimball, ASC, holds up remarkably well (according to data provided by Reelgood, it was the most popular streaming title before and during Maverick’s release), and its sequel just set the record for the biggest Memorial Day weekend in cinema history. Shot by Oscar-winner Claudio Miranda, ASC, with aerial photography

by David B. Nowell, ASC (who was the only Local 600 member to have worked on the original), Maverick took advantage of new technology that allowed Director Joe Kosinski to place cameras directly inside the cockpits of F-18 jets, an option not available to Kimball (and director Tony Scott) in the mid-1980s.

Installing multiple Sony VENICE systems inside a jet begins and ends with safety, a job Guild 1st AC Daniel Ming took very seriously.

As Kosinski shares: “NAVAIR [Navy Air Systems Command] reviews all modifications to ensure safety during the flights; if there’s an emergency or an ejection, the cameras couldn’t interfere with how the canopy would come off. We had to modify a lens hood because it protruded a few millimeters too far, so Dan manufactured his own lens hood on a 3D printer in his hotel room, and that got installed the next day for the shoot!”

Maverick’s highflyers, including Aerial Coordinator/Lead Camera Pilot Kevin LaRosa II, who flew a modified, custom-built L-39 Albatros, capitalized on digital technology that did not yet exist in 1986. But the Maverick team also carried over the type of filmmaking that has kept the original so compelling. “I told [Kosinski] that one way to get great aerial imagery of the jets was to use teams on mountaintops shooting with longlens tripod-mounted cameras, as we did in the first film,” Nowell recounts. And with the U.S. Navy suggesting locations that would provide the best ground-to-air coverage, "we could slot four cameras in a variety of positions facing east for the morning," Nowell adds, "and then get on the other side to shoot westward in the afternoons.

We always had this beautiful backlight, but a totally different look in the landscape that we

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could use for other parts of the sequence.”

Using light toward creative ends was a common theme ICG staff writer Pauline Rogers uncovered for this year's Interview Section (page 88), as each of her five subject groupings share a remarkable understanding of how audiences react to a moving image.

Lens Masters (page 90) gives voice to the industry’s best optical minds – ZEISS’s Christophe Casenave, Band Pro’s Emin Nalbandian, and Panavision’s Dan Sasaki – whose knowledge in such areas as full-frame prime and zoom lenses and anamorphic glass is breathtaking (no pun intended). Fashion Show (page 96) cuts out the template for how directors of photography work with costume designers to best serve the stories at hand.

Pairings such as Mauro Fiore, ASC, with Sanja Hays (Spider-Man: No Way Home), Nicolas Karakatsanis with Jenny Beavan (Cruella), and James Laxton, ASC, with Caroline Eselin (The Underground Railroad, If Beale Street Could Talk, Moonlight) each reveal a workflow and creative give-and-take that shares more touchpoints than even other department heads might be aware of.

As a round-ball junkie, my personal favorite, Sports Center (page 102), hits the court with the live event genre’s very best camera operators. Fun takeaways from long-time pros like Stephen Bennett, Andy Italiano and Darrin Pattison include the level of skill it takes to follow a tiny white ball when the sun is behind a golfer and how keeping a speeding hockey puck in a tight shot on an ISO camera is only for the brave at heart.

Speaking of courage, the fearlessness on display in Get A Grip (page 108) forms the backbone of the chief lighting technician/key grip partnership, and no one does that better than our three featured pairs: Cody Jacobs and Ed Titus, John Sandau and Chris Birdsong, and Stephen Thompson and Lee Donaldson. Horror genre specialists Thompson and Donaldson often watch rehearsals together, where before a single flag has been set, they’ve “already figured out what angle the light is coming from and how best to shape it.”

Our final grouping, My (Color) Space, dials-in the art of color grading with three dynamic practitioners: Tanner Buschman (MTI), Lynette Duensing (Instinctual Hollywood) and Siggy Ferstl (Company 3). Each has a mastery of the ever-changing technology employed in digital color correction that speaks not only to their inner artist but their love of storytelling.

Seacia Pavao The Interviews “The tax credits in Massachusetts have allowed for even more work in this area, and that has meant meeting more and more people.

Sometimes it’s because I work with them on a film or TV production, or it’s because we try to do a gathering of stills and publicists; and occasionally it is because I have the pleasure of shooting for IGC Magazine, as I did here with Mauro Fiore, ASC.”

Zac Popik The Interviews “I couldn’t have asked for a better portrait shoot! Working with [Key Grip] Chris Birdsong was incredible! We had a short window to make his portrait and I felt that photographing him in his truck would help tell his story. We shot for about 10 minutes and then had a nice conversation after. Chris was excited to hear how my unit stills career has taken off since my recent move to Atlanta. I hope to have the pleasure of working with him on-set very soon!”

ICG MAGAZINE

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David Geffner Executive Editor

Email: david@icgmagazine.com

THE INTERVIEW ISSUE Cover photo by Scott Garfield, SMPSP

CONGRATULATIONS Claudio Miranda, ASC, ACC on the release of Top Gun: Maverick!

VENICE

Thank you for choosing the VENICE and the VENICE Rialto to support you.

“Top Gun is a fantastic example where we delivered shots not previously achievable thanks to the VENICE and VENICE Rialto.”

— Claudio Miranda, ASC, ACC

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Rodeo is compatible with a broad range of cameras made by IO Industries as well as other manufacturers.

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Sony VENICE 2 PRICING: $79,000 WWW.SONY.COM

“It has the new full-frame 8.6K image sensor and the Dual Base ISO feature, which is important for moving through a range of 800 ASA to 3200,” says Gonzalo Amat, ASC, who is using the new Sony VENICE 2 on the Netflix series Outer Banks. “The quality of the sensor is first-rate. The latitude, colors and highlights – everything was even sharper than before while still using a menu similar to what I was used to,” Amat adds. “You can shoot on a very bright, sunny day without losing details. The rendition of the color and skin tone of faces is quite cinematic. It doesn’t feel electronic – it feels more like a film camera. In the end, the way the camera handles skin is what’s most impressive. I’ve used other 8K cameras before, and I was always completely taken aback by the fact that you can see everything on people’s skin. This is not the case with the [VENICE 2]. It has a certain softness to skin tones which recreates what film used to do. In the end, that’s what tells the story.”

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A clockwise turn of the handgrip engages a metal band that braces each riser section with tension control and frictional lock to safely tighten and lock in place each riser tube. A pan ring provides 360 degrees of mast rotation, avoiding the need to completely lower the system. Four telescoping legs holding the base may be individually adjusted or collapsed, and four heavy-duty jacks with 14-inch reach provide leveling for uneven terrain. For transport, the telescoping mast can be easily removed from the dolly, or it can be transported while fully raised.

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“Serv 4K unifies on-set and remote streaming setups with a 4K HDRready device that’s easy to set up, manage and access,” shares Greg Smokler, VP of Cine Products at Creative Solutions. “It’s part of an end-to-end streaming solution that removes barriers to creative collaboration by providing incredible image fidelity, simplified remote viewing, stream management, and double the local streaming capacity.” Serv 4K boasts a maximum encoding bit rate of up to 85 mps H.265, 256-bit encryption, HDR (CCI-P3, PQ2084), and full throughput support, allowing secure on-set and remote streaming of 10-bit 4:2:2 video at resolutions up to 4Kp60. Serv 4K also supports HEVC, delivering high-quality media in smaller file sizes. Up to 20 devices can stream on a local network to Teradek’s VUER app, with iOS, Android, PC, MacOS, and Apple TV support. Unlimited devices can access cloud-based live streaming and upload instant recordings to Teradek Core and third-party platforms such as Frame.io. Recordings are saved to an SD card for secure upload if an internet connection is faulty.

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GEAR GUIDE

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Atlas Lens Co. Orion 21mm Anamorphic Prime PRICING: $14,995 WWW.ATLASLENSCO.COM

“I’m continually impressed by what Atlas Lens Co. creates for the filmmaking community at large,” says Christopher Probst, ASC. “The new 21-mm Orion anamorphic prime is just bonkers wide for a front anamorphic lens, and it surprisingly exhibits minimal distortion for such an extreme 2x anamorphic angle of view. I have had the pleasure to utilize it on several commercials, and it came to the rescue when I had some high-frame-rate shots that required a resolution crop on the sensor, but we still wanted an extremely wide perspective. The fact that the lens performs so well with minimal distortion allowed us to punch into its field of view without any compromise in image quality or be stuck with any funky distortion artifacts.”

MossLED ShortCut FlexLED 2700k-6000k PRICING: SC120 $157 FOR 16 FEET SC 240 $285 FOR 16 FEET WWW.MOSSLED.COM

“We’ve always loved the MossLED FlexLED 24-volt products for their high build quality and great output,” says Janice Fraser, LED Supervisor, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. “But their new ShortCut FlexLED line has opened up an even wider range of applications for us in Season 2, with its increased flexibility of cut points and improved brightness.” The higher chip operating voltage allows for an extremely short cutting length of less than one inch, as well as being 20 percent brighter than the company’s standard LED. This new LED chip utilizes all the benefits of 24 V (lower current, less voltage drop and lower heat) along with the shortcut points of a traditional 12-V FlexLED strip. The chip conforms to strict standards and has a performance of CRI, TLCI, and R9 values all above 95.

Two-pixel densities have launched at 120 LED/meter and 240 LED/ meter, producing 2324 lumens and 4553 lumens, respectively, when both 2700k and 6000k chips are operated at full power. Fraser calls it “the perfect flexible LED for when maximum brightness and adjustability are required.”

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ZOOM IN

Eddy Chen UNIT STILL PHOTOGRAPHER

Taipei, Taiwan-born, but raised in the Southern California suburbs, Eddy Chen started shooting film at the age of 12, training his eye at import car shows. Chen moved to Los Angeles in 2007 to pursue photography professionally. When Chen began shooting full-time as a professional, he used a prosumer Nikon D200 that was bought with his mom's credit card. But, he insists, film has always been his love.

“Sadly, the film cameras started to gather dust,” he bemoans. “But in the past six to seven years, I started taking them to set and would shoot a couple of rolls. I would get them developed and scanned, and then send the shots in to the networks.”

The first show Chen consistently provided film stills for was John Wells’ Animal Kingdom for Turner Broadcasting/TNT (which premiered its final

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season this year). “The photo producers loved the look of film and asked if I could shoot more,” Chen smiles. “So, I obliged – under the condition that they would pay for it, and they agreed.”

When Season One of HBO’s Euphoria came around [ICG Magazine February/March 2021], Chen kept doing the same thing – shooting a few rolls of film and turning them in. “Then I would wait to see what they would say,” he recounts. “They asked me to shoot more film and gave me a decent budget for the rest of Season One.” The creative direction for Euphoria’s second season confirmed the production’s enthusiasm.

It was easy to convince HBO to shoot almost all of it on 35mm so it would match the show, which would be shot on 35mm. “We had a creative brief for Season Two, and Marketing gave me the budget I

had asked for based on the ratio of film they wanted me to shoot, which was 30:70 film to digital,” Chen adds. “After a few weeks, they came back to me and said they loved the film shoots and said, ‘Why don’t you shoot 50:50?’ I was getting close to the budget cap halfway through the season, and I told Marketing. They liked it so much that they approved going over the cap. Essentially – no cap. And, by the end of the season, I was shooting 70:30. I think all the film and receipts totaled more than twenty thousand. I turned in more than 5,500 film shots, so they’re sitting on a goldmine.”

Excited about getting back to the medium he loves, Chen notes there were a few extra steps to the process – “like dropping off the film coverage for the week at my lab in Glendale – a fantastic group at Digital Photo Printing and Studio,” he shares.

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ZOOM IN

“I don’t think it’s about the push to go back to film as it is about reminding people there's another creative approach to a project other than just digital.”

“When I got the scans back, I would often crunch the blacks in post and adjust the highlights – and that was about it. The colors/contrast with the use of certain lenses and the grain when pushing the film was a look that even postproduction couldn’t replicate.”

What Chen really loves is pulling out his trusty Minolta Flash Meter he got as a kid from his dad, who was also an avid photographer. Chen says he also enjoys using different cameras, from a Contax G2 and Nikon F6 to medium-format cameras such as his Fujifilm 645, Contax 645 and Mamiya 67.

“Honestly, film just looks better, in my opinion,” he states. “It certainly works for Euphoria, which is shot on film. The key art image they used for Season

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Two was shot on my blimped Nikon F6, and that image ended up everywhere on billboards. It was a dream project to have so much creative freedom.

That included shutter-dragged two-second-long exposure shots with flash, light streaks, motion blur, you name it. I never got any notes from the network, so I just kept doing my thing on film!”

Shooting film also enables Chen to work more closely with Guild Director of Photography Marcell Rév and Local 728 Lighting Technician Danny Durr. “They lit for film, and the light was always mesmerizingly beautiful, which makes my job so easy,” he shares. “For Season One, DIT Justin Steptoe helped me match the colors off his monitors. But I don’t think it’s always about trying

to match the look of the show. Much like how it’s not possible to always have the same angle as A-Camera, and those other angles can also be beautiful. Film lets me serve up a completely different creative perspective.”

In fact, shooting film has helped Chen reach a similar state of creative euphoria. So, will there be more? “I don’t think it’s about the push to go back to film as it is about reminding people there's another creative approach to a project other than just digital,” he concludes. “I love shooting film – always have and always will. So, of course, I want to see more of it. But it has to work for the project. These days when networks reach out, it’s becoming more of a given they want me to shoot film.”

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BOOK REVIEW

The Cinematographer’s Voice: Insights into the World of Visual Storytelling

BY LINDSAY COLEMAN AND ROBERTO SCHAEFER, ASC, AIC

A true artist will study the past to inform the future.

In the introduction to The Cinematographer’s Voice, readers get a solid look at the current place of cinematography in the language of visual storytelling.

The technical (and photographically interesting) examination of four images from four different films (featuring seven different actors) emphasizes how images can be unique – but often, as the authors write, “the stamp of the cinematographer can weave from film to film.” The book also tackles the influence of new technology where “consumers of film have themselves become budding cameramen based on the increasing sophistication of technical virtuosity; of even the simple smartphone.” They do justice to changes in methodology, points of connection between cinematographers and other artists, the greater need for collaboration, and more.

But where this book excels – and what bears repeating – is the idea that a true artist needs to study the past to inform the future. Each of these 23 interviews covers what it truly takes to stand for your art.

Rodrigo Prieto ASC, AMC (We Bought a Zoo, Water for Elephants, 8 Mile, Brokeback Mountain), described by the authors as “one of the most flexible, adept cinematographers in the world today,” lends insight into his (and Brokeback Mountain director Ang Lee’s) approach to anti-heroes and alienated characters using the challenge of moonlight amid a stark and uncaring landscape.

“Ang wanted moonlight to be present, seen and felt,” Prieto explains. “It’s one of the hardest things to do in cinematography, to create moonlight.” Adding that color rendition desaturates because the cones in the eyes, at a certain light level, register less color,

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Prieto uses such principles often in his work.

He also comments on the value of the image.

“As cinematographers, we are shooting 24 still photos a second,” Prieto continues in the book. “The value comes because of each preceding image.

And the one after. But the same applies to a whole movie. You build on the drama; you build moods and atmosphere as the story progresses. I’m not looking for shots, a cool moment of lighting, or an unusual angle that will stand alone. I’m looking for a given shot that will work for characters, how the scene is positioned in the story.”

Peter Deming, ASC (Mulholland Drive, Oz the Great and Powerful, Lost Highway, Drag Me to Hell), who is a frequent collaborator with David Lynch and Sam Rami, gives the reader an insight into the horror aesthetic, where, Deming says, “the scare is in the characters and the dialogue. It’s not in the physical expression of the scare.” Deming’s strategy for emotional violence is enlightening, and so are the accidents and challenges that make the film better.

Lost Highways, he explains, was fraught with changes, with elements of the unexpected. And that often made it better. The beautiful explosion “wasn’t designed to explode at all. We were done shooting and ready to pack up. The producer was saying that the art department would come out and dismantle the cabin once we had the negative report. We started thinking, ‘Can’t we just blow it up?’” He recalls a talk with Don McAlpine, ASC, ACS, about adjusting the exposure as the explosion progresses.

“It’s tough, especially when it’s an explosion taking place at night,” Deming shares. “I think with the initial explosion, you’re sort of screwed. Unless you’re shooting in the day, you’re always going to

lose a certain amount of that. Once that initial burst is gone, whenever fire and smoke follow – you have to gauge.” Deming also notes his close collaboration with Lynch and their forward-thinking choice of using prosumer cameras to make Twin Peaks: The Return stand out.

Readers should connect with the section on John Mathieson, BSC (The Phantom of the Opera, Kingdom of Heaven), and his starkly beautiful images for Ridley Scott’s Gladiator. The British DP talks about his reliance on a French romantic painter, who captures “a rather overweight gladiator with his foot on his victim, in an arena with his head raised to the imperial box,” Mathieson explains. “That was one of the visuals that referenced [the whole film].

There were stripes of light in the painting. That is what made me put up the most expensive shadow in cinema history, the fabric to cover the area, so we had light and shadow. The whole gladiator thing became more like theater, so we had a big spotlight over whatever Russell Crowe was doing.”

Mathieson’s philosophy is clearly stated. “I’ve never made a film for money. If you’re making a film for the money, good luck to you, keep everyone happy. Keep the studio happy…[but] people won’t remember your work." Mathieson adds that while he was unafraid to challenge Scott when there was a difference of opinion, “it’s better if the director works with you. It’s surprising how many directors are not concerned with imagery, and performance; my God, there is enough to do there anyway. You are left to your own devices. I don’t think that it’s a particularly good thing because you do it by yourself. I think it’s much better to have a conspiracy and a collaboration and do your thing with them.”

cinecAward cineCongress 13th International Trade Fair for Cine Equipment & Technology

16 - 18 September 2022

MOC | Munich, Germany

www.cinec.de

Portfolio Creation | Acquisition | Camera Camera Support & Grip | Lenses & Optics | Lighting | Sound | Post Production | Animation | Server Archives | Distribution | Projection Services

Organisation:

Film & TV

Kamera BILD TON SCHNITT

in cooperation with

ALBRECHT GESELLSCHAFT FÜR FACHAUSSTELLUNGEN UND KONGRESSE MBH JUNE/JULY 2022

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BOOK REVIEW

A BUILDING EXPLODES INTO FLAMES IN LOST HIGHWAY (1997)

DAISY FULLER (CATE BLANCHETT) DANCES FOR BENJAMIN IN THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON (2008)

ENNIS DEL MAR (HEATH LEDGER) IN BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN (2005)

MEMORY LIGHT IS FOCUSED ON CLEMENTINE (KATE WINSLET) AND JOEL (JIM CARREY) IN ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF A SPOTLESS MIND (2004)

When co-editor Schaefer interviewed Claudio Miranda, ASC (TRON: Legacy, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Oblivion, Oscar winner for Life of Pi), it was Miranda’s “tasteful” lighting and flawless work in postproduction that spoke to his art. Miranda, a one-time chief lighting technician, was one of the first to embrace digital capture with the Thomson Viper, and he speaks of the challenges and benefits of the new format.

Miranda’s peers say the DP sees the whole pipeline, and he notes in Schaefer’s interview, “I shoot with awareness for post. If, for instance, I was to shoot with flares, and knowing that they would need to be erased in post for a plate, I’d take that into account and wouldn’t do it. I have a good understanding of what they, in post, need to do. If you don’t understand their process, if you’re not in sync, the result will look terrible. Pi was successful because we coordinated with one another so well.

I’d specify the time of day a particular shot was evoking, pass that on to post, and then stick with it.

We all had references of what the scene was going to look like. I lit it like that. The magical night had tons of warmth in the light, then was offset by cool

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skies. That helped the cinematography to integrate well with the VFX. I don’t think it would have been possible to integrate without an awareness of what the extension was going to be.”

Ellen Kuras, ASC (Summer of Sam, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Away We Go, The Mod Squad, Swoon, I Shot Andy Warhol) talks about how cinematography in documentary and narrative formats offers different challenges. Kuras has been challenged by shooting on historical lands and found accidental use of color (green) from fluorescents that inform her philosophy today. “When I’m looking through the camera, I am always thinking about the meaning of my actions,” she explains. "Should I pan left to reveal this object, or if I rack focus to the background, I’ll reveal that character looking furtive, et cetera. Whether working with narrative or documentary, I find that I always want to know what is the director’s intention. There’s an inherent reason the scene was written; otherwise, it wouldn’t exist. And that, in turn, gives the scene a meaning, which in turn helps me know how to shoot it and, most importantly, helps me to advise the director on how to block it. All of this comes because you

create meaning with the image, and so blocking has to do with visual metaphor. It always comes back to meaning.”

The book offers many more insights, including those from Peter Suschitzky, ASC (Empire Strikes Back, The Rocky Horror Picture Show), Agnès Godard, AFC (The Dreamlife of Angels, Beau Travail), Dean Cundy, ASC (Halloween, The Thing, Back to the Future, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Jurassic Park), Mauro Fiore, ASC (Tears of the Sun, The Kingdom, Lost Souls), Dion Beebe, ACS, ASC (Chicago, Collateral, Memoirs of a Geisha), and Schaefer himself (Quantum of Solace, Best in Show, Finding Neverland, Monster’s Ball). In reading this thoughtfully constructed offering, one truly understands how impactful the creator of the image is on how audiences digest and interpret cinema and television.

Published by SUNY PRESS ISBN: 978-1-4384-8641-3 Pricing: $95

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EXPOSURE

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Jeremiah Zagar DIRECTOR | HUSTLE

BY DAVID GEFFNER PHOTOS BY SCOTT YAMANO / NETFLIX

Born and raised in South Philadelphia, Jeremiah Zagar grew up around many of the locations seen in his new film Hustle, a basketball drama from Netflix that stars Adam Sandler as an aging NBA scout who chances upon the prospect of a lifetime. Add to that, Zagar’s parents are both Philly-based visual artists who have stamped their creative mark on his home city, and you have a filmmaker uniquely prepared to direct a feel-good story about a famous sports city (whose notoriously tough fans let their teams know when they are not feeling good).

Zagar’s “man of the streets” persona has informed his entire career, beginning with his feature documentary debut, HBO’s In A Dream, which received two Emmy nominations and was short-listed for an Oscar, followed by HBO’s Captivated: The Trials of Pamela Smart, which premiered in Competition at Sundance.

Three years ago, the filmmaker’s facility with nonactors blossomed (spectacularly so) with his narrative feature debut, We the Animals, an indie-fest darling around the globe, including Sundance, where it premiered in 2018.

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EXPOSURE

"What drew me into Hustle was the chance to portray basketball as visual poetry, to transcend the genre in a way and become cinema. Because for me cinema is poetry."

One of the constants of Zagar’s work, which has an experiential quality that leans into striking colors and lensing, has been Local 600 Director of Photography Zak Mulligan, whose Super 16mm work on We the Animals was described by The New York Times as having a “dreamy, nostalgic glaze speckled with lambent light, like the fingerprints of memory.”

Zagar and Mulligan (whose first project was a 2007 sports documentary called Always a Fire) are playing in a much bigger sandbox with Hustle, both with budget and genre expectations. But they also have a star (Sandler) who loves working with indie filmmakers (Paul Thomas Anderson, Noah Baumbach, and the Safdie brothers, among them) and a story that still brims with the rough-edged poetry of real life that Zagar holds dear.

ICG: The first big basketball set piece in Hustle – at night, in Majorca, Spain – is amazing. It feels more like an MMA cage fight than a pickup game.

JZ: We had only a few nights for that and no options for VFX. So, those four hundred Spanish extras are the real deal, and they were crazy into it, even in the middle of a pandemic. As far as the basketball goes, it was the first game we shot from start to finish and the first time we meet Bo Cruz (NBA player Juancho Hernangómez). It’s also the only time we don’t see the game from Bo’s perspective – that scene is only told from the POV of Stanley (Adam Sandler) from the sidelines, or as Stanley imagines himself on the court in the game. We based it on the Rucker Park (New York City) pickup ball games from the 1970s, which were shot with long zoom lenses. Stanley’s a throwback, so the vintage Canon lenses Zak used for his POV fit with our visual plan.

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That game has a wild, off-the-cuff vibe, but it was choreographed, as are all the other basketball sequences that follow. JZ: I storyboarded every sequence, and then we animated those storyboards, so the bones of the scene were there before the edit began. We broke down each game by shooting Stanley’s POV first, what Zak called “Stanley-vision,” which was all done with the vintage zooms from off the court. We’d then send that footage to our editors in L.A., who would cut the sequence together and send it back to us. We’d look at the cut and say, ‘Okay, here are the pieces that are missing.’ Then we’d go back and shoot all the handheld stuff that was more documentarystyle – the Komodo on a stick, for example. That first night in Spain shooting handheld was… euphoric. Everyone could feel how great it was, as we hadn’t seen basketball on screen like this.

Remember, the first player Stanley sees is not Bo. It’s Mr. Everything, and he was spectacular.

The script called for Mr. Everything to do a single dunk, but once we saw what he could do, the entire opening of that scene changed, and it became about him dunking and, at least, initially, before Bo gets involved, blowing Stanley’s mind.

The scene starts with a crane shot coming over the fence to reveal this gladiator-style pit of a basketball court before ending on Mr. Everything’s dunk. It’s ambitious and showy. JZ: Right, and that’s the kind of big Hollywood move we wanted to mix in with the documentary looks that follow. We tried something like that on We the Animals, but it felt like even more of an experiment with Hustle. Zak and I had a chance to test many of these [camera techniques] in Philadelphia before we started the movie in this big, empty

warehouse, as we weren’t sure what would work for the basketball.

Your second unit DP, Tim Sessler, contributed some incredible footage in Spain with an RC car.

JZ: Oh, my goodness! We came back for another night of mostly specialty camera shots with Tim, and when Zak and I saw that little car, which is at that level of the player’s knees, more or less, zooming around the court, we were like: ‘This is the movie.’ You may have seen that perspective in a still photograph, but never moving with the action.

