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8 SEPTEMBER 2022 PICTURE IMPERFECT FEATURE 01 Sixty years after the death of Marilyn Monroe, Chayse Irvin, ASC, CSC, and writer/ director Andrew Dominik go searching for the bombshell’s ghost in Blonde28 THE PRODUCT GUIDE DEPARTMENTS replay ................ 16 book review ................ 22 exposure ................ 24 production credits ................ 98 stop motion .............. 106 SPECIALS The Product Guide ...... 76 September 2022 / Vol. 93 No. 07 contents Rising Guild Director of Photography Natalie Kingston makes her episodic-series debut, facing down a real NOLA prison location for the intense new series Black Bird Nearly 20 years after Hurricane Katrina, a new TV series retells the systemic breakdown inside a NOLA public hospital. FEATURE 02 FEATURE 03 6044HARD TIME EYE OF THE STORM
Of course, when it comes to virtual production, this Guild has many experts who can speak about its innovation and impact on our members. First to mind is Mark Weingartner, ASC, ICG second national vice president and an esteemed visual effects director of photography whose credits include Dunkirk , The Hunger Games trilogy, and The Dark Knight Rises , among many others. Weingartner has been at the forefront of helping to bring visual effects and
National InternationalPresidentCinematographers Guild IATSE Local 600
I would also add that the momentum of virtual tool kits and “production in the cloud” will be felt by all the associated crafts of Local 600, and it is up to all of our members to learn and prepare for its evolution so that we may best meet the new challenges. And to protect our jurisdiction during the rapid pace of technological advancement, I mentioned at the outset of this column that we should use all the tools available to us, including bonding arbitration in our agreements.
One thing is for certain: change will continue to rain down on the film and television industry. And while all these new workflows and new equipment can sometimes feel like a downpour, I have no doubt the members of IATSE Local 600 will continue to remain at the forefront of implementation, education, training, and even, in some examples, the development of new technology. It’s more than just wanting to “keep up” to do our jobs more effectively and more efficiently. It’s our responsibility to this industry – as the guardians of the image on any given project – to make sure we get there first, and we all get it right.
“Some of us still remember working with film rear projection,” Weingartner told me. “And working with LED walls and stages involves a lot of the same issues. People are rightly paying attention to the technical issues of moiré and color rendition, but equally important are the scheduling and management issues – unlike when shooting green screen, you need to have your background assets completely ready before you start Whileshooting.” “thevolume” has its challenges, it also offers real advantages. “You can shift the position of a whole backlot exterior with a few mouse clicks – without having to move the camera carts,” Mark notes. “Of course, there is still a place for traditional lighting equipment on a virtual set,” he went on to tell me, “but the virtual lighting tools expand the director of photography’s toolset tremendously. Our members are leading the way in working out how to leverage this new technology and, as always, it will be our knowledge and experience that determine its ultimate usefulness.”
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president's letter
traditionally post-related content back to the set, one of the main attributes of virtual production. He’s been evaluating different virtual production systems and tools – LED walls and panels, a volumes stage – and is attuned to how they affect the way we work and what possibilities they offer us in storytelling.
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Over the years, we’ve seen enormous technological advances in the making of motion pictures and television. These include capture devices, lighting, different rigs to support where and how the camera can move, displays on sets to monitor the image, and various workflows for how the camera original moves through the pipeline. Most recently we’ve seen virtual walls made of tunable, modular, high-resolution LED screens to help drive virtual production on sets. All of these changes are coming extremely fast and will no doubt be major assets to not only the creative nature of filmmaking but the efficiency with which Union crews can do their jobs.
From my own experience as a camera technician, I’ve seen many new remote focus devices come to market, as well as many more in development, all of which support our work as “the eyes of the audience.” One recent experience I had with new technology was on the L.A. set of the Netflix comedy feature Me Time , starring Kevin Hart, Regina Hall and Mark Wahlberg. A simple scene involving the characters riding in a bus utilized LED walls as live background plates. And while it didn’t impact the work of the operator or assistants (mostly the DP and chief lighting technician, who always have to account for lighting ratios between background and foreground), it is a simple example of virtual production that has become common on film and TV sets across this alliance.
New Technology? Let’s All Get It Right!