Tim was quite nervous with the TERO because it was going fast and the potential to hit and injure these guys, who were all professional basketball players, was real.

You’re a South Philly guy, born and raised. Is it easier to shoot a movie in your backyard? JZ: Well, yeah, in the sense that I know where the hidden gems are – the places that haven’t been seen much on screen before. I grew up walking past most of the locations in this movie. Deep South Philly near South Street, Center City, and then Manayunk were our three major locations, and then across the river in Camden, which is where the 76ers facility is. Manayunk, which people haven’t seen on screen at all, was written in by (Co-Writer) Will Fetters, who’s from Delaware. There’s a famous bike race there that he wrote into the story.

The training sequence, when Stanley is preparing Bo for the combine, is an obvious homage to another famous Philly movie, Rocky. That massive hill Bo has to run up, with the huge stair climb at the top, provided some beautiful images.

JZ: That was shot in Manayunk, and when Zak and I

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We also started EP’ing projects like Voyeur, a documentary feature for Netflix about Gay Talese, which is pretty out there. We’re doing an upcoming series for Apple TV+ and two projects at HBO, so what we’ve created with Public Record is a means to remain more in control of our destiny. That’s the dream for all filmmakers, I would think.

Because documentary filmmaking is at the heart of your ethos, is there a social component at the heart of Public Record’s mission? JZ: Listen, we want to make the world a better place. There’s a famous story from the [Jewish] Talmud about an old man who’s out planting a carob tree. His neighbor comes up and says: “Why would you plant a carob tree? It won’t bear fruit until long after you’re dead.” And he says, “It’s not for me. It’s for generations who follow.” We have a similar goal.

We want to make work that future generations will find value and meaning in and can take inspiration from. We want our work to be a source of joy. I can’t imagine spending time doing anything else.

went there we realized we’d need two streets – one for the beginning of the run and one for the end, and Zak would have to light both of them! We were fortunate to have such a great second-unit team, as we’d send Juancho, or his double, over for Tim to shoot the other section of the hill as we were setting up the main-unit shot.

How much of an overlap is there with your doc aesthetic when you make a narrative feature, even one that is essentially a fantasy, like Hustle?

JK: When I was young, it felt like narrative and nonfiction filmmaking never met. But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve seen doc language seep into fiction films more and more. And yeah, there is an overlap for me – we use different types of documentary language in Hustle to give the audience a feeling of authenticity. Like the Boa Challenge scene. It’s fairly implausible that streetball footage would go viral and that, based on that, Bo would be invited to an NBA Pro Combine. But if it’s grounded in a doc aesthetic, an approach to the filmmaking that is a little…dirty, then the audience buys in. For example, sometimes we’d have the perspective on the audio dip so it wouldn’t be so clean.

You may be one of the few narrative filmmakers I’ve interviewed that's worked more with nonprofessionals than actors. And the performances

you get in Hustle, from major pro athletes no less, are impressive. JZ: [Laughs.] I wouldn’t call them “non-actors.” They just haven’t acted professionally before. And when they got on set, our acting coach, Noelle Gentile, made sure they were prepared and understood the craft. Everybody on Hustle, as well as everyone on We the Animals, who hadn’t acted before, was a joy to work with, and that’s mostly because of Noelle. She does a lot of training before they get to set. And I would add that it’s good to mix non-professionals with people like Adam Sandler or Queen Latifah, because they rise to the moment with the help of these incredible actors.

What is the mission of Public Record, the company you co-founded and are talking to me from today? JK: After we made In a Dream, Jeremy Yaches, who produced that film and is a producer on Hustle, and I realized we weren’t going to make movies together if we didn’t have an infrastructure that was outside of what we were doing – he was producing commercials and I was editing documentaries. We started Public Record as an office share with five of our friends, which propelled us into a business making short documentary commercials that was based on this Errol Morris model – the commercials would fund our indie film projects, like We the Animals and Sidelined, which was a documentary for A&E.

How would you describe your partnership with Zak Mulligan? JZ: We both love bringing nonfiction aesthetics to narrative films – like Hustle and We the Animals. But we also love when that realism is heightened. And it’s rare to find another filmmaker, like Zak, who’s so eager to dive into both those worlds. He lit and shot-listed everything on We the Animals, but people think it all just happened on the spot, and that takes a lot of planning.

[Laughs.] We made a million-dollar movie, and then we made a movie that cost…a whole lot more.

A lot was different with Hustle, but what was the same was that we came in every day and knew how to work together; we were making the same movie we’d made before in so many ways, with the same shared language and ethos on the set – one of kindness, and respect for our crew and the process. Having that kind of security blanket is invaluable.

You mentioned a heightened realism – I’d describe it as an experiential quality. It’s a huge part of We the Animals, but even Hustle, a commercial film, goes there. Is that your DNA regardless of the story being told? JZ: I think that quality you’re talking about, what I just mentioned as this shared visual language Zak and I have, is what makes something cinema. The movies I love all have that. And what drew me into Hustle was the chance to portray basketball as visual poetry, to transcend the genre in a way and become cinema. Because for me cinema is poetry. It’s about reaching that state of euphoric immersion.

Hopefully, there are moments in all of my films that achieve that kind of visual poetry. We’re falling short, of course, sometimes more, sometimes less; but that’s always the goal.

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ON THE STREET

Green Day Sustainability efforts, in an industry long known for intransigence, gain steam thanks to a multiplicity of partners on and off the set.

BY PAULINE ROGERS

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Hollywood is packed with bright people who will stop at nothing to create the next box-office hit. And while that’s great for the audience, a studio’s balance sheet, and union employment rolls, is it necessarily worth the potential harm to Mother Earth such productions often involve? Does it make sense to build enormous sets from scratch in distant locations and then abandon them? Is a massive build-up of an already huge carbon footprint, piles of non-recyclable waste, and unused food products worth another hit movie?

That’s not to say this industry has not been aware of the waste and emissions it often leaves behind. But it’s had a less than admirable history of creating green practices on sets – everything from the ongoing use of gas-powered generators to tables of craft-service food dumped in the garbage.

Everyone knows it’s time to envision (and put into action) a plan of sustainability for every production, everywhere. But who will take up the fight?

Thankfully, there are now, more than ever, a multiplicity of partners – studios, unions, producers, vendors, and other stakeholders – coming together.

Will it be enough? All the major content producers have generated “green plans.” But follow-through is dependent on their financial and environmental commitment. And while Universal Studios, for example, has installed solar panels on some sets, measures, overall, remain inadequate – nowhere near ready to meet the current threat level experts have envisioned for widespread climate change.

Still, there are many everyday heroes in this fight, including Local 600 members like Allison Elvove and Kristin Glover, who co-founded ICG’s Green Committee in June 2019, and it’s important to highlight their work.

MEMBERS OF IATSE LOCALS 600, 695, 705 AND 728 AT A APRIL 2022 BEACH CLEAN UP ORGANIZED BY HEAL THE BAY / COURTESY OF MATTHEW BOREK / IATSE L.A. YOUNG WORKERS GROUP

The Producers Guild of America (PGA) was one of the first organizations to put words into action.

One great example is Mari Jo Winkler (In Her Shoes, Dan in Real Life, Vinyl, The Goldfinch, Stillwater, and Y: The Last Man), who has “greened” every show she’s done since 2003. “We’ve increased our use of LED lights, invoked sustainability from the moment we opened a production office, [set up] paperless protocols, and been conscious of where we get our food and donate the waste after we’re finished,” Winkler shares. “We’ve installed an aggressive recycling system and have been composting since 2010. On Stillwater, we trained the film crew, including the facilities and locations teams, to ‘green’ our sets.”

But even an early adopter like Winkler says

that’s not nearly enough. Working with fellow producers Lydia Pilcher and Katie Carpenter, Winkler co-founded the PGA Green; and working with their studio partners, co-founded the Green Production Guide (GPG), which posits green protocols for all the organization’s members and the industry as a whole. Winkler has inspired other veteran producers like Clara George (Fairly Legal, Defiance, Girlfriends’ Guide to Divorce, The Magicians, Emmy winner for Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee), who is a member of PGA Green and GPG Task Force.

“One of the biggest issues we tackle is the impact of carbon emissions,” explains George, who was on Local 600's recent NAB panel "Sustainable Production: The Path to Net Zero Climate Impact."

According to a recent Studio Carbon Emissions Report, today’s productions emit an average of 391 to 3,370 metric tons of carbon dioxide. Winkler notes that, “the science tells us we have eight years to cut our worldwide carbon emissions by 50 percent to avoid increased catastrophic climate occurrences. As a result, PGA Green has had a laser focus around the conversation of decarbonization, energy use, fuel, and transportation.

“On a standard television series,” George adds, “generators represent up to 20 percent of the carbon footprint. Technology, batteries, grid patterns and lighting all need to be addressed.

And this is doable today. The switch to sustainable production can be compared to the move from film to digital. We must get ahead of the curve.”

George says Local 600 directors of photography are key players on the ground, and many have no idea of the power they hold. On her productions, George will go to the DP and ask if a camera/lighting design can be achieved without a diesel generator. “It has to come from the bottom and the top,” she adds. “The DP’s power is huge.”

Many IATSE members are heeding the call.

George’s last series, The Magicians, worked to eliminate carbon-emitting generators, only using them, as George describes “as a last resort.”

She cites a story involving the day Director of

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ON THE STREET

Provide a renewable diesel fuel tank on the lot

Sound Stage

Provide separate bins and designated waste areas for compost, recycling, trash, and hazardous materials

Source renewable electricity from the grid/utility

Provide battery energy storage

SUSTAINABILITY PRACTICES

Provide adequate house power, grid ties, or power drops at different parts of the studio lot

Here you will find sustainable practices to Ensure all office and house incorporate on your soundstage or facility. lighting is led Visit GreenProductionGuide.com for more information and Eliminate the need for vendor recommendations. supplementary heating & cooling by providing central hvac

Install electrical submetering to track electricity consumption

Capture and use gray water in landscaping

Heat spaces with electric heat pumps, not natural gas Install smart sensors to control hvac (temperature) and lighting

Add communal green space where possible (provide shade or warm seating area for drivers so vehicles do not idle)

Provide storage space for set materials to enable reuse Install sensors that shutoff hvac when opening your elephant doors (large sliding)

Provide a sustainable practices memo to productions and include in the lease as well Provide plumbed water lines and water dispensers in all workspaces

Install solar panels or other renewables on site

Provide refrigerators dedicated to food donations

Provide electric vehicle charging stations (including level 3, or fast charging)

Provide reusable food services ware in commissaries

Provide golf carts powered by solar/electricity

Offer sustainable options through your rental department: ev/hybrid vehicles, led lighting, electric generators, recycling bins, rechargeable batteries, etc.

Photography Corey Robson’s daughter came to visit her father’s set. “It was 2019 and Alaia was eight years old at the time,” Robson recalls. “We were shooting in a heavily forested area in North Vancouver, and among our grip and lighting gear was a 12-by-20-foot helium-filled passive cloud balloon. It’s a diverse tool, as it can diffuse direct sun and be used as bounce or negative fill. And the harsh terrain and potential damage to the forest floor made grip and lighting lifts prohibitive.

“But the problem with helium,” Robson continues, "is that it’s in short supply, globally, and is very energy-intensive to extract and refine from natural gas reserves. I’m not sure how much total carbon is produced to get a balloon like that up in the air, but I know it’s massively harmful, making it the last option.”

As the balloon technicians were topping up the

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cloud with helium, “Alaia asked me what it was used for,” he adds. “I explained to her the benefits, but also that helium was a precious resource that I try not to use often. Without missing a beat, she asked why don’t they put the helium back in the tanks and reuse it for next time? So, I mentioned it to Clara.”

For a producer committed to the environment, it was a fantastic idea. Since that day, many other shows have been discovering helium-recapture systems.

Reducing a production’s carbon footprint has extended to forward-thinking support companies.

One of the most conscious of the use of electric power on set and location is Grip Trix. The company’s engineer, Robert Anderson, has been in the game for more than 40 years, developing and fine-tuning electric cars, often paired with generators. It was

Provide bike racks and shuttles to public transit

a call from Quentin Tarantino asking Herb Ault if anything could be done to eliminate the generator noise on Django Unchained that sparked Anderson into action. Over a single weekend, he created a system with three lightweight, high-powered LFP batteries; prepared an inverter and charge system; and shipped it to the Django Unchained team in Louisiana. “Not much thought was given to the emissions reduction back then,” Anderson admits.

“But we had basically come up with a way to replace the ubiquitous red generator.”

Flash-forward 10 years and Grip Trix is a forerunner in reducing carbon. Their batteries and camera cars are grid-charged at their North Hollywood location. “In use, these devices produce about 22 percent of the CO2 of an equivalent gaspowered device,” Anderson describes. They’ve also installed batteries, an inverter and solar panels to

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On Location

USE LED LIGHTING TO REDUCE GENERATOR USE; FIXTURES CAN RUN OFF BATTERY PACKS OR PLUG DIRECTLY INTO WALLS

SUSTAINABLE PRODUCTION PRACTICES Here you will find sustainable best practices for on location.

Visit GreenProductionGuide.com for vendors and additional resources.

DONATE LEFTOVER FOOD FROM CATERING TO A LOCAL NON-PROFIT; APPOINT CONTACT PERSON TO COORDINATE DAILY PICK-UPS

SOURCE MOBILE BATTERYPOWERED OR HYDROGEN UNITS AS AN ALTERNATIVE TO DIESEL GENERATORS

ENCOURAGE THE USE OF BICYCLES AND PUBLIC TRANSIT, WHERE POSSIBLE

USE RENEWABLE DIESEL OR OTHER LOW CARBON FUELS TO REDUCE CARBON EMISSIONS, AND SIZE THE GENERATOR TO MATCH REQUIRED LOAD

USE SOLAR POWERED TRAILERS, ALLOWING EQUIPMENT TO BE SILENT AND POWERED BY RENEWABLE ENERGY

SET UP CLEARLY LABELED RECYCLING & COMPOSTING BINS AT CRAFT SERVICE, CATERING, AND KEY AREAS ON SET

COMBINE EQUIPMENT; USE 2 & 3 ROOM TRAILERS TO REDUCE FUEL USE

PROVIDE WATER DISPENSERS TO REDUCE PLASTIC WASTE. WHEN DISPOSABLES NEEDED, USE ALUMINUM

REQUIRE CATERING TO PROVIDE WASHABLE CHINA AND CUTLERY TIE INTO ELECTRIC GRID TO REDUCE OR ELIMINATE GENERATOR USE

USE PAPER TO-GO BOXES, ELIMINATE FOAM SCHEDULE RECYCLING PICKUPS WITH WASTE REMOVAL

RENT EV, HYBRID AND FUEL-EFFICIENT VEHICLES

ENFORCE A “NO IDLING” POLICY FOR ALL VEHICLES; IDLING DAMAGES ENGINES, POLLUTES THE AIR, AND WASTES MONEY

OPPOSITE/ABOVE: COURTESY OF ICG GREEN COMMITTE CO-CHAIR ALLISON ELVOVE

the company’s semi-trailers that are used on set for grip equipment, providing uninterruptible, clean power for tools, lighting and battery charging.

Local 600 Assistant Mark Steinig, owner of Maleko Grip and Lighting, based in New Mexico, is one of the loudest voices for the push toward solar. He says the studios are the end game, as the changeover would be taxing. “The square footage on a roof is a huge amount of money,” Steinig shares, “and some question the return on the investment. Where we are seeing a big move is on location. I’ve been working with Netflix, who is consciously integrating LED’s into all its shows.

The best first step is to use sunlight, with the grips going in and controlling the lights as we always have. But batteries – for lighting and camera, video village, even when we are faced with lighting delays or company moves – can have a measurable

impact. If we can go solar on each working truck, they can be tied together to generate larger arrays and mass amounts of power for each truck. In turn, those trucks can charge batteries that can be used on the set for remote powerheads, cranes, and arms,” something Steinig is doing on a shoot in New Orleans right now.

The industry-leading VFX team at Lucas Films has also been attuned to greening-up productions.

Chris Bannister, Executive Producer at Industrial Light & Magic StageCraft, notes that “the StageCraft Volume can eliminate, or substantially reduce, the number of locations that would otherwise be required for filming. The Volume doesn’t eliminate all set construction, but there will be a 30 to 70 percent reduction in construction materials as a result of smaller sets. And, from an environmental standpoint, lauan [the tropical hardwood used for flats] and

sculpting foam are the biggest savings. Season 2 of The Mandalorian focused on reducing the show’s carbon footprint and diverting as much waste as possible from landfills by recycling and composting, and testing new, new, innovative technologies."

According to a recent report by The Sustainable Production Alliance, (SPA), a Sustainability consortium of the world’s leading film, television and streaming companies, an estimated 60 percent of the carbon footprint of a production is a result of ground fuel and air travel. This can be significantly reduced with stage work made possible in part by VFX-intensive production.

Adrienne Pfeiffer, Sustainable Production Manager for Seasons 2/3 of The Madalorian and the just-released Obi-Wan Kenobi, says additional greenhouse gas mitigation on both series "was made possible through a Disney-supported on-

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ON THE STREET

FILM INDUSTRY VOLUNTEERS FROM "EVERY DAY ACTION" (FOUNDED BY DGA

RECYLCING AFTER SET HOURS AT CHARM, ATLANTA,

ASSISTANT DIRECTOR HILARY COHEN) BRINGING UNEATEN CRAFT SERVICES

GA/ COURTESY OF 2ND AC AGNES RODRIGUEZ-SEBEK

FOOD TO L.A.'S HOMELESS. / PHOTO COURTESY OF JACK HERMAN

site methane digester – to our knowledge the first employed on a production of this scope.

The digester processed tons of catering, crafty, and scenic/greens organic waste, eliminating unnecessary waste haul costs and impact, while providing nitrogen-rich compost fertilizer which was offered to crew for use in home gardens."

There are also green-specific companies now targeting the industry. One example was the sixpart limited X-Files: Green production, which excited writer/producer/director Chris Carter because it offered a “variety of ways to approach filmmaking that are 180 degrees from when I started in the business. Once upon a time, we’d build sets of what was cheapest – not what is sustainable.” Carter worked with Green Spark Group, based out of Vancouver (whose other credits include Divorce,

Then, following the Sustainable Production Guidelines, the show provided water bottles instead of bottled water; when they had a sequence with animals, everything they used went to a shelter. The clothing came from stock and was returned to FOX for other shows, and recycle bins were installed in every area. In addition, they used a lot of Styrofoam that was treated with dirty glue and found a vendor who would take these pieces and repurpose them.

Harris takes the company’s work a step further. She provides training, “whether it’s working with a department to think through a process for implementing certain sustainable practices, teaching courses to producers, or through our selfguided online courses. By teaching and empowering people, we will shift the way we do business,” she states.

Earth Angel, founded by Emellie O’Brien, is another industry-specific green company. Over

by Showrunners Robert and Michelle King. Earth Angel sees an uptick in requests and participation from the corporate side, even before a project goes into production.

One of the company’s biggest endeavors was Sony’s The Amazing Spider-Man 2. O’Brien met with Production and began a step-by-step breakdown of each department. Set and construction salvaged what they could, rented what they needed, and made sure everything went back to be reused. They built-in eco-conscious billboards and messaging.

They used biodegradable snow and smoke. They donated food and recycled the textiles. One great example of this industry’s green power came about in the movie’s graduation scene. “It was shot in a park damaged by Hurricane Sandy,” O’Brien recalls.

“Production fixed the benches and more. And, in leaving what they built, this time, they left it better than how they found it.

The Gilded Age, and Succession). Founder Zena Harris began the company's journey to sustainability in 2014 by consciously targeting every aspect of production – corporate, creative, crews and department heads.

“We help empower them to take agency and incorporate sustainable practices,” Harris explains.

“It’s about more than a Band-Aid solution; we want to put them on a path towards transformation. Like the concept of circularity: we work with productions to think through the materials they bring into their system and how those materials will circulate back into the market. This means reusing, selling, or donating larger materials like sets and composting to make and regenerate soil.”

For the X-Files shoot, cinematographer Craig Wrobleski created lighting environments for LED fixtures, including building them into set design.

the past several years, it has worked on hits like Madam Secretary, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, and In the Heights. O’Brien began addressing the issue in 2013, creating a scalable model for sustainable production. “It’s about strategy, staff, stuff, and stats,” she explains. “We provide a sustainability department to our shows to tackle zero-waste, education, social impact, supply-chain, energy efficiency and emissions tracking.”

For the CBS episodic series Evil, Earth Angel helped implement the CBS Green Production program as part of CBS’s Eye on the Environment strategies, which include paperless reports and water stations. And, when the production wrapped, set decorations and furniture were given to organizations like Habitat for Humanity.

While the decision to go green was made at the production level, it was enthusiastically supported

“On Spider-Man 2, we documented everything we did to go green,” she continues. “So, the SpiderMan fan base and our Twitter feed were both filled with sustainable information. Entertainment is among the most influential industries in society, and we have to use that. If everyone gets into the habit, we can do a lot for our future.”

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British-Italian Costume Designer Georgina Curtis (who was born in Germany) says she’s always been inspired by industry activists David Attenborough and Greta Thunberg. So, when green practices came on the radar of the Costume Designers Guild (CDG) in 2020, Curtis founded and chaired Local 705’s Green Committee. (The CDG’s Sustainability Committee was founded this year by Julia Chase.)

“We opened a room at the Local where costumers

0 6 / 0 7. 2 0 2 2

THE "GREEN ROOM" AT LOCAL 705 COSTUME DESIGNERS GUILD (CDG) CREEATED BY GEORGINA CURTIS/ PHOTO COURTESY OF CURTIS

and designers can swap, donate and exchange kit items,” Curtis explains. “There was so much wasting, buying new over and over again for each show. Then watching the pieces just go in the trash.”

Curtis says repurposing is only a small part of what costumers can do. “There are plenty of examples in fashion of how to be more sustainable,” she adds. “Choosing brands and fabrics that are more environmentally conscious is a small step that can have a large impact. I know from experience it can be a challenge, but the industry is taking baby steps. One person can grow an idea, and the concept can expand exponentially.”

Sometimes it takes only one person (or two or three) to make a lasting difference. The roots of not-for-profit Everyday Action began when DGA AD Hillary Cohen got tired of seeing the food go to waste on sets like NCIS: Los Angeles. After years of being told “no” when she inquired about donating leftover food, Cohen used time during the pandemic shutdown to team up with co-worker AD Sam Luu and re-allocate the food waste on film sets directly to those living on the streets of Los Angeles, Long Beach and the San Fernando Valley.

Recently, Barrett Foa (Eric Beale on NCIS: Los Angeles) joined the team behind this action. And their set-to-street is growing. “We safely, swiftly and seamlessly coordinate meal pickups from major studios and locations, provide food packaging, and transport meals directly to L.A.’s most needy,” Cohen boasts. “We work 24 hours a day from breakfast to lunch to dinner. We employ production assistants and background actors as pickup/dropoff coordinators while they are between jobs. Our board members are working professionals in the entertainment and volunteer sectors, trying to make a difference in the lives of L.A.’s most vulnerable.”

Today, their volunteer base has expanded exponentially, and so has the number of studios and production companies that rely on their daily pickup.

Then there’s the camera crew of Showtime’s Three Women, which adopted a sustainabilityconscious stance even before pre-production.

“We had low paper-waste level with digital-heavy distribution of traditional paperwork, one-liners, sides, scripts/revisions, memos, start-work, timecards, et cetera,” describes Local 600 2nd AC Sarah Scrivener. “On this job, we are using ZoeLog as a digital option to continue the trend of lowwaste production workflow. Kelsey Middleton, the B-Camera 2nd AC on the job, as well as our two loaders – Brittany Jelinski and Liam Gannon – have

and evolved to having all of our customer paperwork be digital, from our New Client Profile to emailing gear lists instead of printing them out. It doesn’t seem like much until you see the volume of paper a rental house can generate! We made the decision originally as a way to cut down on waste. But the convenience of filling out our rental paperwork online has been a bonus for our customers.”

PRG General Manager Matt Keske says his company has made protection of the environment a guiding principle. “We’re innovating products with reduced power consumption and customizing greener solutions,” Keske describes. “Everything from international trucking to in-shop recycling and more.”

been linked on this app with our script supervisor, and it’s worked quite well. And we send all of our kit rentals/timecards/startwork digitally, which also saves tons of paper over the course of many weeks and employees. We can’t always control our surroundings on sets with access to recycling and reusable materials, but this was a small way we felt we could make an impact.”

All of PRG’s offices, as well as Daufenbach Camera, have joined Local 600 Green Committee’s P-Touch Recycle program, and Keske notes that “PRG has become a collection site. Our client camera crews go through a ton of P-Touch cartridges and supplies. So now, when camera assistants come in to prep gear or wrap out, they have a centralized place to recycle used Brother P-Touch systems, ink, toner, and parts."

Operator Allison Elvove, Local 600 Green Committee Co-Chair, says “we’re living during an important time in our industry where it’s imperative we shift attitudes toward environmental responsibility. We need to recognize that transforming creative visions from script to screen consumes energy and resources and generates waste and carbon emissions. We are directly contributing to the effects of global warming on our planet. As leaders in art and entertainment, we have a moral obligation to embrace clean energy.

“I am encouraged by the stories of Local 600 members [and others] who have taken it upon themselves to lead by example on set,” Elvove explains. “Through their actions, they are making an inspiring difference. But, if we want to be the leaders in our industry – DP’s, camera operators, and publicists – we must all be more vocal. We can’t just say this is a problem our employers must fix.

It requires a top-down and bottom-up approach to create a sustainable future.”

Longtime NEB member and Green Committee Co-Chair Kristin Glover agrees, adding that, "a great resource and starting place is the [Green Production Guide], as well the IATSE Sustainability Course, which was created by Green Spark Group, and brought to the IATSE’s attention by myself and Allison. We’re so grateful that IATSE President Matthew Loeb understands how important these issues are, and pushed this education forward.”

As Elvove concludes: “We’re so excited for the opportunity to be engaged in this sustainability conversation and encouraged by the emerging technologies. The time for us to act is now.”

Even when a film or series is not on a sustainable path, crew members are taking it upon themselves to do what they can. Guild 2nd AC Agnes RodriguezSebek says she is “always happy to see recycling bins on set; but invariably, people would put trash in the recycling, even when clearly [identified] and next to [the trash bin]. So, I started hanging a bag for recycling on my camera cart, and a bag in the camera truck. I’d take these home every day and put them into my recycling. It took 10 to 15 minutes.

Easily doable, even when I’m super-tired. I take it to CHaRM: the Center for Hard to Recycle Materials.

It’s a great place that will recycle [amongst other items] drinking straws, corks, cooking oil, batteries, cigarette butts, Styrofoam, tires, electric gadgets, Christmas lights and more. I’ve had people come to me saying [my efforts] have made them more conscious. My husband, who is also in Camera, told me one of his assistants also collects and brings recycling home.”

Like many, Rodriguez-Sebek is recognizing that things need to change soon. “We, in the Western world especially, need to be more accountable,” she adds. “It starts with the individual doing something as easy as carrying a bag and picking up trash when going for a walk, instead of leaving it for someone else to take care of, or worse, to just accumulate.”

Industry vendor partners are making the move to sustainability, albeit with baby steps. “In our first year as a company, our big push was to go as paperless as possible,” describes Daufenbach Camera’s Stephen Wheeler. “It started with electronic signatures for contracts and pickup slips

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FEATURE

TOP GUN: MAVERICK

CLAUDIO MIRANDA, ASC, SOARS INTO THE DANGER ZONE FOR TOP GUN: MAVERICK.

IRON BY KEVIN H. MARTIN PHOTOS BY SCOTT GARFIELD, SMPSP / PARAMOUNT

EAGLES

T he names of 1980s film stars who turned down the lead role of Pete “Maverick” Mitchell in the original Top Gun [shot

by Jeffrey Kimball, ASC] range from John Travolta to Matthew Broderick. In accepting the part of the cocky pilot attending the U.S. Navy Flight School for the best of the best, Tom Cruise sealed his status as a box-office icon – the film was the top-grosser of 1986 – and director Tony Scott’s aerial paean to the armed forces remained a perpetual “top gun” in the home video market for decades to come.

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According to Camera Operator John Connor, a Scott regular whose father operated on the original, just before his death the director expressed excitement about doing a sequel. Cruise had long resisted the notion but eventually reconsidered – possibly remembering The Color of Money, Paul Newman’s quarter-century-later sequel to The Hustler, which hit theaters the same year as Scott’s danger-zone thrill-ride.

The continuation of Maverick’s saga fell to Joseph Kosinski [ICG Magazine April 2013], who had directed Cruise in Oblivion.

Like Scott, Kosinski’s feature and commercial work demonstrates a predilection for strong and imaginative visuals. “I had just turned 12 years old when the original [Top Gun] came out,” Kosinski recalls. “The soundtrack was all over the radio, and I got to see it at the old Orpheum theater – a genuine Art Deco movie house from the 1940s – in Marshalltown,

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Iowa, where I grew up. Between the fast jets and Maverick being the kind of character so many kids would want to grow up to be at that age, the film left a huge impression.”

Having seen online videos shot by Navy pilots using GoPros, Kosinski approached Cruise. “I said, ‘We’ve got to be able to better this stuff if we want to make this movie,’” he states. “I figured that if I could get IMAXcertified cameras into the cockpits, we could capture a lot of the action for real. The original movie wasn’t able to do much real in-cockpit work – I think there are just a few shots where they must have had a little Eyemo camera with a 100-foot load. For me, those angles popped compared to the rear-projection cockpit stuff. Being a pilot himself, Tom wanted as much done practically as possible, so the aerials were going to be a big challenge from a creative and technical point of view.”

Among the first to get a call to duty

was aerial Director of Photography David B. Nowell, ASC [ICG Magazine May 2022] who had operated on the flying sequences for the original film, which employed an Astrovision periscope system and Photosonics cameras. “I had done Joe’s previous two movies and told him that one way to get great aerial imagery of the jets was to repeat what we did on the first film,” Nowell recalls, “using teams on mountaintops shooting with long lens tripodmounted cameras.”

Over 3000 storyboards were created, with certain sequences requiring previsualization.

Aerial Coordinator/Lead Camera Pilot Kevin LaRosa II notes that past aerial films suggested possible avenues to explore. “With just about any kind of filmmaking, recognition of other movies that did something very well become references that serve as inspiration or as points of departure,” LaRosa offers, “though execution may be different given all the tools

DIRECTOR JOE KOSINSKI (OPPOSITE) AND STAR TOM CRUISE (ABOVE WITH MONICA BARBATO) ENJOYED A TECHNOLOGICAL LUXURY THE 1986 FILM NEVER HAD: SMALL- FOOTPRINT DIGITAL CAMERAS MOUNTED DIRECTLY IN THE COCKPITS OF U.S. NAVY FIGHTER JETS.

we now have. It was always a matter of picking the right ones to best showcase what we needed for any given point in the story. There are little tricks you can apply to help sell speed, energy, and agility. What I like to do involves countering moves or having an object static in the foreground. Ultimately, the challenge was figuring out how to deliver fresh, dynamic, and iconic imagery that made the necessary story points while operating safely.”

As with Top Gun, securing cooperation from the military was key. “Fortunately, a lot of the decision-makers we dealt with entered the Navy during the 1980s and were even inspired by the original film,” Kosinski reveals.

“Our producer, Jerry Bruckheimer, faced a lot of resistance the first time around, and said it was easier this time as the Navy knew it painted the armed services in a positive way.”

Even with all the official cooperation, it would still take nearly a year to solve the logistical

challenges and get Navy signoffs on getting multiple IMAX-certified cameras installed in the F-18 jets seen throughout the film.

Claudio Miranda, ASC [ICG Magazine June 2015], who has shot all of Kosinski’s feature films, also gaffed for Tony Scott on Crimson Tide, The Fan, and Enemy of the State. “When Joe got the offer, I thought there was an interesting synergy and also felt a sentimental attraction, due to the long association with Tony,” Miranda reflects. “I called Jeff Kimball and we chatted about his approach on the original, which I think was one of the only spherical movies Tony ever shot. That was probably due to the need to use small, close-focus lenses in cockpits back then – and it was the same for us now. I knew the first version of the Sony VENICE – which was quite new back when we shot the film –

was the smallest system and could work for the cockpit by using the Rialto tethers that let you split the VENICE bodies and lenses.”

Shooting Cruise and the other actors in real jets as they executed elaborate maneuvers required a year-long effort that included placing a battery of cameras inside the aircraft and getting performers through training to pass their G-force ratings. Cruise – a pilot himself who flew his own P-51 Mustang in the film – was fully up to the challenge.

“A lot of the pilots were influenced by Top Gun, so they were gung-ho to help us in any way they could,” Miranda adds. “One pilot pulled 8 G’s for Tom [and wound up getting grounded for it]. At those velocities, you can see the wing flex during high-G moves.

Those kinds of details – and how aircraft dip slightly after departing the carrier – are important details that get missed when films do this with green screen or process screens.

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The approach also fit with Joe’s philosophy of getting as much in camera as possible, which was true even back when we did Tron: Legacy.

We had the glowing costumes actually lighting up the performers’ faces.”

Helping spearhead the incockpit placement of six VENICE cameras – four facing back, two forward – was 1st AC Dan Ming, who gets kudos from Miranda and Kosinski for his problem-solving skills. “Dan and my late key grip, Trevor Fulks, were instrumental in getting all those cameras into the F-18 cockpit,” Miranda says. Kosinski adds, “NAVAIR [Navy Air Systems Command] reviews all modifications to ensure safety during the flights; if there’s an emergency or an ejection, the cameras couldn’t interfere with how the canopy would come off. We had to modify a lens hood because it protruded just a few millimeters too far, so Dan manufactured his own lens hood on a 3D printer in his hotel room one night, and that got installed the next day for the shoot!” As Ming adds: “We used Voigtlander rectilinear wide angles [10mm, 12mm, 15mm] and Zeiss Loxias with Sony E-mount lenses for close-up focal lengths to have as small a profile as possible. The Voightlanders had built-in metal hoods that stuck out into the ejection path, so the 3D-printed replacements would stay clear.”

A powwow between grips, special effects, and camera personnel involving Navy engineers at the Lemoore Naval Air Station in rural Central California resulted in revisions to the cockpit with certain instruments removed. “We proceeded to fabricate cheese plates and brackets on the spot, figuring out where to put accessories, camera bodies and batteries,” Ming continues, “as we knew there was no way we could shoot with the RAW decks on while also running cables safely that were out of the way of any emergency exit situations. Keslow Cameras made custom housings for

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the Rialtos so that we could bolt right into them securely without adding to their profiles. Keslow also helped make a remote trigger system that split out via control hub to the six VENICE bodies in Hirose connectors.”

(Since the original VENICE did not record X-OCN internally, DIT Rohan Chitrakar arranged for cockpit cameras to capture 4K XAVC class 480 to SxS cards, while the rest of the feature utilized X-OCN 6K.) The Local 600 camera team followed preflight and postflight checklists meticulously for the two F-18s to ensure the twelve cockpit cameras and four exterior hull-mount cameras would run as problem-free as possible. “We had up to 26 cameras running some days, between the onboard packages and those in follow jets and helicopters and others on the ground,” recounts Miranda, who shot the ground-based live action with three VENICEs. A sailing package also featured two cameras using a Hydroflex Remote AquaCam. [Ming estimates that approximately 100 Local 600 members were deployed during the shoot.]

Cameras mounted on the exterior of the F-18 provide a true thrill ride when the jets are soaring through canyons. LaRosa’s aerial unit brought on Helinet Aviation, working in tandem with Patriots Jet Team, utilizing three different aerial camera platforms with the most prominently one LaRosa flew being a modified and custombuilt L-39 Albatross known as the Cinejet. LaRosa created this platform specifically for Top Gun: Maverick knowing that a highly maneuverable jet-based camera platform would be necessary to help tell the story. “It would also give Claudio the ability to fly his preferred camera package in the Shotover F1 camera gimbal mounted to the nose of the Cinejet,” LaRosa explains.

The larger commercial jet, developed by Nowell and Team 5,

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“ A LOT OF [U.S. NAVY PILOTS] WERE INFLUENCED BY TOP GUN , SO THEY WERE GUNG-HO TO HELP US IN ANY WAY THEY COULD.” CLAUDIO MIRANDA, ASC

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was also deployed for aerial shooting. “The Phenom 300 could take cameras on both the nose and tail simultaneously,” Nowell reports.

“So, we did the second half of the movie with Michael FitzMaurice as the other operator, each of us operating one camera. We had custom aluminum arms on the F1J gimbal, and could turn both cameras backwards, letting me get a wider view of the action Michael was shooting. Claudio said shooting with Fuji zooms would work perfectly to cover 4K, so they were our go-to’s, with the 20mm120mm on the nose and the 85mm-300mm on the tail.”

“Top Gun: Maverick was a bit different from other projects,” LaRosa elaborates, “because we had two aerial DPs: David and Michael. Michael is a rock star when it comes to identifying and tracking assets moving at high-speed. And Mike’s also being a pilot helped a lot with communication. It takes two people to do the job of operating an aerial camera, creating a 50/50 situation between us: if I don’t do my part properly, then the gimbal isn’t in the right spot; and if he should miss, then we don’t get the intended composition.”

Each day began with a two-hour briefing involving the pilots, actors, Miranda, and the

operators, along with Kosinski and Editor Eddie Hamilton. “We’d go through every maneuver and actor’s line, figuring out altitude for each shot,” recalls Kosinski. “Then we’d debrief immediately after, reviewing footage with Eddie to see what went right and how we could improve things before repeating the whole process in the afternoon.

The data wrangling for the volume of footage going through the Avid was epic for these long two-sortie days. But on every one of these long days, we’d get a minute or two that was worthy of inclusion, and a lot of that was unexpected stuff, like the sun peeking under the belly of the plane and flaring into the lens or vapor trails coming off the wings that showed just how hard a turn the craft was making. The atmospheric conditions have to be just right to create that visual; it isn’t something you can control.” LaRosa calls such finds “moments of opportunity,” stating that “each of our shooters has to possess a filmmaker’s sensibility to take advantage of light, background, and dynamics from moment to moment while anticipating what you think might develop in a unique way.”

Just as spaceships in science fiction films are more often than not being seen

against colorful nebula and planets rather than starfields, Miranda says that “planes shot against skies aren’t as exciting to look at as when seen against a ground-rush background. So, we worked with the Navy to find runs that gave us a lot of mountain range backgrounds. In wanting to introduce different dynamics into the framing, we also strove to find spots where a jet could drop from sight, then suddenly pop back up into view above the terrain.” By necessity as much as design, the lighting on the cockpit scenes was natural, though reflecting Miranda’s oftstated preference for the sun to backlight the action. “There’s no Obie light aboard,” he laughs, “but we could create a bit of fill coming off the pilot’s kneeboard – a pad listing flight operations.”

Ming recalls that the cockpit shoots were realized with healthy stops of around T8-1/2, so the focus could be locked off with sufficient depth of field. “We often had decent stops when shooting from other aircraft or on the ground, though when using super long lenses [including lens doublers] and high speeds, the operators found that any latency in the eyepiece and monitors made it nearly impossible to frame; so, we built optical sights

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for cameras. A high base ASA makes it possible to get more light in dark situations, but frequently you are still shooting wide open.”

When possible, LaRosa tried to segregate sorties by capture methodolog y and lighting scenario. “It’s not like shooting from all directions on a traditional scene,” he explains. “Here, the light is going to be optimized in one given direction, so unless you prioritize the cameras, you may not get the best possible results. I tried to keep certain runs for times when the light was best for the shooters with ground-based cameras and used different sorties when the primary objective was getting views from our helicopters or camera jets.”

Nowell, who DP’d the ground shoot and

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also was one of four operators, says the Navy suggested a particular locale for the groundto-air work, but when scouted, the whole area was an icy nineteen degrees. “Fortunately, by the time we shot, the snow was gone,” he recalls. “It was perfect; there were west- and east-facing sides, so I could get up there and slot the four cameras in a variety of positions facing east for the morning shoot. We’d get on the other side to shoot westward in the afternoons, so we always had this beautiful backlight, but a totally different look in landscape that we could use for other parts of the sequence, which let us make the most of the week we shot up there.”

Two cameras used 150mm-600mm zooms with lens doublers. “The other two

operators hadn’t done this kind of shooting,” Nowell continues, “so I kept them on 800mm lenses, and their angle was sufficiently off the flight path to look like they were shooting something different from what I got as the planes came right at me and passed overhead.

We had dropped the frame to around 22 frames-per-second during air-to-air, but went even lower for the ground stuff, which increased the sense of speed without making the movement herky-jerky.”

When the F-18s pass over a bombing range, they perform pitch-up maneuvers, then roll over and dive towards their target.

“We couldn’t get the necessary angles with ground cameras on that terrain,” Nowell acknowledges, “so our helicopter served

that same purpose, as a relatively stationary platform. There is often a certain amount that can’t be accomplished with fixed-wing craft, so we had a copter during the Cascades shoot, in addition to the jet work.”

Camera operator John T. Connor had just graduated high school when his father John J. Connor brought him onto the set of Top Gun. “My dad shot a lot of landings, but in one instance there’s a shot where the camera reframes,” Connor remembers. “Typically, you’d wind up in the most comfortable position at the shot’s endpoint, but he didn’t expect to have to move so far and hit the camera while repositioning. Tony loved how

real it felt, and it stayed in the final.”

Connor had been slated to shoot inserts, 2nd unit, and splinter on Maverick, but he wound up taking over A-Camera a few weeks in. “Fortunately, they did leave me on an aircraft carrier for a couple of days to pick up stuff not done with the principal actors,” he recalls. “Tom Cruise came up to me as he was about to launch from the ship and said, ‘Hey, get some cool shit,’ so I had plenty of freedom to hunt up interesting shots that told the story. I tried to frame for interesting foreground elements as the ships took off, using all my skills developed from working with my dad and also Tony on several films and commercials. Back in the day, there was the story that Tony wanted backlight for the

aircraft carrier scenes. He was told it would cost so many thousand dollars, and since the production wouldn’t pay, he just wrote the Navy a check.”

Miranda has one cherished moment from the shoot that frames that Tony Scott anecdote as part of the evolution of Naval cooperation from 1986 to today. “I was shooting with a small crew on the aircraft carrier Lincoln,” he relates. “I had been told upfront that we could never turn the ship, so that must have been weighing on me as I walked up a corridor one day. Someone I didn’t recognize approached me and asked how things were going, and I mentioned that we were missing some lighting opportunities since the ship’s maneuvering wasn’t always

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ideal for my purposes. He said, ‘Son, we’ve got twenty-three years of fuel aboard this thing.

We can turn the ship any effin’ way you want!’

“I didn’t believe him at first,” Miranda laughs. “But I said it’d be great if the sun was at a certain position by 4 p.m. I went up on deck at that time the next day, and the whole ship was turning, and as crazy as it sounds, this huge thing was repositioning itself so I’d have this perfect light. It was only after that when somebody told me that I had been talking with the ship’s CAG! [Commander Air Group]. From then on, they had a guy assigned to me and I had free license to turn

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the boat any way I wanted. When we went aboard the Roosevelt, they pretty much let me do everything the way we had on the Lincoln.

It was a full reversal from the original film and from Tony Scott having to pay the Navy to turn the ship.”

For live-action scenes shot on land, Miranda relied on a huge array of lenses, including FujiFilm Fujinon primes and Premiere zooms, plus Sigma FF high-speed Primes – the latter incorporating Cooke /I Technology for data capture facilitating post work. “We had some intimate scenes with Tom and Jennifer Connelly,” he notes, “so I

wanted super-shallow depth of field and used [ARRI Zeiss] Master Primes, but in full frame on longer lenses. That made the edges a bit funky and added a romantic feel.”

As for any homages, Miranda says they included “a little bit of smoke” in some scenes, but nothing near the level of atmosphere used in the original. “I did make a point of using the sunset grad [filter] to get some orange skies looking reminiscent of what Tony and Jeff did,” he adds. “And using ISO on airfields in the evening let me make background cityscapes look brighter. Occasionally we’d run out of time at the end of the day, so the dual ISO function

could buy me another fifteen minutes of shooting time as the sun went down.”

Ming says focus-pulling on the ground scenes was mostly a straightforward affair.

“Though there was a window-lined ready room that used front projection, we were at the high base ASA shooting wide open there,” he notes.

“With T1.4 lenses and larger sensors, it can get pretty shallow, but Preston’s Light Ranger helps us see what is happening.”

Another frequent Tony Scott collaborator, Company 3 Co-Founder/President Stefan Sonnenfeld, handled the digital intermediate, assisted by Adam Nazarenko. Miranda admits

that since some scenes were shot across days where the weather had bright sun and overcast skies, DI massaging was required. “For me, lighting should always trump continuity,” Miranda states. “Conrad Hall would be backlighting all the time, even at night, and if he followed true continuity, somebody would have looked flood-lit on the reverses. Looking better is better.”

For Kosinski, the film’s eventual release (in various formats) is a source of anticipation and excitement. “IMAX’s aspect ratio is close to what you get with the VENICE in fullframe, so that will make for a good match

on that release,” the filmmaker concludes.

“But we are also going out in ScreenX, a new format for which there are 300 to 400 theaters worldwide. It features a center screen in 2.39 but includes side screens that create a more panoramic point of view. We had all those cockpit cameras running simultaneously, which made it possible to create a version for ScreenX that fills out nearly a 180-degree view. We wound up with almost an hour of expanded verticals and nearly as much time for the more panoramic three-screen format, which lets us offer vastly different formats for audiences to choose from.”

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LOCAL 600 CREW Director of Photography Claudio Miranda, ASC

John Skotchdopole Chris Haarhoff, SOC

A-Camera Operator John Connor

Additional 1st ACs Taylor Matheson Jack Ellingwood Markus Mentzer Mark Spath

A-Camera 1st AC Dan Ming A-Camera 2nd AC Max DeLeo B-Camera Operator Tucker Korte

Additional 2nd ACs Alexandra Matheson Jeff Rios John Takenaka

B-Camera 1st AC Robert Smathers

Additional Utility Cosmo Wolski

B-Camera 2nd AC Natasha Mullan

RF Tech Benton Ward

C-Camera 1st AC Mateo Bourdieu

Pursuit Arm Robert Rubin Mauricio Rodriguez

C-Camera 2nd ACs Roger Spain Nathan Stern DITs Rohan Chitrakar Calvin Reibman Utility Britta Richardson Loaders Kalli Kouf Farisai Kambarami Crane Technicians Adrian Santacruz Sean Dommett James Razo

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Additional Camera Operators BJ McDonnell, SOC JUNE/JULY 2022

Still Photographer Scott Garfield Publicist Michael Singer

GROUND TO AIR UNIT Director of Photography David Nowell, ASC Camera Operators Kent Harvey, SOC Dave Emmerichs, SOC Mike Jones 1st ACs Mateo Bourdieu Chris Toll Jimmy Ward Craig Grossmueller 2nd ACs Roger Spain Terry Wolcott Sean Kisch Miki Janicin DIT Nina Chadha Loader Jeremy Hill Utilities Zach Madden Terrell Amezcua

AERIAL UNIT Directors of Photography David B. Nowell, ASC Michael FitzMaurice Shotover Technicians Stephen “Bungee” Scherba Jared Slater Peter Graf Eric Dvorsky

DRONE UNIT Drone Pilot Michael Ferguson Drone Tech Patrick Moynahan Visual Observer Chad Daring

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FEATURE HUSTLE

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GUILD DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY ZAK MULLIGAN GETS HIS PHILLY STREETBALL ON FOR THE ROCKY-ESQUE HOOPS DRAMA, HUSTLE.

HE BY DAVID GEFFNER PHOTOS BY SCOTT YAMANO FRAMEGRABS COURTESY OF NETFLIX

GOT NEXT

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T here’s an expression in professional sports known as the “eye test,” whereby a young athlete’s potential will often default to the skills of unheralded scouts, people who spend their working lives on and off of airplanes searching for that “special” player. Pro combines, showcases for top college players as well as unheralded international ballers, provide the measurable tangibles for owners, coaches, and other teammates to evaluate a young prospect – height, weight, hand size, arm reach and vertical leap.

But the intangibles – game IQ, court vision, leadership skills, toughness, and, most of all, heart – typically only manifest with the “eye test.” That means the difference between finding the next Lebron James (versus Mike James) can hinge on just whose eyes are watching.

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SECOND UNIT DP TIM SESSLER SAYS, "THE ENERGY LEVEL IN SPAIN WAS INSANE. SO MUCH SO THAT WHEN THEY RUSHED THE COURT, WE COULDN’T SEE THE TERO – THERE WERE TOO MANY PEOPLE!”

When we first meet Stanley Sugerman (Adam Sandler) in the new Netflix feature Hustle, the one-time college hooper (number 22, double deuce) is schlepping around the globe looking for the next big thing. “Stan the Man” has been a scout for the Philadelphia 76ers for 30 years, and he yearns to be an assistant coach at home in Philly, where he can be close to his wife, Teresa (Queen Latifah), and their teenage daughter, Alex (Jordan Hull). But when he returns from another junk-food-fueled trip with a top European prospect Stanley knows is not as good as advertised (NBA player Mo Wagner), he comes into conflict with the team owner’s son and heir apparent, Vince Merrick (Ben Foster), who insists on drafting the kid.

Not long after that boardroom showdown (shot handheld with quick whip pans and searching zooms), Rex Merrick (Robert Duvall) chastises Stanley for “backing down” to his son. He then shows him a tiny office

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in the bowels of the arena, where Stanley will finally get the chance to be an assistant coach. But quicker than an Anthony Edwards jab step (another NBA star featured in the film), the elder Merrick dies, leaving Vince in charge. The cocky young CEO (after admitting he was wrong about the prospect) says that to fulfill his father’s wish of making him a coach, Stanley must go back on the road to find someone who can take his franchise to the promised land.

Deplaning in Majorca, Spain, Stanley stumbles upon a streetball game that looks and feels like an MMA cage fight. It’s here, on a hot summer night, in a sketchy part of town, that the eye test (or what Hustle Director of Photography Zak Mulligan calls “Stanleyvision”) reaches a career zenith in the form of Bo Cruz (NBA player Juancho Hernangómez), who, wearing his day-job duds of cargo shorts and construction boots, “hustles” the best street baller on the court (seen moments

earlier dunking out of his Nikes).

As Stanley watches, the crowd hyped to a fever pitch for the mano y mano battle, the six-foot-nine-inch, 215-pound Cruz swats away all three shots of his opponent and then casually picks up his money and walks off into the night. Stanley follows him through graffiti-riddled alleyways to an impoverished apartment complex, where Cruz lives with (and supports) his mother, Paola (María Botto), and young daughter, Lucia (Ainhoa Pillet). He eventually convinces the young Spaniard he’s for real. But when the 76ers reject Cruz as “unproven and risky,” Stanley opts to bring the prospect back to Philly on his dime, where he’ll train and coach-up the “find of a lifetime.”

Mulligan, whose 15-year partnership with Hustle director Jeremiah Zagar last bore fruit with the Sundance 2018 award-winner We the Animals, says “the non-basketball elements in Hustle felt intuitive and similar to territory

we’ve explored. But the basketball was tricky to figure out.” Zagar (Exposure, page 32) adds that “Zak and I looked at every basketball movie ever made and realized that even the best ones still mirrored how the sport is shot on television, which is from the outside-in.”

Surprisingly, the pair ’s cinematic inspiration came from another sport entirely.

“We watched Raging Bull, Rocky, and Creed,” Zagar continues, “and were like: ‘Why are boxing movies shot so much better?’

On a base level, it’s because the camera is inside the ring. But more than that, in the case of Raging Bull, every fight has a stylistic signature, almost like a series of short films that reflect where Jake LaMotta is in his journey. We thought that because in Hustle every game is essentially a one-on-one, we could take a similar approach.”