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ndustry insiders thought that by Fall 2022, most of the speed bumps slowing down the technology pipeline since the onset of COVID-19 would have been smoothed over. But as our annual Product Guide (page 76) makes clear, that’s not the case. U.S. vendors are still pushing their market dates for new gear weeks or months forward, as the global supply chain remains kinked, even with formerly mundane factors such as receiving shipments from distant ports of call. Parts are more expensive across the board because they’re harder to get, and seasoned vendors – like GA-based Flanders Scientific, whom I spoke to about Display trends (page 88) – have opted to consolidate or reposition the bulk of their product lines.
I
“Production into the cloud is inevitable, is likely to take a while, will get occasionally messy and will impact every aspect of the work. Camera-to-cloud is taking its first steps but has a long way to go that’s more up to connectivity providers than equipment manufacturers. We’ve seen this kind of fundamental change before, and the practical choices are to lead, follow or get out of the way.”
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“Every department on this show had a stake in telling this story as they knew how important it was,” Nickell recounts in Eye of the Storm (page 60). “They read [Sheri Fink’s book on which the series is based] –sometimes twice. They talked to each other about what everyone was trying to achieve. The physical challenges and the need for innovation were embraced as IATSE Locals on both sides of the border joined together.”
Michael Chambliss Seeding the Cloud
Nickell adds, “A real-life story of this scale requires the best of the best across the board. It was a tremendous privilege for me to work with so many talented, passionate people to recall a time when good people were caught in the most difficult conditions imaginable.”
the creative telepathy between Director Andrew Dominik and Director of Photography Chayse Irvin. She quotes 1st AC Jimmy Ward (who has worked with Irvin for seven years) as making sure his team never “slowed down an idea.” Ward recalls that “if Chayse wants to put on a diopter element because it feels right, that creative spark would be gone if I had to tell him to wait 15 minutes because that particular piece is on the truck.” Irvin and Ward worked closely with Panavision’s Dan Sasaki, who showed them deconstructed lenses from the 1930s. “We pulled all these weird elements out and created these cases of different lenses,” Ward adds. “I think we called it ‘The Crazy Wavy Case,’ and it gave us options that could get thrown in at a moment’s notice.”
Sadly, a year-and-a-half can feel like a decade in the world of new technology. Just ask ICG staffer Michael Chambliss, who did an indepth ride through "the cloud" for his Workflow section (page 94-99). Chambliss discovered that virtual workflows utilizing the cloud have not only become more commonplace on Local 600 sets, there are many more types of cloud options to choose from. Hybrid, specialized, live event, postdirected, etc. The symbiosis virtual production generates between set and post has recharged camera teams across the Alliance. Examples (like Frame.io’s real-time mark-up of instantlycaptured footage) abound in Chambliss’ report, underscoring that the control cloud workflows bring back to the set is undeniable.
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Also beyond doubt is how swiftly union filmmakers are able to adapt to technology (of any era). Valentina Valentini’s cover story on the new Netflix feature Blonde (page 28) illustrates
Valentina Valentini Picture Imperfect
“It was fascinating to get into the minds of Director Andrew Dominik and Director of Photography Chayse Irvin – simpatico artists, to say the least – to find out how they brought forth the vision of Blonde. The story is based on an interpretation of facts about Marilyn Monroe, and so, too, the visual interpretation of the source material gave way to an inventive and chaotic (in a good way) cinematic experience. If you can see this film in a theater, do!”
Cover photo by Matt Kennedy, SMPSP
As Staff Writer Pauline Rogers reports in Capture, Lighting, and Support (pages 78-87), the pipeline problem is persistent and troubling. Erik Schietinger, co-owner of TCS in Brooklyn, told Rogers that “we’re not going to see a significant change for at least another year and longer if these new COVID [variants] continue. Many factories and warehouses have become short-staffed. Companies are still struggling, and production and distribution speeds have been greatly impacted. One of our vendors recently confirmed that their new timeframe until normalcy for orders is 18 months!”
Email: david@icgmagazine.com
Enabling choices on set was also a hallmark of our feature on the Apple TV+ series Five Days at Memorial, which prioritized cross-border cooperation in the service of telling a powerful true-life story. Dignifying the lives lost inside one of New Oreleans' largest public medical centers (in the days right after Hurricane Katrina) was the driving factor for IATSE Local 667 crews in Toronto and Local 600 crews in NOLA, who, as Local 600 Director of Photography Ramsey Nickell describes, “worked seamlessly,” on a show that tested both physical and emotional limits.
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The new/old sequence required a coordinated effort from everyone. Varrieur says, “Executive
Cobra Kai BY PAULINE ROGERS PHOTOS BY CURTIS BONDS BAKER
16 SEPTEMBER 2022
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Since joining the series in Season 2, Guild Director of Photography Paul Varrieur says he’s tried to pay homage to the original film (which is seen occasionally in flashbacks) but also modernize its look. However, the updated version of the All Valley Tournament presented its own problems.