“Basketball players move incredibly fast,” Mulligan elaborates, “so to catch their power and elegance without slowing them down,

we had to customize our own rigs. Key Grip Charlie Marroquin built something we called the 'Charlie Bar,' which was like a Snorricam, but with a weight belt attached to a speed rail that stuck out about six feet. Attached to the end was the Sony Rialto, the stripped-down version of the VENICE, on a Ronin [stabilizer], with a grip on each end at the back balancing the weight. The Charlie Bar let us get very wide and close without restricting the player’s movements. It’s a perspective you’d never see on TV or even in other basketball movies.”

“Stanley-vision moments,” aka the sideline POV of Sandler’s character, were captured on a vintage Cooke Varotal 25-250mm zoom lens with a doubler and set back from the court to “find specific details that someone who hasn’t scouted basketball for 30 years would never pick up,” Mulligan continues. “It’s through Stanley’s eyes, that night in Spain, that we first sense how special Bo is.”

Of the process, Zagar adds: “Zak and I

storyboarded every game, and we animated those storyboards, so they’re in the edit before the edit began. It’s a similar approach we took on We the Animals. But with Hustle, it was even more of an experiment – trying to mix a large Hollywood aesthetic with a raw, handheld documentary feel. That’s why the intro to Spain starts with this massive crane shot coming up over the court before we switch to Stanley-vision, which is loose and indie.”

Shot over two nights with all Spanish extras, A-Camera 1st AC Troy Dobbertin describes the Majorca location as “super-high energy. It was the first time we shot a game from start to finish,” Dobbertin recalls, “and it was a learning process to figure out the best approach without needing twenty takes and tiring everyone out. Spain was the start of another rig we used that was equal parts amazing and challenging – a RED KOMODO with a fixed Voigtlander 21mm lens on top of a

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“ THE NON-BASKETBALL ELEMENTS IN HUSTLE FELT INTUITIVE AND SIMILAR TO TERRITORY WE’VE EXPLORED. BUT THE BASKETBALL WAS TRICKY TO FIGURE OUT.” DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY ZAK MULLIGAN

tiny Ronin-S gimbal. This setup let [A-Camera Operator] Stew [Cantrell] weave through the action, which made for an interesting challenge as he was right up in the middle of the game. [Laughs.] Remember these are pro basketball players who can run you over if you get in the way.”

Second Unit Director of Photography Tim Sessler, who also shot C-camera, employed a similarly creative approach for Cruz’s first on-court appearance. “We used the Freefly TERO, which is a fairly large RC [radiocontrolled] car with a MōVI Pro stabilizer,” Sessler remembers. “It had a RED MONSTRO, with a 19mm Leica R lens, which gave us this unique perspective, about 16-inches off the ground. One person drives the TERO and the other controls the MōVI in MIMIC mode, which allows for a very reactive operating to follow the movement. The energy level [of the extras] in Spain was insane. So much so that when they rushed the court, we couldn’t see the TERO – there were too many people!”

Cantrell, who couldn’t join the Hustle team in Spain (French-German A-Camera/ Steadicam Operator Eric Bialas ably filled in), says shooting handheld anamorphic (Hawk Class-X lenses) on the VENICE, coupled with a plethora of diopters Mulligan favored to “funk up the look,” made the show a challenging one for operators and AC’s alike.

“It took a minute for me to acclimate, as I had never shot basketball and was surprised by how incredibly fast these guys can move,” Cantrell reveals. “Also, with a minimum of three cameras for every basketball sequence, along with the long-lens work and Tim’s specialty rigs, there was no way to keep it all

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clean and separate. You knew you could end up in someone’s shot and they in yours. So, it was more about trusting Zak and Jeremiah to know where the best moments will land and find them in the edit. It was fun but challenging.”

Of the camera crowd control factor, Sessler adds: “There can’t be any ego with that many talented operators – who all have different types of skills – on the floor at the same time.

You take a step back and let whoever has the best frame run with the moment.”

Dobbertin notes that “along with the Hawk anamorphics, we also used the Leica Leitz primes [full-frame spherical lenses] with the VENICE wide open, and that’s a completely different kind of focus-pulling experience. While the Hawks provide a bit of a grace area, the Leitz are supercritical. When you’re sharp the frame looks gorgeous, and when you’re out the image can fall apart.”

“Falling apart” aptly describes Cruz’s first big U.S. tryout, where Stanley has him pitted against the likely number-two pick in the NBA Draft, Kermit Wilts (Anthony Edwards).

The sequence begins with a 360-degree pan around the two players as the ball is tipped off, before eventually utilizing the Charlie Bar back-and-forth POV’s that define the new rivalry. Mulligan notes that with “three to nine cameras” employed for most every U.S. basketball sequence, he and Chief Lighting Technician Bill Almeida were limited to what each location provided.

“With all those cameras, we’re basically seeing 360 degrees,” Mulligan shares, “so you

have to lean into the existing top lighting rather than try to get too stylized. The first tryout, where Bo and Kermit meet, had these big overhead fluorescents with some diffusion that was cutting a lot of the light, so we removed that and utilized the overheads.

Once in a while, we’d have a unit on the floor as needed for fill or backlight. That location also had dark blue velvet drapes, which let the background recede and separate from the action on the court.”

Zagar says the Spanish experiment was a “proof of concept” and later utilized in all the U.S. games. “Most people will break basketball down into pieces,” Zagar explains.

“But we said, ‘We need to shoot this like a live event.’ And then we’re going to look at the [temp edit] and see what pieces explode for the viewer. That’s how I always approached editing documentaries, and it helped us on Hustle, as we could look at the edit and say, ‘Okay, that’s where the dunk goes, or that’s where the ECU of Stanley’s eyes goes.’ If it wasn’t for COVID, the editors would have been on set instead of in L.A.” Also on set was a team of hoop experts led

by Basketball Coordinator Mike Fisher (Space Jam: A New Legacy, Thunderstruck, Glory Road) and college coach Bobby Verdun, who would also look at the edit and weigh in. “Mike, Coach Bobby, Joe Vescey, Dell Demps, and Adam Sandler as well, who’s a great basketball mind, all helped with the bullshit detector,” Zagar adds. “But it was always within the ethos of what Zak and I created for each game from a narrative standpoint. That first game with Kermit was all about how do we get into Bo and Stanley’s heads as we see them break

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down? One of the things Zak proposed was to skinny the shutter, à la Saving Private Ryan, which helped with Bo’s collapse.”

Cantrell says typical gameplay coverage would “start wide outside the court with a pass behind spectators or players on the sidelines. Steve [Andrich] and Kyle [Rudolph] were on the zooms, and me and Arthur [Africano] would be handheld. We’d move closer with a camera at either end and maybe one or two in the middle before we’d finish on the court with me on the Komodo/Ronin-S rig trying not to get run over. [Laughs.] Using a small handheld stabilizer a few feet from the players’ faces while the game is going was a different perspective. But it's totally in keeping with Zak and Jeremiah’s approach to filmmaking.”

Dobbertin adds that “what was interesting about the KOMODO is that Zak kept pushing [during prep] to make the rig lighter, and by the end, we had it down to a Tilta Nucleus-M, which we nicknamed ‘The Meatball’ because it’s literally just a knob. The motor/MDR plugs into the Ronin, and Stew had a fanny pack with the Teradek and one battery to power his monitor, so we’re fully wireless. Luckily it was a wide, fixed lens [for the Komodo], which was good for focus – until it wasn’t! [Laughs.]

When it all worked, it felt like an insanely controlled Steadicam move, even though it was Stew sweating through his [COVID-safe] face shield and goggles, and me hoping we could hold focus!

“Huge props go to my second AC – Eve Strickman – and B-Camera first and second Tsyen Shen and Alec Freund,” Dobbertin continues, “as we were mostly working behind a curtain during the games. We had the Preston for all the VENICE cameras. But, honestly, when you’re using a diopter 80 percent of the time, as Zak likes to do, it almost doesn’t matter. You try to know your infinity with the diopter and make an educated guess.

Mostly it came down to reading the lenses and just getting used to them. Since it was a long shoot, there was a time to gain that comfort level.”

Although supremely gifted as a basketball player, Cruz doesn’t have the mental comfort level to hang with Kermit’s trash talk – hence at the end of the first tryout, his game falls to pieces. Smug in the knowledge that they made the right call, the 76ers order Stanley back on the road, but for once he’s not having it. He quits and embarks on a two-week crashtraining plan to prepare Cruz for the NBA Combine, where league GMs and coaches will be gathered.

Cruz’s training regimen is centered around a long hill (in Philadelphia’s Manayunk neighborhood), up which Stanley challenges him (every morning at 4:00 a.m.) to run faster than it would take an average cyclist (one minute and forty-five seconds) to reach the top. These scenes provide some MULLIGAN SAYS THAT WHENEVER "WE FOCUSED ON BO’S ANXIETY AND TEMPER GETTING THE BEST OF HIM, IT’S WITH THE LEITZ LARGE-FORMAT PRIMES...

WHICH IMBUED THE FRAME WITH THIS HEIGHTENED FEELING, LIKE BO’S ADRENALINE IS RUSHING OUT.”

stunning night photography, including a shot

by Sessler and his second-unit team (1st AC Michael Toland, 2nd AC Jim McCann, DIT Ilya Akiyoshi and Loader Ryan Baldwin) on the Canon 50-1000 lens.

“It’s where the VENICE shines,” Sessler recounts. “We’re losing daylight, shooting T13 at ISO 8000, and the shot still makes it into the film! It’s all existing streetlights that were coming up with a natural wet-down from the rain. The training sequence was a Rockyinspired montage, where we’d do fun stuff like having the VENICE under a plexiglass platform as Bo dribbles across. Or shooting Juancho’s double with the rickshaw and Libra head on a rooftop. The double looked so much like him that Juancho’s mom thought he was her son on the Majorca location.”

Cantrell praises Marroquin’s many inventive rigs, as well as Dolly Grip Andy Sweeney, “who helped us figure out ways to accomplish shots that added so much to that sequence,” he asserts. That included Cruz trying to fire passes through a massive tractor tire as he dribbles down the court.

“We did a shot where the Libra head was on a dolly, and the periscope [Probe Lens] was nosed in through the tire,” Cantrell adds. “Bo fires a pass through the tire [after many failed attempts], and we pull back as it comes right at the lens. Charlie and his team also came up with a zipline rig for Bo’s hill/stair climbs, where the camera whips down past as Bo runs up. Zak and Jeremiah detailed the feeling they wanted to convey [for the training scenes] and then gave us the freedom to contribute ideas. I think we used nearly all the rigs the grip department came up with, and all those shots ended up in the movie!”

Hustle’s penultimate game is the NBA Combine, where Cruz’s character shortcomings are fully revealed. Having his mother and daughter watching in the stands (courtesy of Teresa), allows Cruz to, initially, perform up to his highest potential and impress the watchful eyes of NBA stakeholders. But when Wilts sees Cruz blow a kiss to his young daughter, he seizes on her presence to get inside his head, resulting in a career-killing moment for the Spaniard.

“Whenever we focused on Bo’s anxiety and temper getting the best of him,” Mulligan describes, “it’s with the Leitz large-format primes, which are technically much cleaner than the Hawks. The Leitzs imbued the frame with this heightened feeling, like Bo’s adrenaline is rushing out.”

Mulligan says the Combine scenes are also where they started mixing formats.

“The real NBA Combine has different types of cameras everywhere,” he continues, “so we’d have the crane be a practical camera in our shot. Or we’d dress up operators like press people and give them a two-thirds-

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“IT’S ALWAYS INTERESTING WORKING WITH NON-ACTORS, AS WHAT YOU MAY SACRIFICE IN CAMERA AWARENESS IS USUALLY MADE UP WITH SOMETHING UNEXPECTED." A-CAMERA 1ST AC TROY DOBBERTIN

inch-chip news camera to hold [and use].

We also had Steve Andrich, an operator who’s spent the bulk of his career shooting for NFL Films, come in. Mixing Steve, who has a sports background, with our narrative group – Stew, Arthur [Africano], Kyle Rudolph and Tim – was a way for me and Jeremiah to curate the different shots we needed to tell the Combine story.”

Dobbertin credits the film’s acting coach, Noelle Gentile, with helping the non-professional actors reach challenging emotional highs and lows, which crescendo in the movie’s final third. He points to the tip-off of the Combine 5-on-5, with Juancho and Edwards at center court, in close-up, with just a section of Juancho’s face in focus left of frame. “Stew and I went to Zak and Jeremiah and said: ‘Anthony’s incredible in this shot, but he’s out of focus. What if we add a split diopter to a lens that already has a diopter on it? And they said: ‘Go for it.’ It was a lot of glass, but it created this amazing moment as Anthony rocks in the frame, hitting and then missing focus.

“It’s always interesting working with nonactors,” Dobbertin continues, “as what you may sacrifice in camera awareness is usually made up with something unexpected. Often they’d call cut and Stew and I would walk up to each other and both say, ‘Did you have any idea he was going to do that?’ [Laughs.] What that meant is that it was on us, the camera department as a whole, to anticipate, or react fast enough to catch that magic moment.”

The ultimate magic moment comes a few days later, when Cruz, after having tackled Wilts to the floor in anger at the Combine, gets one more eleventh-hour chance to prove his worth. Stanley’s former college teammate, Leon Rich (NBA Hall of Famer Kenny “The Jet” Smith), now a big-time NBA agent, arranges a “hush-hush” game at Cardinal Hayes High School in the Bronx with just NBA decisionmakers – no media or press. Nearly pulling Cruz off his return flight home to Spain, Stanley races over with minutes to spare, where the prospect has one final battle with his nemesis.

“That last game is about the establishment welcoming Bo into the fold,” Mulligan shares.

“And the many NBA players seen in that scene ultimately defer to Bo and Kermit duking it out one last time. That meant the coverage had to reflect a level of confidence, mental and physical, we hadn’t seen in Bo since the opening streetball scene in Spain. It had to be smooth and polished, a full-circle moment.”

Cantrell says it was the only basketball game with no handheld, instead featuring Steadicam, Rickshaw rigs with remote heads, long lens, and even a mounted Phantom rig (shot at high speed but reduced to 24 fps in the final edit) on the backboard for Cruz’s emphatic dunk that ends the scene and marks the full realization of his potential in front of the people who matter.

“Andy [Sweeney] was amazing – pushing the Libra head [on the rickshaw] so fast and smoothly to capture the skill of these NBA players,” Cantrell concludes. “It also helped that the basketball team ran through the different game-play with us and the actors, so we had an idea of the best way to move the camera to capture that last game.”

Sessler adds, “For Bo’s final dunk, we cut the backboard off and mounted the Komodo to the back of the rim.” Dobbertin credits Fisher’s basketball acumen with helping the Local 600 team garner the best possible coverage. “So much of this movie features camera angles and rigs we’ve never seen with basketball before,” he concludes. “But that last game, shot mainly wide and smooth, highlights the basketball and these players’ incredible skills.”

Mulligan says he doesn’t see Hustle as a huge departure from his and Zagar’s awardwinning indie work on We the Animals. “We’re still using verité storytelling techniques,” he observes, “and a close-in, handheld camera that removes any [emotional] distance between the viewer and the character’s journey. We did the same live-edit approach on Hustle as we did on We the Animals, which was incredible, on a small indie film, to be able to slip in new ideas after the scene is shot. We even had the same boys from We the

Animals doing FPV [first-person view] drone work in the Boa Challenge scene, where Bo’s streetball footage goes viral. The camera department took around 15 iPhones to all the NBA stars to get a Tik-Tok feeling for that sequence. [Laughs] It takes a lot of planning and structure – camera tests, shot-listing, lighting schemes with the gaffer, tests with the DI colorist for LUT’s and finishing – to get that loose, improv-like feeling we achieved in both films. No doubt.”

Zagar says that what’s exciting as a director “is when something is not working and we figure out a solution, hopefully, to make it even better than what’s scripted. The scene at the NBA Combine, when Bo loses it with Kermit, was scripted and storyboarded as Bo pulling up his fist to hit Kermit and Stanley calling out to stop,” Zagar recounts.

“There were 500 people watching us do this scene over and over. And Juancho had to leave in two hours because he’d just been traded to the Boston Celtics. And it was not working.

Everything kind of went quiet for a moment and I walked down to Juancho and said, ‘You want to hit him, right?’ And he says, ‘Yes, I want to hit him!’ ‘But Juancho you know you can’t hit him, right? But you have to hit him.’

And everyone’s looking at me like ‘this guy is crazy!’ So, I asked Anthony Edwards to get on the ground and I did the move where he goes to hit him and hits the ground nearby instead. And they both go, ‘Yeah, that’s it!’

“Zak and I go up in the stands,” Zagar continues, “and looking down on the scene, we both realize it works because you’re not sure if Juancho misses or not from that vantage point. Zak’s like, ‘That’s the scene right there! Let’s do it.’ We had to reconfigure for the new choreography, but because Zak and I have this shared language and history, no time was lost. We got the shot, Juancho made his plane, and it became my favorite moment in the movie because it felt so real.

I don’t do much as a director other than have the good sense to hire people like Zak who are better than me. But in this example, I felt good because we brought the best possible resolution to the table.”

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MULLIGAN (ABOVE) SAYS HE DOESN’T SEE HUSTLE AS A HUGE DEPARTURE FROM HIS PAST WORK WITH ZAGAR. “WE’RE STILL USING VERITÉ STORYTELLING TECHNIQUES, AND A CLOSE-IN, HANDHELD CAMERA THAT REMOVES ANY [EMOTIONAL] DISTANCE BETWEEN THE VIEWER AND JUNE/JULY 2022 74 THE CHARACTER’S JOURNEY.

LOCAL 600 CREW MAIN UNIT (PHILADELPHIA 2020, 2021)

D-Camera Operator Kyle Rudolph (2021)

Director of Photography Zak Mulligan

D-Camera 1st AC Michael Leonard (2021)

A-Camera Operator/Steadicam Stew Cantrell, SOC A-Camera 1st ACs Troy Dobbertin (2021) Robert Lau (2020) A-Camera 2nd ACs Eve Strickman (2021) Autumn Moran (2020) B-Camera Operators Arthur Africano (2021) Quenell Jones, SOC (2020) B-Camera 1st ACs Tsyen Shen (2021) Troy Dobbertin (2020) B-Camera 2nd ACs Alec Freund (2021) Kimberly Herman (2020) C-Camera Operator Tim Sessler (2021) C-Camera 1st AC Michael Toland (2021) C-Camera 2nd AC Jim McCann (2021)

D-Camera 2nd AC Leon Sanginiti (2021) Basketball Camera Operator Stephen Andrich (2021) DIT Thomas Wong Loader Maddie King (2021) Dan Foley (2020) Additional Loader Ryan Baldwin (2021) Still Photographer Scott Yamano BTS Videographer Jeff Bergman (2021)

SPAIN UNIT (2021)

2nd Unit Director of Photography / C-Camera Operator Tim Sessler C-Camera 1st AC Rafa Miralles C-Camera 2nd AC Melanie Rodriguez Still Photographer Scott Yamano 2ND UNIT (PHILADELPHIA 2021) Director of Photography Tim Sessler 1st AC Michael Toland 2nd AC Jim McCann DIT Ilya Akiyoshi Loader Ryan Baldwin

Director of Photography Zak Mulligan A-Camera 1st AC Troy Dobbertin

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ULTRA VIOLET & BLACK SCORPION

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BEHIND THE MASK GENERATION NEXT TEAMS UP WITH A FOR DISNEY’S NEW ULTRA VIOLET

STANDOUT RAFAEL LEYVA LARGE LATINX CREWBASE KID-SUPERHERO SERIES, & BLACK SCORPION.

BY MARGOT CARMICHAEL LESTER IMAGES COURTESY OF THE DISNEY CHANNEL/DISNEY+

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a m for sure not the target audience for Disney’s new action-comedy series, Ultra Violet & Black Scorpion. But even this later-middle-age white lady, with grown nieces and nephews and no grandkids, fell hard for the show. Centered around a Mexican American family that includes an over-achieving brother, loving parents, a kooky sidekick gal-pal and two superheroes, the series takes viewers on a wild ride via two masked crusaders – teenaged Violet Rodriguez (Scarlett Estevez) and her uncle, Cruz de la Vega (J.R. Villarreal) – traversing the worlds of adolescent angst, family dynamics and crime-fighting.

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COURTESY OF RAFAEL LEYVA

From the series’ opening moments, Local 600 Director of Photography Rafael Leyva (left) established a look that bridges the gap between the mundanities of life as a high-school kid and the action-packed aspects of life as someone with superpowers. “I wanted it to feel like two dimensions clashing,” the Puerto Rican-born DP, who was profiled in [ICG Magazine’s Generation NEXT 2019] issue explains. “Our goal was always to find a comic-book style of shooting and lighting to enhance that and separate the teenage world with the villain-fighting world. On one side, colorful, fun, and transparent; on the other side, shadowy and contrasty.”

Leyva says he was able to “paint with all sorts of colors” to create a surreal world full of saturated contrast and strong shadows. “I love when lighting changes the mood of every scene,” he adds. “So, each different genre had a different lighting approach. There were dramatic moments between a mother and a child, so it became close and wide and personal, lit by a bedside practical.

Then there was the superhero transformation where an explosion of color and transitional contrast invade the frame.”

The DP worked with Keslow Camera on the gear package, an ALEXA Mini LF with Angénieux Optimo Primes. “For a large, transformative world, I wanted a larger image capture,” he continues. The rig’s depth of field was important, as was its capacity for overall 3D sculpting image capture. “And the ALEXA’s color science, to me, is superior and closest to celluloid capture. I needed that color space to create the color contrast I wanted.”

Key Grip Raul Indio (another Puertoriqeño) says Leyva’s storytelling and creative lighting were key to the show’s look. “His mastery of diffusing light with hard bounces, muslins, ultra-bounce, and his application of a more saturated color palette – including cyans, egg yolk and sodium vapor – were the secret ingredients,” Indio describes. “I liked working with him because he’s not afraid of going beyond the standard and trying something new in each scene.”

Visual Effects Supervisor Kolby Kember describes the look as “definitely more playful and fun, packed with a richer, more cinematic shooting and lighting style.” And the camera language enabled composition for specific edit cuts, enhancing the story as much as possible with one camera.

“For quick cuts, the hardest thing is making sure that continuity matches the effect they want to create in the edit,” Leyva explains. “I sometimes shot 90 degrees and did quick pans when the camera was on the dolly. We did a lot of tracking shots where the quick pan or extra frames enhanced the edit and feeling that my directors wanted.”

Levya encouraged the crew to experiment and innovate. And A-Camera/Steadicam Operator Stefano Ben did just that in Episode 9, coming up with a simple and elegant approach to a sequence originally thought to require camera moves and VFX. “Moviemaking is a very creative process, and VFX opened new horizons for our possibilities,” Ben shares. “But when it’s possible, I always try to find the real meaning of the words ‘movie magic’ rather than say ‘fix it in post.’ After watching the rehearsal, I realized how we could shoot the scene without any use of special effects or green screen.”

They placed the lens at a high angle to create a perspective that looked like two slightly different

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countertops were a single surface. This enabled them to hide a narrow space between the two so that a superhero could physically “run through” them.

“The shot worked great and represents the meaning of the word ‘collaboration,’” Ben exclaims. “It would have never been possible without the lighting and approach of Rafael, and collaboration with the Art Department.

Their passion and experience were crucial to the process.”

The cinematic bar Ultra Violet & Black Scorpion set is high from the pilot episode, in which Violet discovers a luchador mask with special powers.

Shot on location in an alley off of New Orleans’ busy Magazine Street, the first sequence depicts a guy trying to steal a car in the middle of the night. The directors wanted a long one-take establishing shot to set the tone for the world we’re about to enter. “My priority was that we see the entire scope of the city and maintain a gritty comic-book look,” Leyva recalls. The sequence begins with an aerial

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shot capturing the city’s breadth and beauty, then smoothly booms down as the camera rotates and lands with a push that puts us under the car up close and personal with the asphalt.

“I’m a huge fan of camera push-ins and how they change the psychology and feeling of the scene, especially when the camera is on the shadow side,” Leyva adds. The technique shows up again in Episode 3 when Violet enters a stairway looking for her kidnapped uncle. “I ended up rotating the lens 360 degrees to give the frame a disorienting feeling.”

Back to that alley sequence: The action continues with a mix of stunts and wiring and VFX, starting deep in the alley. The crew crawled its way along to capture the action.

“This was the most difficult location,” Indio remembers. The sequence required several lighting Condors, rooftop lighting rigs, stunt cranes, camera cranes, drones, dollies, Steadicam, a chest-mounted POV mini-rig and a 20-by-20-foot green screen in the wind.

“For us grips, safety is always the number one priority,” Marin adds. “You’ve got all the camera operators and crew members in the

middle of the action, plus French Quarter tourists trying to get through to their hotels, and [trying to keep] the road accessible for emergency vehicles at all times.”

Of course, no modern superhero story can be told without skillful deployment of VFX and intricate stunts and fight choreography. And as Kember describes, “being a superhero show for a younger audience and getting to play with some of the creative looks of the powers was a blast. Raf was open to creative collaboration and was always willing to get what we needed to properly achieve the effect in post. This was our first time working together, and I hope to do it again.”

Ultra Violet’s superpower is the ability to move at hyper speed, creating an opportunity for the VFX team to design cool swoosh effects and energy fields. “We came up with some solutions to get a character that travels as a beam of light to look good on camera using different forms of practical interactive lighting that helped sell the effect,” recalls Kember.

After Leyva finished shooting standard studio mode, he handed the set to Kolby to make a pass with an Astera bulb to implement

OPPOSITE PAGE/ABOVE: LEVYA SAYS HE WANTED THE LOOK TO FEEL LIKE TWO DIMENSIONS CLASHING. "OUR GOAL WAS ALWAYS TO FIND A COMIC-BOOK STYLE OF SHOOTING AND LIGHTING TO ENHANCE AND SEPARATE THE TEENAGE WORLD WITH THE VILLAIN-FIGHTING WORLD. ON ONE SIDE, COLORFUL, FUN, AND TRANSPARENT; ON THE OTHER SIDE, SHADOWY AND CONTRASTY."

light-speed registration and hard-cut light to create an even deeper contrast.

“We would walk the light tube through the scene to cast light onto everywhere Ultra Violet would be traveling,” Kember continues, “and used light flashes off screen for some of her bigger effects moments – like when she’s in a closed space and needs to react with the entire environment at once.”

The epic Lucha Libre championship match in Episode 3 also required creative problemsolving and collaboration. The crew had just one day to shoot six wrestling matches and pick-up shots of audience reactions. The action takes place in a boxing gym, a set faithfully recreated in the local convention center by Production Designer Nate Jones.

“Nate also delivered a gym, school, house, rooftops and alleys in a smart, portable way so we could change the aesthetic of any location in minutes,” Leyva recounts. “That, combined with green screen and wireless RGB LED’s, made location switching very friendly. This way we could open up the world and textures

of the Latino community – and the world our characters fight crime in.”

Not only did they have to build the set, they also had to solve a rigging problem.

“On scout, we realized there was no way to rig from the ceiling,” Indio describes. “We needed to find a way to build a 12-by-12 lightbox to rig the wrestling announcer’s drop-down microphone gag. After brainstorming various approaches, we ended up building a full truss structure, 24 feet tall, inside the convention center. We dressed the structure and added ‘truss warmers’ – lights mounted inside to glow the shiny aluminum – and concert moving lights to integrate it into the scene. The final product was a combination of hard work and logistical ideas from everybody on the crew.

The rig changed the way the location looked, from a simple stage and wrestling ring to more of a rock-’n’-roll aesthetic and ultimately a cool choice for that location.”

T h e m atc h e s t h e m s e lve s we re choreographed by Stunt/Fight Coordinator James Lew, who also served as second-unit director. “As with all the action written in the script, my team and I choreographed,

rehearsed and shot a previs of all the fights in the ring,” Lew says. “This was edited and presented to the director, producers and all the departments. With the fantastic second-unit camera department, we moved extremely fast and efficiently, and got all the action.”

Lew, who has worked with action legends Jackie Chan, Jet Li, The Rock, Steven Seagal, Jean Claude Van Damme, and Brandon Lee, jumped at the chance to work on a superhero story about a teenager and her uncle. “We were lucky to have Scarlett Estevez starring as Ultra Violet,” he continues. “Every time I watch her on set I am impressed at her maturity and the extreme professional talent she brings to her work. Scarlett is athletic and quickly learned the action we designed for her. Of course, it’s important that we keep her safe from any action where she may get injured.

We hired two of the top stuntwomen to be her double.” Lee Chesley took the assignment early in production but had a schedule conflict and passed the job to Marissa Labog. Another change may be required for Season 2. “By the time we finished Season One, Scarlett had grown taller very fast!”

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"THE SIGNIFICANCE OF HAVING A LATINX DP, CAST AND CREW IS BECAUSE ‘ NOSOTROS TRAEMOS LA CULTURA LATINA EN NUESTRA PIEL ’ – WE BRING THE LATIN CULTURE WITH US ON OUR SKIN,” KEY GRIP RAUL INDIO

“James is a legend,” insists Leyva, who was working with Lew for the first time. “We’d mold the previs of all the fights and mold them in favor of light and camera and the coolest shot for the audience. It’s like we were joined at the hip.”

Lew says he was impressed by Leyva’s ability to make scenes look like a big-budget feature movie within an episodic schedule and budget. “From the first day I watched Rafael do his magic on set, I was just blown away by how talented, fast and passionate he was with his work,” Lew explains. “The best thing about working with Rafael is getting swept up in his passion. It elevates the crew and actors to bring their best for the production. And even better is Rafael’s quality as a man of dignity and professionalism. It seems rare nowadays

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to work with somebody who puts all his heart and soul into his work. He is a man that you can trust to have your back.”

Disney has produced four other shows featuring families of Latin heritage and has cast two of the show’s stars before – Estevez in Bunk’d and Brandon Rossel (who plays her brother, Santiago) in Fast Layne. But Ultra Violet & Black Scorpion is the first series lensed by a DP and production team members from the community. “The significance of having a Latinx DP, cast and crew is because ‘nosotros traemos la cultura latina en nuestra piel’ – we bring the Latin culture with us on our skin,” Indio explains. “I remember going to see the Lucha Libre with my grandma, Abuela Lolín, when I was a kid, and we both loved it.” These lived experiences deliver an authenticity that

crews from different backgrounds might not be able to muster. “It’s a natural combination of colors and life in every frame – a visual expression that shares our contributions and way of life with everyone,” Marin concludes.

For Ley va, helming this camera department increases representation behind the camera, to be sure, but it also better serves the production and its audience.

“Representation is important to the industry – and I’m incredibly proud to be a native of Puerto Rico and to help lead the way,” Leyva asserts. “There’s a lot of passion, color, and history in our backgrounds and within our surroundings. We could see ourselves in Ultra Violet’s world. And we made sure all that was expressed in every episode so the audience can, too.”

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LOCAL 600 CREW Director of Photography Rafael Leyva A-Camera Operator / Steadicam Stefano Ben, SOC Vincent Bearden, SOC A-Camera 1st AC Dan McKee A-Camera 2nd AC Taylor Perry B-Camera Operator Rob Stenger, SOC B-Camera 1st AC Michael Charbonnet B-Camera 2nd AC Jonathan Robinson DIT Paul Rahfield Loader Ben Maner Still Photographer Brian Roedel 86

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Photo by Brian Roedel/Disney+

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“The better lens is a lens that shows the character that cinematographers research and desire,” describes Christophe Casenave, ZEISS product manager for cinema lenses, who lives near Oberkochen, Germany, where, Casenave adds, “the ZEISS tower is the center of the village. Everyone knows each other, and kids in school will not ask, ‘What do your parents do?’ but ‘In what department at ZEISS do they work?’” It is where Casenave began his ZEISS career, taking care of photography lenses. During his time with ZEISS, he has defined and driven R&D to develop the Loxia, Milvus and Otus lenses. Although Zeiss is a manufacturer with serial production, which does make individual lenses on demand, “Recently,” Casenave says, “we decided to do a special edition of the Supreme Primes – the Supreme Prime Radiance – which addresses the need for cinematographers to bring more character to their images.”

What was the trajectory for ZEISS’s development of Prime lenses? ZEISS has always been a driver for innovation for prime lens development with the Super Speeds, which were the fastest lenses of their time. Then we did the most complete set of consistent T-stop lenses with the Ultra Primes. It did even contain a rectilinear super-wide-angle lens, the 8R. Then ZEISS developed the first-ever family of lenses without breathing and with consistently high speed, the Master Primes. ZEISS was also the first brand to propose full-frame cinema prime lenses; and, with SP and SPR, the innovation to create beauty and character to the lenses.

Why is it that perfect lenses are not always desired by cinematographers? The better lens is a lens that shows the character that the cinematographer searches for. In the past, the character of a lens was known first when the prototype was built. We could design the lenses on a computer but had to limit ourselves to improving the quality through optical parameters, mainly the MTF. There was no way to “design” character.

How has the improvement in computing power impacted design? We have much more accuracy in the way we model a lens and, as a consequence, we can design the look and character of a lens. The best example is the Supreme Prime Radiance. Instead of trying and guessing the results of different coatings and accepting what comes out, we were able to simulate the ghosts and flares, which allowed us to choose from hundreds of options the one that we liked most and then produce it.

How do you find balance between quality and feel or look? The look is the combination of the sharpness, which is the ability of a lens to render structures like people’s faces, and the micro-contrasts, which impact the way the lens renders skin tones – for example, the color rendition, the flare and ghosting it produces under certain lighting conditions, the distortion, and the vignetting. These are the main parameters a lens manufacturer can tweak to design a look that will be unique. What look is appealing to whom is subjective, and we can only hear what cinematographers say and try to put a lens design behind the words. Radiance meets the demand of cinematographers wanting an interesting look or feature but with the quality of a Supreme Prime.

LENS MASTERS PHOTO COURTESY OF ZEISS

How do you overcome mechanical design challenges, like having logarithmic iris? Designing a lens is always a compromise between different goals, and trying to reach perfection in terms of ergonomics, smoothness or ring movement, size, and weight. With the Supreme Primes, for example, we wanted to build small and lightweight high-speed lenses. For that, we developed a fully new focusing mechanism based on a thread. This brings real advantages compared to curves in terms of weight and size. But to still reach the smoothness that a curve provides, we developed a new type of thread that combines two different materials to eliminate frictions. A linear iris will use more volume within the lens, so you need to reduce the number of blades to keep it small. We wanted to have a fully rounded shape, so we chose a logarithmic iris. It is not only more compact and allows us to include 16 blades, but it also offers a bigger rotation at high apertures, leading to a much better precision for aperture settings.

What are the challenges in making lenses match?

We introduced this concept with UP lenses, a full set of color-matching lenses with similar T-stops. It’s all about setting the tolerances of the different components: the glass, the way the glass is worked out, the precision with which you apply the coatings. You can’t tighten the tolerance on all single elements; otherwise, nobody would be able to afford the lens. Here, again, computation and simulation software has improved so much that we can set the manufacturing tolerances on each element of a lens so that we heavily reduce the differences between two lenses of the same type without having much impact on the manufacturing costs. When it comes to matching lenses within the

same lens family, here again, computational optics has been a breakthrough. It allows us to choose the exact glass type and the coating formula that will allow the same color rendering, even between two lenses with very different optical construction.

Why develop two different looks? With the Supreme and Radiance, the possibilities are almost unlimited, for the same reason – you can simulate the look before building the lens. This allows designers to try out hundreds of optical designs before building the lens; 20 years ago, the discovery of the idea of the Supreme Primes and Supreme Prime Radiance was to provide lenses with similar sharpness but with different reactions to hard lighting conditions – the Supremes will be quite clean; the Radiance will produce nice blue flares.

ZEISS has also branched out to making lenses for other industries. We have several high-profile products for space agencies like NASA and other applications.

We built a super-high-speed lens to photograph the dark side of the moon. It was a 50mm T 0.7. And then Stanley Kubrick misused it to film Barry Lyndon!

ZEISS also produced lenses for Hasselblad mediumformat cameras that were taken by astronauts on the moon. And, in Aalen, where I live, is the headquarters of ZEISS Vision. It is the city in the world with the biggest concentration of opticians and especially the Zeiss authorized opticians. You see the ZEISS logo everywhere. My optician has all the equipment that ZEISS has ever produced. The last time I was there, I saw these wonderful blue frames with a blue color that almost matches the ZEISS logo. I fell in love with the frames as I did with the company.

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LENS MASTERS PHOTO BY BYRON COHEN

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NALBANDIAN Emin Nalbandian, Chief Optical Technician at Band Pro, originally got into the industry as a technical director in live television production. A man who questions everything, the why and how fascinated him. Working at a local studio, Nalbandian’s desk was behind the camera. “I’d always pay attention to that camera and the production side,” he recalls. “I was fascinated by how all of it worked.” The natural career move for him was to technical director and go-to person for repairs. Today he is the chief optical technician at Band Pro, overseeing the Burbank Optics Department’s cleanroom and a staff of lens technicians, as well as making frequent visits to Angénieux’s factories to work with the engineers behind their top cine lenses.

How does one become a lens technician? Being a good optical lens technician comes from experience.

The best way is to work closely with an experienced lens technician. Books and online guides may provide some knowledge, but nothing beats the experience of taking apart a full lens and reassembling all the pieces.

Every situation and every lens is unique and poses a different challenge. There are some old lenses that have multiple different versions of mechanics even though it’s the same model. Even some lenses of the same family line could be drastically different in focal length. With vintage lenses, you never know what you will find when you go into them.

Angénieux has quite a history in the film business.

The company started in 1935 and is known for making quality lenses for television and cinema across a wide variety of formats, from 16mm and 35mm to full frame.

The Apollo 11 mission flew with Angénieux zoom lenses, and the list of iconic films shot on Angénieux glass is too numerous to mention. For me, Angénieux lenses and the film industry are synonymous. You can’t think of one without the other. It’s a real honor to represent them in the Americas. Stanley Kubrick was a big fan of Angénieux. He used custom Angénieux zoom lenses on A Clockwork Orange and Barry Lyndon.

What are the new lenses that Angénieux has developed? All the history is great, but what’s been exciting for me is the next generation of Angénieux

cine lenses. I’m talking about the full-frame Optimo Lens family. First off, there’s the Optimo Ultra 12x, the next generation of the 24-290mm zoom. This is the go-to high-end zoom for big shows. Next are the Optimo Primes, which are high-resolution full-frame primes with modern optical and mechanical design.

The standard look is beautiful on its own with a classic Angénieux look, but they also give you a unique option built into the lens with the ability to customize the look on demand. This gives DP’s a unique tool to create any look they can envision. The way this is achieved is through Optimo Primes’ Integrated Optical Palette (IOP). For the first time, rental houses or DP’s can put filtration directly inside the lens to come up with unique looks, shoot, then change back as needed.

Most recently are the new Optimo Ultra-Compact zooms, which were designed as the next generation of the Sci-Tech Academy Award-winning 15-40mm and 28-76mm zoom lenses.

What feedback are you hearing from DP’s and rental houses? The glass is in demand. For years DP’s have asked for Optimo Prime lenses, probably figuring they’d never get them. It took a few years to do the idea justice, but eventually the full 12-lens Optimo Prime set was made available. What nobody expected was the custom look flexibility of the IOP. In the old days, a rental house had to buy a set of lenses for each specific look. Now they can set up a look, send it off on a job, get it back, change it back to the factory look, or change it to a completely different custom look. It’s taken some time to get up and running, but the feedback has been strong.

What exactly is the IOP? The IOP, or Integrated Optical Palette, is a tool within the lens that allows you to customize it. It’s like a painter’s palette. There are three things in the lens that you can change.

You can change the rear filter, the iris blades, and an internal glass element in the middle of the lens.

These can be done with a tool kit, and it takes less than 10 minutes to access the lens.

What’s the biggest challenge for you as Optics lead for AGX Americas? It’s not exactly a challenge, but something really important to remember. Stay curious. Keep learning. When it comes to cine

glass, you can never really stop. The lens world is always evolving, and there’s a vast number of lenses out there. You can never know it all; every day it’s something new.

What’s the most satisfying part of your job?

Working closely with DP’s and rental houses on special unique projects. A good challenge where you have to think outside the box and help someone find a solution to what they want with a lens can be very satisfying. This is why this new IOP concept is so exciting. There is a limitless possibility of looks you can achieve, and it’s not the lens company that’s dictating what’s possible anymore. The cinematographers can create anything they want.

But there is something special about going back to the basics, no? Yes, and for me, that’s being able to take a lens that’s seen action, been heavily damaged, and now is just barely functional, and getting it back to good as new. For example, one of my favorite lenses is the EZ-1, yet it can be one of the most challenging to repair. I recently worked on one that had taken a fall and was frozen, and it barely had an image. After saving whatever parts I could and replacing the rest, there’s something special about rebuilding the lens down to the final screw, then painstakingly adjusting the size of each of the 24 sets of rollers to optimize the zoom. It’s a long process, but the result is extremely rewarding once you tighten the final screw and everything works.

What trends do you see now in cinema glass?

Filmmakers, more than ever, are trying to get character on their shows and are chasing a certain look based on their project. You are seeing detuning on all sorts of shoots. Detuning is modifying a lens to fit the look and character of a project. Traditionally, one might remove a lens coating to give the look certain desirable characteristics. For example, making the lenses softer or giving them more falloff when shooting a period drama. Because of this, vintage lenses are on fire. Some old lenses have gone up astronomically in value because of this popularity. At the same time, the latest full-frame cine lenses are strongly in demand.

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LENS MASTERS

“Growing up, I always enjoyed science and numbers, but I never thought I’d enjoy something artistic,” observes Dan Sasaki, Senior Vice President of Optical Engineering and Lens Strategy for Panavision.

Sasaki, who recently was honored with the Curtis Clark ASC Technical Achievement Award, adds that “working at Panavision opened my eyes to the overlap between science and art that exists in the field of cinematography. That balance is where creativity thrives. It’s incredible to be part of a team of people coming together to create images that tell a story and convey emotion.” Having trained under his father as well as Panavision legend Tak Miyagishima, Sasaki has spent more than three decades at Panavision, evolving the craft and artistry of lens design. His favorite job is talking to cinematographers, directors, and their crews, listening to their ideas, and helping develop solutions that give them the unique look they are going for.

“Through our collaborations, those filmmakers become like a family,” he says. “I’m honored and humbled that they welcome me into the creative process and put their trust in Panavision to help them bring their vision to life.”

How did the need for an anamorphic process evolve?

In the early 1950s, widescreen exhibition became increasingly popular as a draw to get audiences into movie theaters. Several processes offered competing methods of producing a widescreen image. Still, anamorphic optics were quickly identified as a particularly efficient means, squeezing an image onto a single strip of film with an anamorphic lens on the camera during capture and then de-squeezing the image with a projection lens in the theater.

That climate is actually what led to the founding of Panavision. The company’s first product was the Super Panatar projection lens, which featured a variable prism that projectionists could adjust to support any format for 2.76:2 to 1.33:1 with the turn of a single knob, accommodating the wide variety of competing projection aspect ratios.

What were the early anamorphic lenses like? Early anamorphic production lenses, such as those initially developed for CinemaScope, introduced unwanted distortions in the image, most notably “anamorphic mumps,” which stretched subjects horizontally as they got closer to the camera. In developing the Super Panatar projection lens, Panavision learned which methods of compressing an image worked more efficiently and effectively, and, building on that experience, the company turned its focus to developing anamorphic production lenses that could solve those unwanted distortions and, in the process, give filmmakers more creative freedom.

How did this lead to a new patent? For these new lenses, Walter Wallin – who was Panavision’s vice president for research at the time – invented a patented anti-mumping anamorphosing system. This

dynamic full-anamorphic anti-mumping system kept the compression ratio of the lens consistent from infinity to close focus while emphasizing the vertical defocus that has become associated with Panavision’s anamorphic lens offerings.

ultimately delivered lenses that reacted the way Jess wanted. That cooperative relationship works both ways. Jess’ vision helped us devise new techniques that we’ve subsequently been able to adapt for other projects.

How has the system evolved? Our anamorphic systems are continuously evolving, and since the introduction of Panavision’s first anamorphic lenses in the 1950s, we’ve built on Walter Wallin’s original anamorphosing system through new lens series as well as modifications to our existing anamorphic lenses, which have been updated to reflect the various capture mediums and trends over the decades. Heavily influenced by feedback and ideas posed by our customers, the advancements in our anamorphic designs have streamlined efficiencies on set and offered filmmakers a broad palette of diverse optical attributes, resulting in greater creative flexibility in crafting their images while still delivering the magnification, perspective, disproportionate breathing, flare, bokeh and focus roll-off that have come to be associated with the “filmed in Panavision” look.

You’ve also reconfigured vintage lenses to fit a cinematographer’s needs. We did it with our T-Series 2x-squeeze anamorphic lenses, which were originally conceived for use exclusively with digital cameras.

When Dan Mindel [ASC, BSC, SASC] was shooting Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, he needed T-Series lenses to supplement his optics package, but he was shooting on film, so we ended up reconfiguring a set of T-Series lenses to work with a spinning-mirror reflex film camera. Not long after that, we did it again for Robert Richardson [ASC] on Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood. Even more recently, we’ve modified some sets of T-Series lenses to deliver a 1.85x squeeze, which allows filmmakers to use more pixels within a sensor’s native aspect ratio while capturing an anamorphic image.

What is happening today? In recent years, we’ve seen an increase in anamorphic lenses being used on larger-format cameras. Previously, the fundamental squeeze ratio of 2x had remained a standard that all our anamorphic lenses were built to. Still, to give filmmakers greater flexibility both artistically and technically when working with these modern largeformat imagers, we’ve introduced a number of sub2x-squeeze anamorphic optics. These squeeze ratios – 1.3x, 1.65x, and 1.85x – allow filmmakers to maximize the effective pixels within a sensor’s native aspect ratio while achieving the desired release aspect ratio and still offer an aesthetic that separates itself from the proportionate magnification of spherical photography.

Have you created any custom anamorphic lenses that became a lens series? There are a couple of ways of thinking about that question. For example, early in my career my dad [former Panavision Vice President of Operations Ralph Sasaki] and Tak Miyagishima [former Panavision senior vice president of engineering] introduced me to Laszlo Kovacs [ASC], who asked for a 60mm C Series that he could use on Multiplicity. The C Series had been around since the 1960s, but there wasn’t a 60mm focal length, so I was tasked with making one that would match the rest of the set. Likewise, when John Schwartzman [ASC] was prepping Pearl Harbor, he asked me to build a 20mm C-Series lens. I’d studied applied physics but wasn’t formally trained as an optical designer. Making that 20mm C Series gave me a real taste of the stresses that come with making custom optics. [Laughs.]

Working with individual cinematographers is one of your passions. Collaborating with Jess Hall [BSC] on WandaVision [ICG Magazine February/March 2021] proved to be a great exercise in helping a cinematographer achieve a unique look through lens customization. Jess has an incredible passion for his craft, and he always brings very specific visual ideas, which gives us a great guide as we set out to find the right solution. On WandaVision he wanted to craft unique looks for different timelines and eras within the show by combining various lensing technologies with other tools across the imaging chain. For example, for sequences where he wanted to create an image with greater clarity while still preserving an organic, cinematic feeling, he came to us with the idea of pairing a larger-format sensor with our Ultra Panatar 1.3x-squeeze anamorphic lenses. Our challenge, though, was that he wanted to avoid photographing too much horizontal flaring, and he wanted reduced glaring. That meant our original Ultra Panatars were out, and we needed to devise a version that would deliver the contrast and resolution Jess was after.

It was an educational process for everyone, but we

Keeping lenses current is another creative avenue for your cinematographers. More recently, the largeformat Ultra Panatar anamorphic lenses started a few custom focal lengths to complement our vintage Ultra Panavision 70 lens series. We’d updated the Ultra Panavision lenses for Robert Richardson [ASC] when he was shooting The Hateful Eight. Then when Greig Fraser [ASC, ACS] shot Rogue One, we made further refinements and also needed to create a few all-new focal lengths, which essentially ended up being the first Ultra Panatars. Around that same time, Trent Opaloch was prepping Avengers: Infinity War. He liked the concept of the Ultra Panatar squeeze ratio.

But he didn’t want the artifacts associated with the vintage optics. He asked if the Ultra Panatar lenses could deliver more modern imaging characteristics while retaining the feel of the 1.3x lenses. We ended up making full sets of Ultra Panatars from scratch for Infinity War. Those were, in effect, custom lenses, but that became the basis of our Ultra Panatar line.

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Sometimes it takes a village to pull off a film, especially with an outrageous “contest” between the reigning fashion queen of the 1970s (Emma Thompson as The Baroness) and the young upstart (Emma Stone as Cruella). That’s how three-time-Academy-Awardwinning Costume Designer Jenny Beavan (A Room with a View, Mad Max: Fury Road, Cruella) and award-winning (AFI Fest for Violet and at Almería International Short Film Festival for Meander) Director of Photography Nicolas Karakatsanis (The Mad Women’s Ball, I, Tonya) banded together with director Craig Gillespie to bring high-fashion madness to the screen. Karakatsanis says the minute he stepped into Beavan’s workshop at Shepperton Studios, “it felt like this dreamy, magical environment, where people were working very hard to make the vision of the film ready.

I had the same feeling when the sets were built by [Production Designer] Fiona [Crombie] and her team.

It’s like a magical endeavor to light the characters and the room.”

Cruella is so outrageous. What are the first things that you two discussed? Nicolas Karakatsanis: The main creative discussions happened directly with Craig [Gillespie]. The schedule was so tight for Jenny that I didn’t want to interfere with her deadlines and creative process. The main discussions were more about the fashion pieces. For the “normal” stuff, I didn’t have input. Jenny has way more experience than me, so that’s a given not to disturb her workflow.

Jenny Beavan: We both had our creative discussions with Craig, and then I just got to it. Ten weeks for a schedule that seemed to have so many different big scenes coming up at the beginning. I had to trust Nicolas, and he had to trust me. I’ve been in this game for a long time and feel I know what will and won’t work in terms of colors and textures. And Nicolas lit it all beautifully.

The “fashion/statement” pieces are at the center of the film’s outrageous look. NK: I find feature films often don’t understand fashion. So, often it is ridiculed because designing fashion is a very different thing than making period clothing that is based on something that we know. We wanted the fashion to be something that was not a farce but something that

NICOLAS people would buy if it ended up in stores. JB: This was not a documentary about fashion or the 1970s. It is a prequel story about Cruella, so the fashion is very specific and not about any actual designers of the period. It had a heightened reality, and yet at the same time, it had to be believable. The audience could then relate to the characters, which, for me, is when a film interests me – whatever the story or subject.

More than in other projects, there are a lot of contrasting images in Cruella. NK: One of the biggest challenges was the Black and White Ball in a white interior – which wasn’t the original plan. The contrast

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with the unveiling of Cruella’s red dress works amazingly. JB: A big part of the shot was the burning off of the cloak. It was VFX, and not for me to say how to light it. I have never done anything quite like this before, but Max Wood is a master of VFX, and many people have asked me if we did the sequence for real.

Red was always going to be the perfect color to wear if you wanted to stand out in a Black and White Ball.

How important is costume to setting the image?

JB: Costume is storytelling and the complete key to setting the image, as it is the costumes that support the actors who tell that story. The lighting and camera work will guide you to the focus of a scene, but we create the characters to be focused on. NK: [nodding] Set and costume design completely determine the image feel. The lighting will obviously steer it in a certain direction, but in the end, it’s what you film that will determine the look. I trusted Jenny. On Cruella, I was most preoccupied with the sets. Everything is stage-built, so you need to build them in a way that camera angles are doable as your shots have been designed.