It was the summer of 1984, and when a martialarts master agreed to teach karate to a bullied teenager, it kick-started (pun intended) one of the most beloved sports flicks in movie history. The Karate Kid is an action-packed underdog tale that climaxes with the All Valley Karate Tournament, where underdog Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) defeats martial-arts hotshot Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka) with a kick to the face.
“First, we were shooting in a practical high-school gymnasium,” Varrieur explains, “where not one light existed. Second, I wanted to update the photography, using tools that didn’t exist in 1984.”
The original feature was shot on film, of course,
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Flash-forward to 2018 and to Cobra Kai , the Sony/Netflix series created by Josh Heald, Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg that is a continuation of the 1984 film. It’s thirty-four years later, and a now down-and-out Johnny Lawrence is seeking to reclaim his glory days by reopening
the infamous Cobra Kai dojo. That, not surprisingly, reignites his rivalry with a now successful Daniel LaRusso and, in Season 4, inspires a sequel to the famous All Valley Karate Tournament.
Local 600 camera team shot in a 1:78 aspect ratio (the original film was 1:85), using the Super 35 portion of the sensor. “That means it was a 17-by-9 with a 16-by-9 extraction for 4K,” the DP continues. “Panavision Primo primes, 14.5 millimeter all the way to 150 millimeter, are my lenses of choice. Anything longer and an 11 to 1 Primo zoom with extender was utilized.”
while Varrieur’s capture system was the Sony VENICE, sourced from Panavision Atlanta. “James Finn at Panavision and I go way back,” Varrieur adds, “and his service over the years has been exemplary.” Varrieur’s
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Creator/Director/Executive Producer Heald requested the ability to ramp any part of the fight sequences. “So, most of the fights required shooting at 72 frames per second,” Varrieur adds.
Producer Bob Wilson and his incredible production team worked behind the scenes to make this sequence a reality. The art department had to recreate the original scoreboard but resize it to fit our space.” Production Designer Ryan Berg adds that “the original scoreboard from the movie was a large wall that showed the progression of the tournament. But for our sequence, we needed to bring it up to date with LED screens and moving graphics. The result was a terrific mixture of the style of the 1984 board and a more intense graphic that you’d see at a WWE or Monster Trucks [show] but for karate. Both funny and cool. Graphic Artist Andrea Ferguson and I worked on elevating the graphics to make it more badass, which is a common descriptor
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on ourVarrieurshow!” notes that the LEDs on the new scoreboard presented flicker issues. “The camera department had to adjust shutters,” he shares, “depending on how much of the screen was photographed. On top of that, our excellent stunt coordinators, Ken Barefield and Don Lee, had designed incredible fight sequences, which required extremely athletic Steadicam operation by Brandon Thompson, who often saw the flickering screen.”
“This required an open stop of 2.0, and our first
AC’s – Adam Castro, Ross Davis and Courtney Drewes – were excellent on focus throughout.”
Light changes were key to updating the tournament, as Varrieur was seeking a more rockand-roll look. “We incorporated MAC Axiom Hybrid light sources,” he says. “They can be whatever type of fixture you need at any moment. They can go from a beam to spot to wash, and at 16,000 lumens, they have all the punch that’s needed. The lighting console was the High End Systems’ Hog 4. Our gaffer, Ed Nyankori, worked tirelessly with the Atlanta Pro AV vendor to program light changes that worked with the fight sequence.”
worked to provide each fixture with position presets so they could be selected and focused based on who was competing. The lights needed to be repositioned quickly to maximize the effect during coverage. They also allowed a backlight to be available in almost every setup.