What was one of the most fun moments? NK: Cruella’s runway show in front of The Baroness’s house. It’s the first time we see Cruella’s expression as a fashion designer. The color palette was completely different from the other fashion moments we saw until that point in the movie. Jenny did such great work. I wanted a lot of colors, but keeping in mind the 70s and the punk feeling, we kept the colors all in an RGB tungsten feel. Meaning, what would a punk concert have used to light a stage? We used Par cans and whatever was cheap and makeshift. All were shot handheld to accentuate the energy of Cruella and her designs. JB: It was a nightmare scene shot out of doors in November, by the river, with dancers starting around a fountain, so they all got wet and nearly died of hypothermia. There was a lot of yelling to get warm! It wasn’t just a fashion show but another moment of storytelling as Cruella does two fingers to The Baroness.

It was a tight schedule, and there was a hiccup requiring a scramble with costume and camera. NK: Emma Stone broke her shoulder in the middle of the

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prep. That was a big “oh shit,” and Jenny handled it like a champ. So, she had more time to work on designs.

JB: [laughing] It saved our bacon! Poor Emma, she was so upset, but I kept telling her that so long as she wasn’t in too much pain, I was thrilled as it gave us the chance we needed to put in details.

What was the most challenging set/costume for the two of you? NK: The last scene, where Cruella walks into her new house with dark walls. She’s dressed in a jet-black dress, and her face is very white. Not the easiest to light. JB: [smiling] Ah, but the black wool suit has a bit of a sparkle in the weave.

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Their partnership began on the micro-budget Oscarwinner Moonlight, grew exponentially during If Beale Street Could Talk, and solidified on the hugely challenging The Underground Railroad [ICG Magazine May 2021]. “The first time I met with Caroline Eselin, what struck me were her tone boards for Moonlight,” describes Director of Photography James Laxton, ASC. “I was a camera loader before I was able to make the jump into costumes,” Eselin adds. “I’m also married to a cinematographer [Roberto Schaefer, ASC, AIC], so I can respect everything James goes through.” “It’s a shared experience,” Laxton notes. “We often have the same images in our head – and we just go from there.”

Moonlight was your first teaming, and it was a very low-budget film. Caroline Eselin: The budget was so small, we returned every pair of shoes we weren’t using, even if it was a two-dollar pair. We were all jammed into a motorhome – hair, make-up, and AD. I had a six-by-six-foot space for fittings. But we all knew we were doing something very special. A story that hadn’t been told. Finding those characters with Barry, James and our cast was a collaborative, specific and beautiful experience. James Laxton: Budget was tight

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all around, but looking back, I often wonder if it was just right. I’m not sure the film would have had the energy it did if it had been a 20-million-dollar movie. The realism and honesty that the film has may have been missing.

There are magical moments in Moonlight, especially within your collaboration. CE: It was wonderful to shoot in Miami because I used what was there, which made it that much more authentic. I found several nightgown options for Paula (Naomie Harris) and showed them to Barry and James separately. Both went straight to a pink, green, and blue flowered one. It was great to witness that synchronicity and to also get to use that lovely and thoughtful choice. JL: Moonlight is a film that is told in strong colors to support the story, so when Caroline designed a character in a particular color, it was important to amplify these choices in our lighting. Whether it was the pink light in the back bedroom or the sodium-vapor streetlights, it was all about giving strength and power to support the design in front of the camera.

What was the biggest challenge for your respective crafts? CE: White t-shirts on Black skin. The look was indicative of the period. We didn’t have a proper setup

to tech the whites down for camera. If James hadn’t been so understanding of the situation and how the light worked, we would have had a serious problem.

JL: I remember one discussion Caroline, Barry and I had was about Juan’s white shirts and how it was so important for Barry that the shirts be rendered very white and not aged. Initially, this idea felt a bit scary, knowing that I’d have to find a way to light Mahershala Ali’s skin tones against a crispy white tank top in the bright sun. In the end, the images with the white tank top are some of my favorites and an example of what happens when you lean into challenges and don’t fight what’s in front of you.

If Beale Street Could Talk was a step up in budget with a long story arc. Was there a collaboration between costume and lighting that stood out? JL: We went into Beale Street with a lot of weight on our shoulders. Making a follow-up to Moonlight brought with it some burden. In addition, we were adapting one of the great, if not the greatest, American authors, so just a bit of pressure. [Laughs.] We did a camera test before shooting during which we all got to see our leads in costume, and after that day, any nerves I had went away. Seeing the costumes that Caroline

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had designed for the actors, I immediately felt the love and strength and sense of family that the story we were telling was all about. The warm tones and pops of blue and Tish’s green shirt. It’s forever in my head for lighting.

How did your partnership change for The Underground Railroad, which has an epic 10-episode story arc? CE: It was a question of visibility. We began with candles and fire and nighttime. So, it was a choice of what would be good against Black skin in the middle of the woods with, basically, natural light. JL: As Cora’s story progresses, she moves through quite a few different lighting scenarios: moonlight, harsh sun, candlelight, gas-powered lamps, and a lot of different weather. This was all to make sure the audience felt her journey in each step. In Episode 2, Cora finds her way into a town with a modern façade but with a dark and twisted core underneath. Our lighting and camera work aimed to give reference to hidden darkness, and we worked with Caroline on this. CE: Each chapter had its own palette. We shifted our color choices and design to follow Cora’s journey and her environments.

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There was more of a separation enhanced by costume and lighting as the story moved on. JL: A big inspiration for me was Gordon Parks’ Segregation series, which he photographed in the 1950s. At the time, he used a particular film stock and a development technique that rendered a unique color palette. We talked with Caroline about Park’s unique color palette and how using it would give the colors in her design a slight shift. CE: The Segregation series was a great gift of inspiration from James and the jumping off point for color in the costumes of the South Carolina chapter.

How have high-resolution digital cameras impacted the choice and design of costumes and lighting?

CE: As I realized with Underground, it’s not just for the smaller screen or the episodes; it’s about how the audience sees what we create. The fabrics react differently with the newer technology. We learn every day what works and what doesn’t. And we are often surprised. I remember a moment [on The Underground Railroad] in the vineyard. John Valentine [Peter De Jersey] was wearing a vest that buzzed on camera in natural daylight. We got rid of [the vest] and his shirt underneath still played fine. It was a color that belonged at the farm, and it made the costume and frame better

without [the vest]. JL: From my perspective, the large sensors, with their change in latitude, give lighting more advantages. I find less need to ask for bright white costumes to be teched down. The concern we had on Moonlight with the desire for white t-shirts on Black characters went away when I saw some tests in prep.

Speaking of prep, this is one area that is key to your partnership. CE: We continued to talk through prep and shooting. It’s a real pleasure working with James because even though he’s humoring me at times, he’s willing and open to try and test. I can go to him in the middle of the day, and he will turn the camera for a quick test, which is very helpful. We did a lot of this on Underground. With Beale Street, that ability to test our respective departments two weeks into the space helped our collaboration and preparation before we began shooting. JL: While prep is one of my favorite parts of the process, where ideas float around and where plans get put into place, shooting is where I am at my happiest. I love seeing Caroline on the set putting her finishing touches on things. Tweaking a light just slightly or adjusting the camera position to help bring the costume and the character better into view. That’s where I love to be.

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When Oscar-winning Director of Photography Mauro Fiore, ASC, came in to take over Spider-Man: No Way Home after the pandemic, Costume Designer Sanja Hays (a three-time Costume Designer’s Guild nominee: Spider-Man, Captain Marvel, and The Mummy) was already hard at work in her workshop. The two were about to come together on a picture for which “the sensibility was different,” Hays commented. “Fashion was different, and the technology was different.”

“The dozens of options that would best show off the newest entry into this popular franchise were amazing,” adds Fiore. “Right from the beginning, I knew that Sanja’s approach was critical, and I needed to find the best way to create a visual that enhanced their importance.”

Why is it so crucial for your two respective crafts to work so closely? Sanja Hays: It’s obviously in colors and how Mauro – or any DP – sets the lights and the filters. The costume designer needs to know what lights and film stock are being used in order to know how the colors and textures are going to read.

I need to see how he dials the digital cameras and, if film, what stock. I’ve had problems before when a DP has used a certain film stock or dialed a light that has turned blue into royal and pink into rust. Then it’s a problem. We have to know from the beginning how the media can/will affect the costumes, and then we can anticipate. With Spider-Man: No Way Home, Mauro was willing to test and test more. We didn’t want to fix it in post. Mauro Fiore: And it wasn’t just costume and lighting that we had to address. We had

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lighting. In our first tests, we realized that the lights started to strobe, especially on some of the details.

The light became reflective on the gold. And we could see it break down when the LED’s started to form a rainbow in reflection, especially on the gold of the suit. So, Sanja did another pass on the suit, taking some of the reflective material down and enhancing some of the details to make them more dimensional.

What were some of the surprises in your first tests?

SH: We began with the red colors. Each of the SpiderMans had three different red colors, and they were all going to read differently. Then we tested the green and purple of Willem Dafoe’s Green Goblin suit. Green can be sensitive on the digital camera, and even green goes blue. So, we worked with a lot of samples with green to see how the camera read it. MF: From the perspective of Camera, these different tonalities had to be dealt with. Spider-Man’s red had to be the most dominant red on screen, so other tonalities had to be more subtle.

The digital sensor’s sensitivity to red is always an issue, so we did further tests to deal with this.

Working on a franchise, particularly one as deep as Spider-Man, is it always a case of bigger, better, more exciting? SH: You certainly want to up your game. You kind of want new and fresh for the audience. Pop culture in the comic world evolves, so you want to change and adjust and make it fresh. New and more interesting costumes. We improved the suit the Green Goblin wore because technology has changed, and so did audience expectations. With the Spider-Man costume, we updated the fabric and the way it was printed on.

The cuts and details were more comfortable. With Dr. Octavius, the belt and tentacles were made in metal for the original, but now we had ways to make these things more comfortable and lighter.

What was one of the first lighting elements you needed to address? MF: Test the suit with LED

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to be on the same page as Production Design and other departments, as the color palette impacted everyone. Normally, Costume will often adjust to production design and lighting. Not here. Costume dictated everything. No red couch. No green for Green Goblin. Or yellow for Electro.

Did you find that a great lighting concept had to change or even go away because of a costume issue? MF: We had several sequences that were planned to be shot against LED walls. Because of the same kind of issues with panel lights and the costumes, they went away, even though we tried to address issues. At a certain point, the costumes must be what they are, and you can’t change their nature.

Theoretically, you can adjust, but we came up against something that would be completely different, and we just didn’t have time. For example, there was an issue with using interactive LED panels as a light source for a specific scene. If you are trying to create a lighting interaction that includes hard light, such as sunlight, it’s difficult to project hard light from LED panels. We eventually went away from using these screens as a lighting source.

So, sometimes it’s out of your hands? MF: With Spider-Man, Sanja had another bit of a challenge that we both had to accommodate. Our director didn’t want to have anything in any part of the frame in red besides Spider-Man. She had to design everything to

keep the red out. SH: [laughs] What was funny about this was that we had a final scene at Christmas, and the director didn’t want red. Mauro and I looked at each other. Christmas? On the streets of New York?

Without red?!

How did VFX impact your work? MF: Costume and lighting need to work together with VFX no matter what. We had a lot of green screen in this movie and quickly found that certain costume colors just wouldn’t work with the green background. At some point, Sanja came in with a new design, and at other points, the costume took precedence, and we switched to blue screen, which was more forgiving.

SH: Green Goblin, for example, couldn’t be in front of the green screen.

With all the massive sequences, do you have a favorite, and how did you bring it together? SH: The final battle with everyone all together. Everything was brought into play – superhero and supervillain; each must stand out. I loved Zendaya’s costume. Instead of her black and white, we put her in a colorful striped

sweater, something that was not easy to lose in visual richness. MF: One of the challenges of the final sequence is the complexity of the lines and shapes on the scaffolding. The costumes and lighting must be utilized to pull the characters out, also because they are moving quickly through these environments.

As mentioned, the film features three different Spider-Mans, whose costumes are all from different eras, along with Tom Holland’s updated costume reveal. All three suits are a key part of the narrative. SH: The challenge with the three different Spider-Man suits was the fact that each of them was in fact different, because they were made in a different time, by a different costume designer and in a different movie, with each having their own specific visual requirements. Each one is a different red, with a different Spider-Man on the chest and different web design. We recreated from scratch both Toby’s and Andrew’s costumes to match the original costume – as much as possible – with the new technology that is now available. It was a long and challenging process, often more difficult and time consuming than doing the original suit.

What did you learn about costume/lighting in a digital world for a franchise? MF: The traditional testing and examinations that were always a part of our art form are critical because the technology around us is in a constant state of change. I realized that projecting tests in a theater and discussing them with all departments is a critical part of our collaborative process, especially on a Spider-Man movie.

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Andy Italiano drove to Hollywood with a handful of résumés and walked into any building that had the word “production” on it. “I’d say to the first person I saw that I wanted a job and asked whom I could speak with to make that happen,” he recalls. “I had more success in one afternoon doing that than in three months of networking and sending out résumés and making calls. What I learned is to show up!” He began working on religious programming at Santa Fe Communications in Burbank, the same place where Hispanic game shows with big stars would come to record. His most important job back then was driving the one-inch master tapes that had just been edited for Merv Griffin Productions from Burbank to Hollywood. Today he shoots pro sports and some NCAA basketball, including March Madness.

What is the “B” crew for football? Depending on how much of the country will see the game, our football crews are designated as A, B or C shows.

I’ve been with the same director on an “NFL on CBS” C show for 25 years. My director, Suzanne Smith, got promoted to the B show this year. The higherlettered shows have more cameras, equipment and people involved, as well as higher-profile announcers and more eyeballs watching. Usually they cause more stress as well, which includes anything that will interrupt the flow of the telecast, including missed shots or assignments, conflicts with others on the crew and being late for meetings, rehearsals, warmups, or connections. Or any issue that will hurt the team. The stress to nail the shot becomes more intense when more people are watching, including the executives in charge.

What is the most challenging sport to shoot?

Hockey. The puck moves very fast, and the complaint I often hear from viewers when watching hockey is that they cannot see the puck. It’s hard for a camera operator to see the puck at times! If we operate an ISO camera, our job is to follow the puck and to stay on a tight shot as long as possible. One key is to anticipate where the puck is going, so even if we can’t see the puck, we keep the puck in frame. It looks easy when played back in slow motion, but getting it live can be so challenging. The operators that do it well are very skilled.

Tell us about the unique demands of shooting baseball. There are so many scenarios that can play out in a short amount of time. During any given pitch, camera operators should know who is on base, how many balls and strikes there are, and where the ball will go depending on where it is hit. Baseball can seem slow at times, but then there are times when many situations are playing out very quickly while the ball is in play. The lenses we use are incredible – Fuji and Canon. They are extremely powerful – and expensive – and there are not many times when we can be fully zoomed in on the action because we will be too tight. The lenses are capable of going way tighter than we can shoot. So tight, in fact, that if there is a full moon over the stadium and we zoom all the way in on it, you will only see part of the full moon unless we zoom out. Often, if you pay close attention, and depending on how firmly the operator is holding onto the camera, a viewer can sense the heartbeat of the operator moving the frame during an extreme close-up shot.

Live means great prep and no changes. Right? Not always! One time at an MLB All-Star game, POTUS was throwing out the first pitch. The director decided he was going to stay on the RF-handheld camera that I was operating for the entire moment – from walking him out of the dugout to the pitch to the handshakes

and back to the dugout. My style was keeping my lens as wide as it goes and to be about three feet from my subject. I had it planned out and had rehearsed that way. Five minutes before the big moment, Secret Service came to me and said to stay 10 feet from POTUS the entire time. I said: “I can’t do that. My style is….” They cut me off and said: “Ten feet!” I didn’t know what to do, but I did my best to follow him with a style I wasn’t used to. It went okay until the pitch. This POTUS was a lefty, and I had rehearsed for a righthanded pitcher. Time slowed down at that moment. I realized I messed up in a big way with a big audience.

I blamed it on the “lefty” thing. The director ended up laughing about it later and decided to hire me again.

What do you mean by having a specific style?

When I am on a super-slow-motion camera, I will take chances to maximize that technology and clarity.

For example, zooming in extremely fast from wide to tight, at the point of impact of a ball being struck or a tackle being made. As the cameras and lenses become more sensitive, there are more opportunities to experiment and push the limits – if the director and producer allow this. They are taking a chance allowing these moves, because many times, I will miss a shot by going for it. To learn what works, operators can’t be afraid to make mistakes. I toured with Metallica for 18 months, and I would recommend every camera operator shoot live music. There are far fewer rules to follow and critical moments of action. This allows for much more experimentation and pushing limits with the camera. I learned many of my camera tricks and my “style” from experimenting on that tour.

Does today’s technology impact what you do?

Fortunately, framing a shot never changes, but the equipment I use, especially the lenses, is heavier.

Fiber-optic cables are mostly used now, and they are more fragile and sensitive to dirt and dust. The camera picks up more detail, and focus is more critical. In super-slow motion, a quarter second out of focus seems like an eternity during playback in slow motion. For example: If a baseball player is stealing second base, I want to be very tight on the base and the attempted tag-out during the moment of impact.

To get that shot from the time it takes the base runner to steal, I need to break off my other assignment, find the base, and be as tight as possible as the player slides in to see if he is out or safe. In slow motion, that replay can be up to three or four seconds long, but as it happens to live, it’s a second or less. Being out of focus for a quarter-second or less during live action at the moment of impact at the base can be a painfully long two seconds or more out of focus during slow-motion playback. There is not much room for error with composition and focus for slowmotion replays. It’s part of the everlasting challenge of shooting live sports that keeps many of us trying to do better the next game.

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“I always dreamed of playing pro baseball,” says Darrin Pattison. “In college, one of our classes used a local cable truck to cablecast local high school sports. I loved running camera on those games.” The excitement stuck, and if Pattinson couldn’t play pro ball, he would get in on the action with a camera. He began doing SportsChannel and Prime Ticket shows with director Doug Freeman. “One of Doug’s favorite lines is, ‘You don’t have to respect me, but you have to respect the position,’” Pattinson adds. It’s an adage that has taken him from local sports to golf and car racing. He was there in 1996 when Tiger Woods first became pro and hit a hole in one. He was also on FOX TV’s inaugural World Series crew and has worked hundreds of playoff games over the last 25 years. He traveled to Barcelona and Greece to work the Olympics, and to Tokyo as part of the NBA Global Games. Despite it all, Pattinson’s favorite spot is still behind the camera at Angel Stadium (Anaheim, CA).

How has the technology changed? When I started, it was an analog world with only tube cameras, and shooting the lights or sun was strictly forbidden. We had to register (align) and chart the tubes for at least 10 minutes per camera for every setup. One-inch tape machines were the norm for slo-mo, and HD was just something we had heard about in college. The tube cameras were also very heavy to carry. Within 10 years, the CCD (chip) cameras started showing up, and they were great for the operators. No registering, smaller cameras and you could shoot the lights and the sun.

What did HD do to how you shoot? In the early 2000s, HD made its way onto the scene. It looked great, but the cameras got a bit heavier, and they got very expensive. As a result, we all had to start learning about fiber optics as HD did not work well with copper wiring. Phillips/GVG were the only ones that had a triax HD camera. In tape, the EVS (non-linear) systems became the norm. Your camera was always recording – if you shoot it, it’s recorded forever.

What are the staple cameras today? There are primarily three different types of cameras in sports telecasting. I’ve done handheld, hard and robotic cameras throughout my career. All three have their unique challenges. Handheld is more physical and right in the action – but it’s also more dangerous! You never know which NBA superstar can crash right into you after a slam dunk. Hard cameras are stationary but require you to know all the players and shoot on a long lens. These days I’m mainly a robotic operator, which requires you to be a camera operator and an engineer.

You pride yourself on the adrenaline rush to help get it right. But sometimes… That would be 1991 at the Forum. NBC was doing the NBA championships between the Lakers and the Bulls. I was running a camera on the pre/post show out of a vendor truck.

There were generator problems early in the day, and

it messed up both trucks’ power systems. NBC tried to delay the start of the game and had to eventually join a few minutes late. Tim O’Neill and I were in the TV compound on break when the NBC truck lost power again. All the executives came pouring out of the NBC truck and raced into our studio pre/post set. I grabbed my handheld camera, sat on an apple box, and was the only camera on the NBC finals for two or three minutes. Eventually, they got the NBC truck back up and running, and my few minutes of fame were over [laughs].

How are home and away shows different beasts?

Home shows you know the setup, the truck, the director, the show format, and most of the crew.

Away shows are generally very challenging as it’s a new director, and the show format is different.

Sometimes the show is a Remi or Cloud show, so half of the production is in another market, and delays in intercom and video exist. I’m fortunate to have been on home shows for the last 20 years or so.

What were the most difficult shots of your career?

When the sun is behind the golfer, you have to follow the ball. Tight hockey when I’m overconfident and had a good game the night before. Home run follows are on a mid-home robotic camera during a day game.

Before color viewfinders, it was when the director looking at a big color monitor in the truck would tell you the color of the car to follow, and you were looking at black and white!

Does working with a small family of specialists up your game? We are all professionals and have worked together for over 30 years. Every night we push each other to get the best shots we possibly can. Between the ten of us, we have worked countless Super Bowls, World Series, NBA Finals, and pretty much every other major sporting event you can come up with. This group is the cream of the crop, and I’m fortunate to be able to work with them every day.

And like a family you can push and tease each other?

Once in a while, we prank each other. I was setting up in Angel Stadium some 30 years ago, and Steve Bennett was on the away show. He told me he hid a piece of equipment in one of the bathrooms, of which there are over twenty on the upper deck at Angel Stadium. It took me quite a while to find it, particularly because it was in a ladies’ bathroom! After the game, my show had to strike, and his didn’t. So, to get back at him, some of my fellow cameramen and I moved his camera to the other side of Angel Stadium. He comes in the next day and sees what he thinks is his camera in the camera well, but it’s really ESPN’s. He has no idea where his camera is until he gets in contact with one of us. He now has to move his camera back across the stadium and is not happy. Of course, this was the pre-cell phone era. Later in the day, he tells me he called the owner, and I’m in trouble. I didn’t believe it but played along to make Steve feel better.

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“I’ve heard it said we’re like eighth-graders with money,” laughs Steve Bennett when talking about the tight-knit family of sports shooters. “After I left baseball ...or baseball left me after college…I didn’t know how I could replace that camaraderie. But I didn’t have to look far. We are very serious about our work, and we have a good time with it as well.”

Starting at a small-market TV station in Palm Springs, CA, Bennett had the opportunity to learn almost every job in the broadcasting world – from master control operator to 6- and 11-o’clock news director. It formed a foundation that still helps him today. “I got the advice, ‘Don’t be good at a lot of things; be great at one,’” he adds. “So, I veered off toward camera because, frankly, I like being out in the action. My first live show was a parade in a rough section of town. While on my camera tower, I was introduced to my new career as target practice for a gentleman with a BB gun!” Today, Bennett covers pretty much every sport, including his favorites: boxing, baseball, football and golf.

What was it like when you started? In the early ’80s, in L.A., video was the name of the game; I cut my teeth on the Hitachi SK-70 camera. You had to power it with a Variac drawn from a power source.

It had a peculiar reverse focus, so instead of pulling toward yourself for closer shots, doing the reverse was necessary. Operators would put reverse-focus modules on to correct this. State-of-the-art lenses were 44-to-1 back then; whereas today, it’s not uncommon to use a 122-to-1 lens. I called those “Hubble” because they were more like telescopes.

There were also a lot fewer positions to go around.

Fewer cameras and much less content. In baseball, for example, there was one show a visiting team would televise back to their home market. There were no home shows, ESPN, TNT, or Amazon, like today. You had to be patient and persistent to get a foothold. Things were much different.

What excites you most about shooting live sports?

Just that – it’s live, and you aren’t working from a script. You see two teams playing each other on the field, but there’s also a team behind the scenes in the truck whose combined efforts hopefully make for a successful show. As a sports camera operator, you need the skill to zoom, focus and frame instantly and to implement and remember specific assignments for any given situation or play. In addition, you are listening for the director’s additional commands while also listening to the announcers for other verbal cues to pick up supporting shots. Also, it is very important to “sell” your shots to the director – shots you see, anticipate, tie together, or feed off other shots. All of which can potentially add to the director’s palette.

And, of course, there are no do-overs.

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How do you prepare for a game? I usually survey the arena or stadium for possible supporting shots that may or may not present themselves in the telecast.

In baseball, that could be retired numbers on the wall, pennants from past years, fans in the stands, or something quirky about the stadium. I may never use any of it, but it’s in your head should the time present itself. For example, at Dodger Stadium, the announcers may be talking about a good-hitting pitcher. One of the coaches on the field may have been a good-hitting pitcher himself. You could shoot him or perhaps go to the wall and shoot Don Drysdale’s number 53, who was also a good-hitting pitcher back in the day. I also study the player rosters of each team and memorize, to the best of my ability, jersey numbers and faces.

Another very important thing is to remember you have two distinct bosses – the producer and the director.

Replays are primarily what the producer cares most about, while the director, on the other hand, wants live shots and assignments. You have to be proficient in both and expect the unexpected. We’ve all been plowed into by big, strong basketball and football players. I once had a homerun ball hit me on the top of my head on the fly. It’s all part of the job.

harm’s way. I remember at the Nagano Winter Olympics shooting the halfpipe handheld on the fringe of the pipe’s ravine. One of the athletes missed his mark and plowed into me, knocking me and the camera to the icy ground, and barely avoiding the ravine. [Laughs.] It made the front page of the local newspaper.

What does one need to know about shooting golf?

There are different skill sets for different cameras.

A handheld is more physical, running around with a camera on your shoulder to find the best positions.

Walking a five-mile course is not uncommon. Longlens cameras on towers require you to spot and locate the golfers and follow their shots to the fairway and greens. You team up with and rely on your video operator, so the camera iris remains constant. A good video person is extremely important. Again, you must zoom, focus, and frame simultaneously. Another challenge is when you are shooting amateurs and non-professionals. With the pros, you can anticipate the shot going in the air, so you make your tilt up to catch the ball just before contact. With amateurs, you have no idea where the ball’s going. It literally can go anywhere!

What is the skill set for shooting action sports, like boxing, or the X-Games? You have a long lens and handheld cameras for live and replay, specialty remote overhead, and slow-mo cameras and jibs. The bigger shows, like all other sports, have SkyCams to enhance the broadcast. You have to find a flow and rhythm and try to get into a sort of zone, which means being a shot or two ahead of the action. Handheld in the ring can be very challenging. You’ve got commissioners, entourage, and cornermen, all asserting themselves in a confined space. It’s very important for you to get your shots, too; so with all the shoving and pushing, friendships aren’t easily made in that ring. [Laughs.] Then there is the matter of stamina – four-plus hours with a heavy camera on your shoulder is not uncommon. You can also have extremes in weather – very hot, very cold, rainy, windy, you name it. And again, you can often be in

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Who knew that the call from David Tattersall, ASC, to Chief Lighting Technician Stephen Thompson for the series Outcast would lead to a partnership with Key Grip Lee Donaldson that has spanned more than six years and a half-dozen dozen films? “The first thing I learned is that I can count on Lee to deliver any shot I come up with,” Thompson reflects. “I didn’t need to micromanage cutting and shaping the light.

Donaldson adds that “the friendship we’ve formed on and off the set gives us the ability to have an open dialog without the worry of offending one another.”

This relationship is a vital component to success in the unusual and inventive horror genre in which the men have specialized. Together, they’ve done Halloween II and III, The Exorcist trilogy, and Scream 5.

Are there tricks that you have learned from each other? Stephen Thompson: Lee gets a kick out of the box of lace I carry around for shadow patterns, but when we need to break up a light, he will rig a swath of it in front of that light. On the last Halloween, I spent a lot of time going through patterned and colored glass samples. [Art Director] Richard Wright built a lot of windows into the set using beveled and patterned glass. [Director of Photography] Michael Simmonds and Lee kidded me a lot about trying to shoot a pattern through every window. Lee would surgically trim each light to paint the pattern on the walls without any spill to give away the trick. He knows how I think. He knows when to add a diffusion frame and a bottomer or net someone’s shirt.

What have you learned about how Steve works? Lee Dodnaldson: One of the givens is that he will watch and learn during the rehearsal. I watch and learn as well, but watching his process is very impressive. After the rehearsal is over, he already knows exactly what angle he wants the lights to come from. He then stands on marks to decide where they should be. Knowing where to put lights for multiple lighting positions, depending on the scene’s action, is always impressive to me. Another given with Steve is that if he sees the face of the key light for one actor or mark on another actor or mark, he wants it gone. I usually have it done already, but occasionally he will catch one. Then I get the, “Stand on this mark and tell me what you see.”

“Oops” is my usual response.

and that’s where I so appreciate Lee as a wingman. In the smoke, flames and explosions, I know that our work will have integrity and the crew will be safe. LD: Still, it feels like controlled chaos nearly all day, every day.

What was the hardest set you’ve worked on? ST: Production wanted to shoot a crazy rave party at a huge, abandoned power plant in Charleston, SC. Lots of moving lights and strobes. There seemed to be nowhere to hang truss in this cavernous, crumbling building. There was a sea of old power-generating equipment, so heavy that it was impossible to navigate the span of about 56 feet. LD: This was going to take some creative rigging. [Key Rigging Grip] Geoff Herbert and I discussed what needed to be done, and then he went to work figuring out how to pull this off. The first thing we had to do was get structural engineering reports. It was determined that the existing gantry track could support the weight needed for the truss rig. Getting it up there was another story. Some specialty climbing riggers were brought in to hang the initial motor rigs. Then the truss puzzle pieces. Once the main supports were installed, more motors were added to be able to raise and lower the truss for the light installation and get the lights to the proper height.

This light show would have put most raves to shame.

The rig looked fantastic and worked perfectly. All we needed was atmosphere and piles of extras dressed in black leather, and a few naked dancers.

What is it about working with Michael Simmonds that’s so great? ST: When we started The Exorcist together, we were excited about his plan to lend it a film noir look, so we re-watched some old Robert Mitchum movies. We broke out the old Fresnels and had fun using hard direct light with stark shadows. It’s funny that with all the fantastic LED lights that have come out, I was most excited to light sets using 20 Tweenies! Lee and I created a shadowy world where anything could be lurking in the darkness. LD: Every strategically placed light was met with a barrage of stands and flags also placed very specifically.

Sometimes so specifically that even being off the mark by an inch would hurt the effect. Steve and I cringed the first time it happened on a tight set, in fear that we wouldn’t get a repeat performance. Luckily, we did, and Steve suggested that maybe I could ride the flag for this particular scene. He was right. I put on my ball cap to help avoid eye contact and did my best. We pulled it off without upsetting the actors.

How has technology changed what you do in lighting? ST: Mostly in being able to pre-visualize.

With the floor plan provided by the art department, I can pull up a 3D drawing of the sets using SketchUp. I can then import the truss, lights and moving lights and place them in the rig. This eliminates so many gray areas for Lee and his crew. I can draw backings.

We can imagine where the camera may be for each sequence. This helps us avoid running into so many problems. If we are shooting horror, the DP generally uses lower camera angles. Lee and I can see out the virtual windows to determine whether we will see off the top of the trans lights. Lee will then either ask for taller trans lights or move them a bit. This ability to see what the camera sees before we get there saves Lee and me so much problem-solving time on the day.

With WYSIWYG, we can virtually light the stages using the moves we will be using to work out the lighting choreography before the sets are even built. When the board operator arrives, we can concentrate on working with the music to come up with a choreography that will keep the viewing audience interested. When I anticipate shadow problems from the follow-spots, Lee is quick to figure out a crane base placement. LD: It takes a great deal of the educated guesswork out of what we do. Thanks to technology, we have much smaller and faster computers – with the DIT right there to help set the look. This has the DP’s preferred color correction, contrast, et cetera. Once the live feed goes through the system and onto his specifically calibrated monitors, we can see, in real time, exactly what the DP wants. This gives Steve and me the ability to sit in the DIT tent and look for lighting issues.

You guys have gone deep into the horror genre. ST: It is a different animal. LD: Budget, for example. ST: And very little time, where you find yourself scrambling all night. We have to work very fast with a smaller crew.

It helps that Lee and his crew are experienced. I don’t have to second-guess. I can just roll onto the next. We get one chance to make it right. LD: Lighting for the horror genre is a fine balance between not enough light and too much, and it’s one we are pretty good at maintaining. ST: Add in a lot of effects and weapons,

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“It’s a movie about two people going to Mars,” laughs Key Grip Birdsong. “Who would not want to do this romance?” “Not to mention comedy – and ‘space work’!” adds Chief Lighting Technician Sandau. “In all my years, I don’t think I’ve done anything like it – and I knew it was going to be fun.” As soon as Sandau and Birdsong began their journey, “it was like we’d worked together for years,” Birdsong adds. “The more outrageous the setup, the more we realized we both knew what the other wanted.”

How was this different from a traditional drama for lighting and grip? John Sandau: Brendan explained it was a three-part movie and finally on Mars itself.

Three different looks would be accomplished by lens and color choices and the use of atmosphere. We had a lot of discussions and a lot of tests. Chris Birdsong: Colors played such a huge part. Being in the future and taking place in three different environments – Earth, space, and Mars – made for a fun ride. We did some

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tests to dial in the look for each location so that we had a formula to go by once we started filming.

What were some of Brendan’s asks? JS: Before we started, he told me about a scene where the characters were going to be watching a 3D projection with varied colors. He said we wouldn’t have the images when we shot it, but we’d need to light them as if we did. CB: One of the first requests Brendan had for me was for the scene when they are in the elevator together right before she boards the ship. We shot this at a high-rise hotel in downtown Atlanta. I had to mount a camera to the outside of a glass elevator that had few places to attach to other than glass. So, I used strong suction cups and a couple of safety cables attached to the top of the elevator. VFX came in and cleaned up the reflection of the camera in the glass. We also took some plate shots of the elevator because we needed to shoot more of that scene on stage in front of a blue screen. Once on stage, John and I had to replicate the lighting effect for the elevator ride using LED cues and a couple of grips waving flags in front of the lights.

What was it like shooting the ride to Mars? JS: Hilarious [laughs]. We had a cabin on the ship to Mars.

We had so many options with built-in LEDs. We could

do cues where the lights came on, on command, or would change color in the shot. All things that would be tough to do before LED’s. CB: LED lighting has changed so much of what I do as a grip. Because most of what we now use is all controlled by a dimmer-board operator, the color and intensity of the light can be changed instantaneously. LED’s cancel the need for nets, color, and neutral density gels. The small size of many of the fixtures also contributes to easy rigging.

We were able to get lights in places that would have been much more difficult before LED’s.

Why was the “spacewalk” so much fun? CB: It all had to be shot against black, and, typically, when you’re doing a VFX-heavy scene, you would use either blue or green screens. However, in a situation where you’re shooting a scene where the backdrop is virtually void of light, like the darkness of space, it’s better to use black material. This helps us avoid any blue/ green color from reflecting onto the helmet visors, the spacesuits, or the actors’ skin. JS: We had to figure out how to rig the actors, the camera, and the lights to get the right angles. Then, for another shot, everything would change. Maybe the actors could only be rigged a certain way that put them in a different orientation.

Chris had to figure out not only how to get the camera

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where it had to go but how to rig our lights in the right positions. I would tell him: “Here is where the light needs to be. What do you think?” And he’d often come up with a quick and efficient answer. CB: We needed a way to quickly move our key light into different places, from down low to very high overhead. I believe we were using an 18K tungsten to mimic the sun and a SkyPanel s360 to mimic Mars. We decided the best way to move the sun was to put it at the end of my 18-foot Felix camera crane, which made for quick setups.

Why was the location work so difficult? JS: The house was beautiful but surrounded by hills covered in thick woods. We had to find ways to rig lights in crazy places. We had to work together to find solutions to get lights where we needed them. CB: The house was in a neighborhood along the Chattahoochee River with steep hills and a lot of trees. Normally for night exterior scenes, we will use large lifts to hang our lights. However, the roads were so steep it made using them difficult. So, we used the trees and the topography to our advantage by mounting lights high up in the trees as well as on hills in neighboring yards. We even used the trees around the driveway to tie off a large balloon light.

This is a space comedy, so there must have been some “you’ve got to be kidding” moments. JS: The moving sun.

CB: As we did in the spacewalk, there was a moment when the ship rotates in space. So, we had to do a lot of large lights moving. JS: Sometimes we just rolled a stand on the stage floor. Other times, Chris came up with dolly rigs and crane rigs. CB: We also had to make the sunlight look like it was shifting through the windows. The Felix crane with the 18K worked great for this. We were able to swing the arm of the crane to easily move the angle of the light across the set.

Describe the teamwork you built together on this project. JS: I have worked in Europe where the set lighting technicians handle not only the lights but the flagging and diffusion as well. Those are jobs that are done by grips here. There you have one department taking care of it, while here we have two. So, working on this show, it was important that Grip and Lighting worked together as one team. I know Chris and I always looked at it like that. An example is when I needed to have a light rigged, he would come up with a solution. If he needed to have some leeway to make the rig faster or easier, I could do that for him.

CB: John, having so much experience in both departments because of his work in the European market, made my job so much easier. He has a great understanding of what it takes to fine-tune everything after the light has landed, so he was always setting me up for success.

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Ohio-born Chief Lighting Technician Cody Jacobs, and Pennsylvania-born Key Grip Ed Titus met at Columbia College, in Chicago. “He worked at the film cage where you went to check-out camera equipment, and I worked over at the lighting cage where people came to checkout lighting equipment,” Jacobs recalls. However, their partnership really began when they both ended up helping fellow Columbia College student, Local 600 Director of Photography Christian Sprenger. For almost two decades, the two have worked together on everything from commercials to pilots and series.

“We forged a solid partnership in problem-solving and a great friendship,” Titus adds. “Ironically, we recently came full circle, working once again, back in Chicago, with Christian as the DP on Station Eleven.”

Because you know each other so well, is there a shorthand? Cody Jacobs: Definitely. When I start to set lights, Ed is right in there with the diffusion I was going to ask for, and the siders and other control the light will need. It’s seamless. Ed Titus: Just seeing where Cody is pointing while talking to his team, I know what he’s going to need. Also, based on the fixture he’s selected, I can usually tell if it’s something he’s looking to have spread on the walls versus something he wants to be contained. I also have a good sense of how Cody likes to light, so I can bring different tools to the table. CJ: On Station Eleven, we had a lot of warm, practically motivated interior sets at night. A lot of times, we would be using actual practical lamps to do much of the lighting – controlling the undiffused light that comes out of the top of those types of lamps is a common thing we ask the Grip department to take care of. But Ed purchased some specialty diffusion that fit right on top of the practicals and softened or blocked that unwanted light in a clean and fast way.

Are pilots a different animal? CJ: We’ve done everything from small and scrappy to bigger and more logistically challenging. You have an opportunity to set the look for the series. ET: And you have a blank slate.

CJ & ET: [simultaneously] Which is also stressful! CJ: …because the decisions you’re making could affect a different key grip, gaffer, and DP for seasons to come.

I remember a pilot we did in Chicago that never aired.

We ended up having to shoot in a boardroom in a historic building where we couldn’t attach anything to

the walls or ceiling. So, after blocking rehearsal, we needed a quick way to get several lights up in the air to create a large, soft top light source without a lot of time or options. I told Ed what I was hoping to do, and he figured out a way to Frankenstein an overhead rig with two MAX Menace Arms and some creative use of speed rail. It ended up working out well with the added benefit of being flexible for all the coverage.

Why are commercials so interesting? CJ: Sometimes, in the same week, you’re doing something very small with minimal resources, and the next day something bigger and more complicated. I feel like the gaffer and key grip also tend to be asked to improvise more lastminute on commercials because of short schedules and minimal prep. We had to create a sunrise effect for a commercial at the last minute a few years ago that involved the special-effects team making a large box with clear plastic sides that were filled with smoke that could be vacuumed out on cue. We had an 18K on a jib arm that the grips were operating that rose up and over the box at a specific moment. This was all figured out on the day with four different departments working together!

Sometimes it’s the best-laid plan. CJ: On the Station Eleven pilot episodes, we had a scene we were shooting in a diner that had been changed and rewritten a few times. On the day we showed up, they decided to block the actors against a large set of windows along the street. It was a night scene, and we hadn’t prepared much for the location because things had been in flux. All of a sudden, we needed a way to help augment the light above the actors for a wide shot. Ed had the great idea of suction-cupping a few rigging points right to the glass so we could attach some lightweight fixtures. ET: On that same pilot, we shot some very large theaters in Chicago. We needed to light in a way we could do these tremendous wide shots with the whole theater space lit up but not see lights. The location played in two time periods – the current day as a functioning theater and another in the future where parts of the ceiling had collapsed, and there was raw light entering the theater. Cody asked if there was a chance of getting a motorized grid raised to the top of the main theater audience area. My riggers were able to do this, and Cody put in a great mix of large soft LED tiles and hard moving lights that

we could focus and change from below. The result was an extremely adjustable broad light that could quickly fulfill different looks when needed.

You both love to be creative with car rigs. CJ: Ed is a pro with car rigging and always anticipates when lighting will be needed even if it hasn’t been asked for.

There have been multiple times where we are doing some driving scenes, and initially, in prep, we decided we didn’t want to put lights on the vehicle, and then, of course, right before we roll, I come up to him to ask for a point – and it’s already there. ET: Another time, we did a pilot that involved a ton of nighttime driving.

Camera was always inside the car, looking all around, and we were going to be on a pretty tight schedule, shooting interior and exterior of the same car – no doubles. We had talked about various rigs we could pull off, but at the end of the day, we basically covered the inside of the car with Velcro, and Cody just sort of stuck lights wherever was out of the shot at a good angle. Worked well, was super-fast, and gave us what we needed.

You are often in each other’s heads without even knowing it. ET: I am sometimes in places before Cody, so I can help get ahead of him, whether it’s on set – or in prep. I remember a pilot in Chicago, where I was in Chicago, and Cody was still in L.A. filming. I would swing by the art office and get a chance to look at plans and such before he had the chance to see them.

So, on some sets, I would say, “Cody is going to want access here,” and have the riggers put in green beds or have a backing moved to give him more space for lighting, et cetera. Right place, right time.

What is crucial to know about the gaffer/key grip partnership? CJ: Even though the gaffer and key grip are in separate departments, they are a team, and things work best on set when those two roles complement each other rather than compete. ET: I think it’s often felt that a gaffer can’t do his job without a key there to help.

But it’s understated how much that is a two-way street.

A good gaffer putting lights in the right place makes a key grip’s life so much easier. And a well-placed lamp in a day exterior can speed up the grip’s day-exterior work process. We’re a team that relies on one another – not just a gaffer needing grips to set flags, but grips needing that light put somewhere that a flag can do its job.

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“I am always on a quest to find how to become faster and more efficient,” describes MTI Film’s Tanner Buschman. “I try to never touch my mouse and only use fast keys on my panels when I color.” Buschman started as an assistant at MTI a decade ago and has moved up through the company’s system. Today, as a senior colorist, he’s handled the final grading for shows such as FX’s American Horror Stories and Showtime’s The Affair. What most excites him today are the recent advances in color grading – such as HDR and new tools that make the format open to limitless possibilities.

makes up a very important part of the pipeline because each is on the front lines of color. They both work with the DP, making sure there is consistency between what is seen on set and what dailies look like.

They also help set the overall look of the show with the DP and allow him [or her] fast control over general color moves, retiming dailies, or general dialogue or concerns. It is very important to have dailies color reflect the final color. People get so acclimated to the color from dailies that it can be very hard to change the look after everyone has viewed a scene a certain way from the beginning.

How has the colorist’s role evolved? When it was just color timing, so much of the final look of the show was based around the film stock, chemical bath, and limited control with printer lights. Nowadays, colorists can be “digital flags,” helping the DP with lighting the set.

We can remap colors completely to suit storytelling needs, apply face beauty fixes, shape the picture with vignettes, emulate different films or media types, and bridge a gap between VFX artists and colorists. The modern colorist’s responsibilities have become more encompassing over the image’s final aesthetic.

How imperative is it for a DP to be in the final color-grade session? Most of them are still not paid to be there. I think it is important to have a DP sit in with a colorist for the final color. There is a symbiotic relationship that needs to develop. My job is to accentuate the DP’s vision of the image through color and contrast. Sometimes someone else will have final say over color, but it is nice to at least start color from the intentions of the DP. I find that they offer great insight into aspects of the image that colorists might not initially see. It could be an issue from set that they want to tackle in color, a concern they have about a scene, continuity issues, et cetera.

There is a push to have colorists get a solo card credit for end titles – is that warranted? Obviously I’m biased towards this answer [laughs]…but I think a way to look at it is, “How much does changing the role with another person change the final product?”

With a final colorist, if you change that person out with a different colorist, then you will get a different final image, much like asking five painters to paint the same tree and getting five different-looking trees in the end. There is a reason why the best in the industry always have return clients, and some of the biggest blockbusters are only colored by a few select people. I hope to see color grading start to get more recognition from the general public and card credits become a norm.

Where does the dailies colorist fit in the overall pipeline? The dailies colorist, along with the DIT,

Remote color grading emerged as a viable approach during COVID. Will it eventually replace in-person color grading, and how do the two compare? I am not a fan of remote color grading. It has nothing to do with a person sitting in the same room as me. I can do remote sessions with clients in Paris with no problem as long as they are in a color bay with a calibrated reference monitor. The problem right now with remote color grading sessions is the accurate reproduction of color on the viewing device and the wide range of environments within which the client could be viewing the media. Without accurate color reproduction on the client’s end, a colorist is flying blind trying to compromise the color notes to work on multiple monitors. An example is if a client says the picture is too milky on their iPad during a remote color session. By the time a colorist gets the

image to have enough contrast on the LCD iPad, they have destroyed how the image looks on a calibrated OLED TV. There is just no substitution for a client sitting in front of a calibrated reference monitor. But as far as the client sitting in another bay compared to sitting directly behind me [is concerned], there is very little difference in the color session.

Tell us about a recent favorite project. I enjoyed working on American Horror Stories, which looks great in HDR. We did an episode that was all about influences. They had a bunch of different mixed elements, like raw footage, Log C, Rec.709 footage, lower thirds, emoji overlays, and complex TikTok sequences with multiple mixed elements to Rec.709 with Log C in the same image. The show was Dolby Vision HDR, and that was where it got complicated very fast. Not only did I have to manage all the color spaces to try and get everything happily into Rec. 2020 PQ, but I also had to ensure that I could get back down to SDR, with every color mapped correctly, with no colorful emoji looking different when comparing HDR and SDR side by side. Getting down to SDR from the HDR image is tough because the Dolby analysis needs extra attention to make sure I am getting the values I need to make the SDR look correct and be consistent across multiple similar shots.

Shots that look simple and beautiful on the screen can be very tough for the colorist to get right…

[Laughs.] For sure, and this goes to the core of a good colorist. It is not about how to make an amazing shot of a sunset look good because you just added some contrast and saturation. The hardest moves for a colorist is the stuff that does not match because of x, y, z, and you now have to make it flawlessly cut within the scene. Generally, you will be using a lot of windows and keys to manhandle the picture into submission.

The average person would never bat an eye at these moves, but they are some of the hardest things for a colorist to pull off and why it is hard to just judge a colorist based on their showreel, where they only assembled the prettiest shots they work on.

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DUENSING Lynette Duensing started her career as a telecine operator, scanning film and color-grading in a linear workflow. She transferred hundreds of thousands of feet of film to video and learned to splice and clean film, load film on the telecine, sync sound, and color-grade the images using DaVinci and Pandora color-correction platforms. After 30 years as a colorist working in Los Angeles, Detroit, Chicago and Shanghai, she is now Senior Colorist at Instinctual Hollywood – working in commercials, music videos, episodic television, feature film VFX, theatrical trailers, and restoration/remastering as well as independent feature-film color finalizing.

How has the colorist’s job changed? The advent of digital acquisition was a seismic change. Non-linear color-grading platforms developed to grade these images led to the “democratization” of the industry.

You no longer needed a lab and expensive suite to finish a project. Advances in color workflows through the use of LUT’s and CDL’s have made it more straightforward to deliver the intended look of the filmmaker.

You do both color and restoration. Any differences or similarities? I do color-grading for digital restoration projects. The film is scanned to make a digital file that can then be color-graded, optimizing the image to capture the original intent of the filmmaker as closely as possible. Scratches and dirt that were present in the original film elements are removed on the digital scan by a restoration artist.

What was one of your most interesting jobs? Most recently, I worked with Polly Morgan [ASC, BSC] on the official trailer for Where the Crawdads Sing. The color session was remote to South Africa, where Polly was working on another film. Collaborating with her, the director Olivia Newman, and the editor Alan Edward Bell, all in different cities, worked quite well.

I was given notes in advance to do a pre-grade. Then we went through shot-by-shot for revisions in a virtual session. Polly is a great communicator. She easily articulates what she wants and how to get there. The feature film digital intermediate grade then would go on to Natasha Leonnet at Company 3.

Are there challenges when working in other countries? I once worked in Shanghai on commercials at Technicolor. Our clients were multinational ad agencies representing U.S. and European brands in China. It was important to understand the aesthetic of the region, which was, in many cases, very different from that of the U.S. market. My client, L’Oreal Paris, in particular, was sensitive to conveying beauty in the

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Chinese ideal. Soft, luminous skin tones, for example.

I was a resident of Shanghai. There was no escaping the differences in culture in everyday life. So, one had to be mindful of those differences and bring that mindset into the color suite.

How does grading a commercial differ from longer format projects? With a commercial or a trailer, you have a very short time to tell a story. So, every shot has to have maximum impact. In short-form projects, I might be using more power windows to enhance a product or environment than I might in long-form.

Time frame for delivery of the project might be a day or two as opposed to weeks. Developing a creative look while working fast is important.

What is it like working in a multi-screen immersive experience? What you’re referring to involves multiple screen venue installations – grading shots that will be pieced together seamlessly so that all the images flow from one screen to the next. For example, the original Kentucky Derby Museum installations, for Donna Lawrence Productions, utilized a multiple camera rig, capturing the race from the infield of the track. The viewer sees the race happening around them. Matching shots from each camera was an intricate task, not unlike matching the shots from a bullet rig. The slight differences in the lenses of each camera can result in a noticeable difference in color and contrast. I matched the elements using my scopes and by eye.

Tell us about the workflow for a trailer. It’s a bit of a hybrid and different from each film we’re doing.

Many times, I’m grading a trailer for a film that isn’t finished, months away from the feature film DI color session. In those cases, I’m starting with the raw EXR files, applying a show LUT and CDL’s, then grading with notes from the filmmakers. Fantasy Island [ICG Magazine September 2021] was done in this way. The editor from the creative editorial vendor sent an EDL

to conform the timeline with the camera files and VFX shots. I used the CDL files from set as a guide to start, then notes from the filmmaker. On other projects, the feature color is complete, and I receive graded files. I then do a trim pass to make the SOT’s work together in the context of the trailer. Other times I receive a graded trailer from the DI colorist, from which we will make versions for different markets.

What is it like colorizing animation? I love working on trailers for Sony Pictures Animation. They’ve been my favorite projects these past few years. We work in an ACES workflow. I like this because the look is very specific. Everyone applying the same RRT/ODT as a starting point means we’re all seeing the same thing. What I see in my theater is the same as what the animators see on the lot. Most of the time, the finished film is months away from the final DI. So, I get to work with the animators in the early stages of their process. We balance and power-window shots in a similar way as live-action. It’s a detail-oriented process that I quite like. Spider-Man: Into the SpiderVerse, Hotel Transylvania 3 and 4, Angry Birds 2, and The Mitchells vs. The Machines were among the animated trailers that I worked on during the early stages of production.

How important is it for colorists to share knowledge amongst themselves? I’m a co-founder of The Colorist Society of Hollywood, an invitation-only local chapter of The Colorist Society, formally known as [CSI]. Color-finishing artists with an exceptional body of work and industry leadership are being invited to join. Education, mentoring, fellowship, and advocating for our craft to promote greater recognition for the work of color finishing artists is the mission. We envision the day when more prominent screen credits, inclusion in major awards shows, and a separate colorist category in IMDb are a reality. We also believe in the importance of fostering relationships with other organizations, like the ASC.

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“If a look or effect can be captured in-camera, that’s great,” shares Siggy Ferstl, Senior Colorist, Company 3, Santa Monica. “But, often, there are images that need refinement or looks that simply can’t be achieved on set for any number of reasons. That’s where the most exciting work of the finishing colorist comes in.

Today, I can offer filmmakers so many more options in the color suite than I could even a few years ago.”

Ferstl started his career in postproduction at age 16 in his native Australia. After mastering the work of the digital colorist, he became a highly soughtafter colorist for commercials in that country and throughout Southeast Asia before relocating to London. Fascinated by the intersection of technology and artistry, he is often among the first in his field to try new tools and push the boundaries of what can be done in the color grading suite. His extensive body of work includes Lost in Space, The Boys, S.W.A.T., Togo, The Morning Show, Narcos and Narcos: Mexico.

What’s the most recent significant change in the colorist’s job? The increased use of HDR. HDR formats like Dolby Vision and HDR10 create the opportunity for colorists to present images that look quite different from the SDR version of the same image. It allows for much brighter highlights and deeper shadows, and it expands the way colors are displayed. Not every DP or director wants to push those capabilities in the grade.

Some still very much want to master for Rec. 709 or P3, and they want the HDR version to essentially feel like the SDR. In those cases, we don’t do very much with that additional dynamic range. For other shows, like Lost in Space, we really made use of the possibilities HDR offers, like bringing out a starfield or enhancing the colors in some different environment on some other planet.

What new tech tools have emerged for colorists?

I work in DaVinci Resolve, and they are constantly expanding their palette of what they offer. They added what they call OpenFX a few years ago and, more recently, some amazing AI tools that offer additional ways to augment the image. They’ve also added in the visual-effects software Fusion. It allows for some more elaborate compositing and more pronounced look changes. I’ll use it on occasion for sky replacements or to access its paint and compositing tools. My clients are happy if I can apply my Fusion skills in the room rather than have to send shots out to VFX. I did a show called Togo a few years ago where we built an elaborate look into the grade, and some 15, 20 layers just in Fusion to build that look. The idea was to digitally recreate the early 20th-Century film stock Autochrome. The work involved adding multiple high-resolution elements to the image, adding grain patterns, textures, edge focus and borders. It’s great that filmmakers want to explore different ways in the grade to create what’s needed.

How early should a colorist be involved? It’s always helpful if the DP and colorist can confer before production begins. I’ll almost always make a show LUT that they can use on set and as a guide for the dailies colorist. But a rule of thumb is that the more elaborate the look they’re going for, the more important it is to talk and test early on. If the imagery is supposed to be very stylized – say it’s an aged look or a futuristic world – it’s especially important to work out some of the details before shooting starts, if possible. For The Boys, the filmmakers knew they wanted a textured, dark and contrasty look, so it was helpful to work out what that meant in advance.

8K is fast upon us – how has high-resolution/largeformat capture impacted what you do in the grade?

People have been shooting with 8K sensors for a while, but I’ve never delivered anything for display at that resolution. I’m usually working in a 2K and 4K timeline within Resolve. With sensors that are 6K or 8K, or whatever it is, some people shoot the whole image area, and others will use just part of the frame and keep the additional image information to have in case they need to stabilize the shot or add camera shake. Resolution itself doesn’t have that much effect on what the colorist does, except that we might be asked to do a bit more beauty work to help out the talent and hide some of what that resolution reveals.

Is TV a lot different from features? Showrunner versus director in the room? The difference is less than it once was. A lot of TV today for the big streamers is as elaborate and cinematic as most features. The approach is often similar, and the expectations are frequently the same. The differences have less to do with where the project will premiere and more to do with what the filmmakers want to accomplish in the grade and what their schedules allow.

What is your favorite recent project? I’ve really enjoyed Lost in Space. I colored the entire series, and we did a lot of interesting things that I had never done previously. I mentioned Resolve’s OpenFX panel. I used that significantly in several ways. For example, there is a “glow” function that we used to create interesting diffusion-type effects that worked very nicely, particularly for the HDR version. Say a character would walk in front of a window or some kind of light source that makes their face appear dark relative to the light source. This would be even more pronounced in HDR than in SDR because the contrast is that much greater.

Normally, I would use a Power Window to isolate the face, track the movement of the character, and then bring up the level on the face until we can see some of the person’s features. But by carefully blending in this glow, we could add a kind of atmosphere or flare to the image that has the effect of both softening the contrast of the scene’s highlights while bringing out details on the face in an organic-looking way.

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PRODUCTION CREDITS COMPILED BY TERESA MUÑOZ 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 compiling this section. 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 120

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First Man / Photo by Daniel McFadden

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DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: JOHN TANZER OPERATORS: JACOB PINGER, BEN VANCLEAVE, DAVE HIRSCHMANN ASSISTANTS: RYAN GUZDZIAL, JESS FAIRLESS, KEVIN ANDERSON, ANDREA GILL, NICO MARTIN, ALAN CERTEZA DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: ALVARO ROBLES DIGITAL UTILITY: ARIS DEMOPOULOS STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: SCOTT EVERETT WHITE

20TH CENTURY FOX TELEVISION “THE SON IN LAW”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: BENJAMIN KASULKE OPERATORS: MARC CARTER, GARRETT ROSE ASSISTANTS: GRETCHEN HATZ, LITONG ZHEN, TOMMY IZUMI, ROBIN BURSEY LOADER: EMILIO MEJIA DIGITAL UTILITY: ROBERT RUELAS

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DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: LARKIN SEIPLE OPERATORS: ALEX KORNREICH, MARIO CONTINI ASSISTANTS: MATT SANDERSON, TIFFANY AUG, JONATHAN DEC, ERIN ENDOW STEADICAM OPERATOR: ALEX KORNREICH DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: MATT CONRAD LOADER: EJ DICKERSON DIGITAL UTILITY: SAM COOPER STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: ANDREW COOPER

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STILL PHOTO BY: CARLOS LOPEZ-CALLEJA/ DISNEY

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ESMAIL CORP.

COLD WEATHER PRODUCTIONS/CRANE TOWN “HYPE” SEASON 2

“LET THE RIGHT ONE IN” SEASON 1

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DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: CARLOS GONZALEZ, SVC OPERATORS: GREG MATTHEWS, BLAINE BAKER

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20TH CENTURY FOX TELEVISION “SON IN LAW” PILOT BACK ROW (LEFT TO RIGHT): GARY WEBSTER, B CAMERA 2ND AC GARETTE ROSE, B CAMERA OPERATOR MARC HAMMEL, B CAMERA DOLLY GRIP ROBERT RUELAS, CAMERA UTILITY SEAN MCQUEEN, C CAMERA DOLLY GRIP MARC CARTER, A CAMERA OPERATOR ROBERT HOOVEN, A CAMERA DOLLY GRIP BENJAMIN KASULKE, DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY

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HIGH ROLLER PRODUCTIONS, LLC “POKER FACE” SEASON 1

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: STEVE YEDLIN OPERATORS: DALE MYRAND, REBECCA ARNDT ASSISTANTS: TONY COAN, SUREN KARAPETYAN, DAVE ROSS, COREY LICAMELI LOADERS: BILLY HOLMAN, ANDREW HWANG STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: PHIL CARUSO

MIDDLE ROW (LEFT TO RIGHT): ROBERT SPAULDING, C CAMERA MŌVI OPERATOR BEAU MORAN, DIGITAL UTILITY RAFIEL GILLEN, C CAMERA 1ST AC LLITONG ZHEN, B CAMERA 1ST AC GRACE THOMAS, C CAMERA 2ND AC FRONT ROW (LEFT TO RIGHT) GRETCHEN HATZ, A CAMERA 1ST AC TOMMY IZUMI, A CAMERA 2ND AC PHOTO BY TEMMA HANKIN, STILL PHOTOGRAPHER

IMPROBABLE VALENTINE, LLC

“IMPROBABLE VALENTINE” SEASON 1

DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: MARCELL REV, CHRIS NORR OPERATORS: ARI ROBBINS, SOC, GEORGE TUR ASSISTANTS: BAYLEY SWEITZER, TSYEN SHEN, JAMES DEAN DRUMMOND, CORY MAFFUCCI DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: MICHAEL POMORSKI LOADERS: AUDE VALLO, NAIMA NOGUERA STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: EDWARD CHEN

IT'S A LAUGH PRODUCTIONS “BUNK'D” SEASON 6

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: GARY SCOTT OPERATORS: DAVE FORREST, CORY GUNTER, KEN HERFT, PETER WILSON CAMERA UTILITIES: ADAN TORRES, MEGGINS MOORE

JAX FULL FRONTAL, LLC

“FULL FRONTAL” SEASON 7

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: BARBIE LEUNG ASSISANT: JASON RASWANT

JAY SQUARED PRODUCTIONS, LLC “MANIFEST” SEASON 4

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: SARAH CAWLEY OPERATORS: RYAN TOUSSIENG, DANIEL HERSEY

CINEMATOGRAPHY - POST PRODUCTION - DIGITAL WORKFLOWS

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ASSISTANTS: ANDREW PECK, WESLEY HODGES, HILARY BENAS, ANNE STRAUMAN-SCOTT LOADER: ANDREW BOYD

MESQUITE PRODUCTIONS

“THE AFTERPARTY” SEASON 2

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: ROSS RIEGE OPERATORS: GRANT ADAMS, BROOKS ROBINSON ASSISTANTS: BIANCA BAHENA, TYLER ALLISON, VANESSA WARD, ALDO PORRAS STEADICAM OPERATOR: GRANT ADAMS DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: JOHN WHEELER DIGITAL UTILITY: WILLIAM RANDALL STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: AARON EPSTEIN

MIGUEL WANTS TO FIGHT, INC.

“MIGUEL WANTS TO FIGHT”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: DIANA MATOS OPERATORS: BRENDAN POUTIER, JESSE SANCHEZ-STRAUSS ASSISTANTS: SYMON MINK, YURI INOUE, DAVE MASLYN, NOTES KAEWBAIDHOON LOADER: JOSIAH WEINHOLD STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: BRETT ROEDEL

NAVESINK RIVER PRODUCTIONS, LLC “MIRANDA'S VICTIM”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: PIERLUIGI MALAVASI ASSISTANTS: ADAM GONZALEZ, JOSEPH ROBINSON LOADER: DANIELLE WILCOX

NBC UNIVERSAL TELEVISION, LLC “HARLEM” SEASON 2

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: MATTHEW EDWARDS OPERATORS: MATTHEW FLEISCHMANN, JORGE DEL TORO ASSISTANTS: MARCOS HERRERA, VANESSA VIERA, NEICY MCFADDEN, MIGUEL GONZALEZ STEADICAM OPERATOR: MATTHEW FLEISCHMANN DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: TIFF ARMOUR-TEJADA LOADERS: JERON BLACK, KRISTINA ALLEN

“THE BEST MAN: THE FINAL CHAPTERS” SEASON 1 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: GREGORY GARDINER OPERATORS: DAVID ISERN, MORGAN GARDINER ASSISTANTS: JUSTIN WHITACRE, MARC CHARBONNEAU, MATEO GONZALEZ, NIALANEY RODRIGUEZ LOADER: ASH HIATT STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: CLIFTON PRESCOD

“THE '90S SHOW” SEASON 1

5/13/22 9:26 AM

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: GARY BAUM, ASC OPERATORS: JAMIE HITCHCOCK, DAVID DECHANT, EDDIE FINE, LANCE BILLITZER ASSISTANTS: CHRIS WORKMAN, YUKA KADONO DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: DEREK LANTZ VIDEO CONTROLLER: JOHN O'BRIEN UTILITIES: DAN LORENZE, RICHIE FINE

PACIFIC 2.1 ENTERTAINMENT GROUP, INC. “WU-TANG: AN AMERICAN SAGA” SEASON 3

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: GAVIN KELLY OPERATORS: ELI ARONOFF, BLAKE JOHNSON ASSISTANTS: DEAN MARTINEZ, CHRIS WIEZOREK, BRIAN GRANT, ADAM DEREZENDES DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: PAUL SCHILENS LOADER: DAN BROWN

NETFLIX PRODUCTIONS, LLC

PANTHERA PRODUCTIONS, INC.

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: TOD CAMPBELL OPERATORS: MICK FROELICH, BRIAN JACKSON ASSISTANTS: TREVOR LOOMIS, ADRIANNA BRUNETTO-LIPMAN, MARC LOFORTE, ALEC NICKEL DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: DOUG HORTON LOADER: BECKY HEWITT STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: JOJO WHILDEN

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: MATTHEW LIBATIQUE, ASC OPERATOR: SCOTT SAKAMOTO, SOC ASSISTANTS: AURELIA WINBORN, TIM METIVIER, LIZ HEDGES, CORNELIA KLAPPER LOADER: NAIMA NOGUERA

“LEAVE THE WORLD BEHIND”

“MAESTRO AKA RYBERNIA”

JUNE/JULY 2022 PRODUCTION CREDITS

125

PICROW STREAMING, INC.

“THE MARVELOUS MRS. MAISEL” SEASON 5

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: ALEX NEPOMNIASCHY OPERATORS: JIM MCCONKEY, NIKNAZ TAVAKOLIAN ASSISTANTS: ANTHONY CAPPELLO, ELIZABETH SINGER, JAY KIDD, BRIAN GIALLORENZO DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: MALIKA FRANKLIN LOADER: BRANDON BABBIT STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: PHILIPPE ANTONELLO

SALT SPRING MEDIA, INC.

“LADY IN THE LAKE AKA FLAMING” SEASON 1 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: LACHLAN MILNE OPERATORS: JULIAN DELACRUZ, WYLDA BAYRON ASSISTANTS: LIAM SINNOTT, IAN AXILROD, PAUL TILDEN, JASON HOCHREIN DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: LUKE TAYLOR DIGITAL UTILITY: JEFF DICKERSON LOADER: MASHA PAVLOVA STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: JESSICA KOURKOUNIS

SEAGLASS PRODUCTIONS, LLC “MURDER MYSTERY 2”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: BOJAN BAZELLI, ASC OPERATORS: ROBERTO DE ANGELIS, JOE CICIO, DON KING ASSISTANTS: EJ MISISCO, PAUL TILDEN, BRAD PETERMAN, NOAH HAMILTON, MATT HEATH, BAILEY NAGY, JEFF MAKARAUSKAS, MICHAEL PRIOSTE LOADER: MARK LIM DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: STEVE FREEBAIRN DIGITAL UTILITIES: NOHEA KAHAULELO, KAHEA KAHAULELO STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: SCOTT YAMANO PUBICIST: TAMMY SANDLER

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: JEFF MESSENGER VIDEO UTILITIES: MICHAEL CORWIN, JEFF KLIMUCK STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: CAROL KAELSON

“WHEEL OF FORTUNE” SEASON 37

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: JEFF ENGEL OPERATORS: DIANE L. FARRELL, SOC, L.DAVID IRETE, RAY GONZALES, MIKE TRIBBLE HEAD UTILITY: TINO MARQUEZ CAMERA UTILITY: RAY THOMPSON VIDEO CONTROLLER: JEFF MESSENGER VIDEO UTILITIES: MICHAEL CORWIN, JEFF KLIMUCK JIB ARM OPERATOR: STEVE SIMMONS STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: CAROL KAELSON

SG FILM PRODUCTIONS

STARZ P-TOWN PRODUCTIONS, LLC “HIGHTOWN” SEASON 3

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: RADIUM CHEUNG, HSKC OPERATORS: DAVID KIMELMAN, SHAWN LEWALLEN ASSISTANTS: ALAN ALDRIDGE, ELI WALLACE-JOHANSSON, SETH LEWIS, TIMOTHY DWYER CAMERA UTILITY: HALEY NELMS DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: ANDY BADER LOADER: BRANDON ROBEY STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: DANA HAWLEY

SWEET PARTNERS, LLC “SWEETWATER”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: MASSIMO ZERI OPERATORS: BRUCE A. GREENE, TAMMY FOUTS ASSISTANTS: MARY BROWN, JIM NYGREN, JONATHAN KURT STEADICAM OPERATOR: BRUCE A. GREENE DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: DINO DUMANDAN

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: BLAKE MCCLURE OPERATORS: NICK MEDRUD, EM MICHELLE GONZALES, WES TURNER ASSISTANTS: LOGAN HALL, KELSEY JUDDO, NICHOLAS KRAMER, MILANA BURDETTE, ESTHER WOODWORTH, BOBBY HATFIELD, JULIO ZEPEDA DIGITAL UTILITY: BRANDON GUTIERREZ

TPA PRODUCTIONS, LLC

“CHALLENGERS AKA TIRE TOWN”

OPERATORS: BIANCA BUTTI, TERRENCE HAYES ASSISTANTS: TIMOTHY SWEENEY, JAMIESON FITZPATRICK, MATTHEW HEDGES, CHUCK MOYA STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: NIKO TAVERNISE

UNCLE GEORGE PRODUCTIONS, LLC “SERVANT” SEASON 4

DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: LOWELL MEYER, GABRIEL LOBOS OPERATORS: AARON KING, NICHOLAS HUYNH ASSISTANTS: ANTON MIASNIKOV, MIKE TOLAND, JAMES MCCANN, LEON SANGINITI, JR. LOADER: SEAN GALCZYK STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: JESSICA KOURKOUNIS

UNIVERSAL TELEVISION, LLC

“NEVER HAVE I EVER” SEASON 4

VACATION HOME PRODUCTIONS

JUNE/JULY 2022 PRODUCTION CREDITS

“ALL RISE” SEASON 3

DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: AMANDA TREYZ, DAVID HARP OPERATORS: TIM ROARKE, STEVE CLANCY, KRISTI ARNDS ASSISTANTS: MATT GUIZA, ADAM TSANG, NICOLE CRIVLARE, JOE DIBARTOLOMEO, RANDY SHANOFSKY, BENNY BAILEY CAMERA UITLITY: STEVE DELGADILLO LOADER: EDUARDO GONZALEZ

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

“MIRACLE WORKERS” SEASON 4

STARZ POWER PRODUCTIONS, LLC DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: AARON MEDICK OPERATORS: PHILIP MARTINEZ, CHRIS SCARAFILE

WARNER BROS

TNT PRODUCTIONS

OPERATOR: KIRK GARDNER ASSISTANTS: GEOFFREY STORTS, PENELOPE HELMER, MELANIE GATES, JACK KHORRAM STEADICAM OPERATOR: KIRK GARDNER DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: NATE BORCK LOADER: KYAH COOK STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: ALAN MARKFIELD

“POWER BOOK” SEASON 3

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: JARIN BLASCHKE ASSISTANTS: NORRIS FOX, JONATHAN CLARK, LEON SANGINITI DIGITAL UTILITY: AUSTIN KITE STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: WALTER THOMSON

“BOB HEARTS ABISHOLA” SEASON 3

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: RHET BEAR OPERATORS: PATRICK MCGINLEY, SCOTT HOFFMAN ASSISTANTS: BLAIR ROGERS, PETER DEPHILLIPPIS, GEOFF GOODLOE, ULRIKE LAMSTER STEADICAM OPERATOR: SCOTT HOFFMAN STEADICAM ASSISTANT: GEOFF GOODLOE DIGITAL LOADER: CARL HELDER DIGITAL UTILITY: NATT VINYUWONGE STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: LARA BRENNAN

“HEART OF A LION”

126

ASSISTANTS: MICHAEL GAROFALO, RODRIGO MILLAN GARCE, DYLAN ENDYKE, SCOTT GAROFALO DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: ROB MUIA LOADER: TREVOR BARCUS PUBLICIST: SABRINA LAUFER

“KNOCK AT THE CABIN”

COMMERCIALS 1ST AVE MACHINE “META”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: TOBIA SEMPI OPERATORS: SAM O'MELIA, SOPHIE BRUZA, CHARLIE WUPPERMAN, EMILY M. GONZALES, ASSISTANTS: RUDY SALAS, DAISY SMITH, NICOLE MARTINEZ, ERIC MATOS, LAURA GOLDBERG, GAVIN GROSSI, ERIK STAPELFELDT LOADER: TIMOTHY GAER DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: RAFFAELE VESCO

BISCUIT FILMWORKS “GOOGLE FI”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: ALEXIS ZABE OPERATOR: DAVID OLAONIYE ASSISTANTS: KARLA MARIE WILSON, EZRA BASSIN-HILL, RYAN MONELLI, JORDAN CANTU, TAMARA ARROBA DIGITAL IMAGING TECHS: NINA CHADHA, SCOTT STEPHENS

CADENCE FILMS “HUGO BOSS”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: ALEXIS ZABE ASSISTANTS: WAYNE GORING, AJIRI AKPOLO DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: NINA CHADHA

CMS

“CAMPBELL'S”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: KAI SAUL ASSISTANTS: NICOLAS MARTIN, ALAN CERTEZA DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: NATE PENA

“PRUDENTIAL”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: ALEXANDER HANKOFF

ASSISTANTS: NINA CHIEN, MITCH MALPICA DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: ANDREW PISANO

LITTLE MINX

RAUCOUS

DIVISION7

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: MATTHEW LLOYD ASSISTANTS: DAVID EDSALL, MIMI PHAN STEADICAM OPERATOR: XAVIER THOMPSON DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: CHARLES ALEXANDER

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: ROB HAUER

O POSITIVE

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: CRISTINA DUNLAP ASSISTANTS: RYAN SAX, JOE ASHI STEADICAM OPERATOR: GREG ARCH DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: MATT MAIO

“CHASE”

“OPTIMUM”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: LOGAN TRIPLETT OPERATOR: JUN LI ASSISTANTS: MICHAEL LEMNITZER, REBEKAH VANDERLINDEN DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: ZACK MARCHINSKY

“BEST BUY”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: ERIC SCHMIDT ASSISTANTS: LAURA GOLDBERG, GAVIN GROSSI DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: JOHN SPELLMAN

“THE NEW YORK TIMES”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: MICHAEL FERNANDEZ ASSISTANTS: CHEVY ANDERSON, DARNELL MCDONALD, JOE ROBINSON DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: ILYA AKIYOSHI

PARK PICTURES “META”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: KRISTY TULLY ASSISTANTS: ERIC MATOS, RYAN SIMPSON

HUNGRY MAN, INC. “AT&T”

PRETTYBIRD

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: KAI SAUL OPERATOR: JUN LI ASSISTANTS: NICOLAS MARTIN, DAVID E. THOMAS, ALAN CERTEZA DIGITAL IMAGING TECHS: CJ MILLER, BEN CRUMP

“VERIZON NATIONAL BROADBAND”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: JEFF CRONENWETH OPERATORS: DANA MORRIS ASSISTANTS: MARK SANTONI, PAUL TOOMEY, SCOTT O'NEIL DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: JOHN SPELLMAN TECHNOCRANE OPERATOR: JOSEPH RODMELL TECHNOCRANE TECH: MARCIN CZWALGA REMOTE HEAD TECH: JAY SHEVECK

IDENTITY

“DICK'S SPORTING GOODS”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: TODD BANHAZL ASSISTANTS: DAVE EDSALL, AMANDA DAROUIE, ALEX SCOTT STEADICAM OPERATOR: XAVIER THOMPSON DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: NINA CHADHA TECHNORANE OPERATOR: RON TATHAM TECHNOCRANE TECH: MIKE SAPIENZA

RADICAL MEDIA

“OPENZA”

SUPERPRIME “AMAZON”

“TARGET”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: ALICE BROOKS OPERATOR: JASON GOEBEL ASSISTANTS: JOSEPH SORIA, HARRY HENG DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: NINA CHADHA

TASTE

“HOMEBAKE”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: TRISTAN SHERIDAN ASSISTANT: JOHN CLEMENS DIGITAL IMAGING TECHS: KAZIM KARAISMAILOGLU, ARTUR DZIEWECZYNSKI

THE DIRECTORS BUREAU “US CELLULAR”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: ALEXIS ZABE ASSISTANTS: MATT BERBANO DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: NINA CHADHA

“MERCEDES”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: COLIN WATKINSON ASSISTANTS: NIRANJAN MARTIN, CHRIS STRAUSER, DAVID GALLAGHER DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: BRYCE MCDONALD

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CHAPMAN LEONARD CINEC

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WWW.INSTAGRAM.COM/THEICGMAG/ WWW.IDXTEK.COM

MASTERPIECE INT'L

23

WWW.MASTERPIECEINTL.COM

MATTHEWS STUDIO

123

WWW.MSEGRIP.COM

NETFLIX

11

PANAVISION SONY

31

15

TERADEK ZEISS

FYC.NETFLIX.COM WWW.SONYCINE.COM

2&3 27

WWW.PANAVISION.COM TERADEK.COM WWW.ZEISS.COM/SUPREMEPRIME

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STOP MOTION

Scott Yamano HUSTLE

Shooting unit stills on Hustle was one of the best experiences of my career.

Having worked with Adam [Sandler] for over a decade, I know his love of basketball runs deep. With me being a die-hard Lakers fan and LeBron [James] as a producer, it was a dream come true. The moment Dr. J walked on set, the vibe was electric. What this image doesn’t reveal is that behind me, there were around one-hundred background performers surrounding the basketball court, in addition to the cast and crew – everyone just standing in awe of Dr. J. Not only is he one of the greatest NBA players of all time; he is also a 76ers legend, and we happened to be shooting in Philadelphia, so the excitement level was off the charts. Our director, Jeremiah [Zagar], also a Philadelphia native, understood the magnitude of having Dr. J in the movie and was thrilled to direct him in this scene. It was a magical day for everyone.

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