LOCAL 600 CREW Director of Photography Paul Varrieur A-Camera Operator Stephen Andrich A-Camera 1st AC Adam Castro A-Camera 2nd AC Michael Fitzgerald B-Camera Operator/Steadicam Brandon Thompson B-Camera 1st AC Sebastian Boada B-Camera 2nd AC Chase Flowers C-Camera Operator Jim McKinney C-Camera 1st AC Courtney Drewes C-Camera 2nd AC Alex Waters Loader Becca Thompson Utility Erika Bond Still Photographer Curtis Bonds Baker
“Paul opted for a color theme to be applied to each of the three rival dojos: green for the Miyagi Dojo, red for Cobra Kai, and yellow for Eagle Fang,” Nyankori adds. “The intention was a subtle addition to the visual storytelling. Joe used the presets to anticipate and work independently, while Paul and I focused on lighting the scene from the floor with ARRI SkyPanels through 8-foot-by-8-foot and 12-foot-by-12-foot light grids from Benny Smyth’s
The space lights proved problematic to rig, so helium balloons with 8K (8-foot-by-18-foot) and 16K (12-foot-by-26-foot) were brought in from Sourcemaker. Bob Weirzbicki led the balloon team and handled placement and inflation. Additionally, 12-light Maxi Brutes were used for direct and bouncedNyankorisources. and programmer Joe McCarthy
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Chief Lighting Technician Nyankori says he initially planned to use bicolor LED space lights in the ceiling “for the ambient light, with mover lights on truss towers to set the rock-and-roll feel,” he recalls. “When a video board was decided on, Atlanta Pro AV was able to address both the moving lights and video board.”
Las Olas AnotherGrips.” concern was scene coverage, which required the helium balloons to be moved frequently by balloon crew Peter and Wendell Phifer II. “Balloons can be tricky to manage,” Nyankori states, “and the 20- and 30-foot sausages were no exception. This was accomplished using nylon guidelines tied to the upper-level seating. Dimming was controlled by our company GrandMA2 programmer Jason ‘Lucky’ Parker, who also maintained a battery of SkyPanels, Kino Flo Celebs and Astera Additionaltubes.” challenges included using a 50-foot Technocrane for dynamic camera movement for the fighting. Varrieur says Operator Stephen Andrich and Dolly Grip Court Wheeler “got some incredible footage.” “Weused the 50-foot Techno with the Oculus 4-axis stabilized head,” Andrich recounts. “We had a terrific team – Court worked the arm, Luis DeVictoria handled the pickle, and Josh Cleland
20 SEPTEMBER 2022 REPLAY 09.2022 20 SEPTEMBER 2022
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was the Oculus Head tech. Paul gave all of us on the Techno crew the freedom to create kinetic and energetic shots within the storytelling framework.
“I won’t lie – there was some nervousness and apprehension when we read the script for the Season 4-ending All Valley Tournament,” Varrieur concludes. “Paying tribute to a sequence that’s beloved by so many people, while trying to do a modernized, updated version with new story points, could prove difficult. But armed with a bevy of new film tools, an experienced crew that knew how to use them, and a supportive production team, we more than accomplished the task.”
Steadicam Operator Thompson, whose background in sports and musical theater allowed him to (safely and quickly) cover the All Valley action at a close distance to the actors and stunt performers, calls the sequences “challenging,” both physically and mentally. “Seeing the fight sequences for the first time on the day of shooting required me to quickly learn and memorize the choreography,” Thompson remembers. “I didn’t want to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and risk potential injury to the performers or myself.
“We rehearsed with the stunt performers and actors with Ken Barefield and Don Lee,” Thompson continues. “The stunt performers showed everyone the fight, and then we would decide the best way to cover the sequence to sell the stunt. We used a medium zoom [28-76-millimeter Canon] on the Steadicam camera body.”
“Paul and I worked with Ken Barefield, who led the stunt team, to understand each match’s choreography and story points and then plot out how to shoot each bout,” Andrich continues. “The basic idea was to do wider coverage with high angles from the crane, sweeping shots on Steadicam, and various dolly shots to get the coverage foundation, especially with the stunt doubles. We would then give the Steadicam a clean pass on top of the action, with our actors, and the Techno would also get a clean pass with the actors.”
“With the 8K sensor and small size of body, RED makes cameras you can really count on and shoot every movie with confidence.”
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Don Burgess, ASC Director of Photography
Warning: It’s thick. It’s dense. It is, at times, confusing. But, if you want to truly understand one of the darkest periods in Hollywood history, a time that defined an entire industry and destroyed many lives, Larry Ceplair's The Hollywood Motion Picture Blacklist: Seventy-Five Years Later is more than worth the time. This book is aimed at film and Hollywood history buffs, removing the “tinsel” from “tinseltown” and exploring how Communism was perceived nearly three-quarters of a century ago.
Seventy-FiveBlacklist:YearsLater
The book goes into scrupulous detail on
“I wanted to add an up-to-date bibliography and
22 SEPTEMBER 2022 BOOK REVIEW 22 SEPTEMBER 2022
BY LARRY CEPLAIR REVIEWED BY PAULINE ROGERS
emeritus in History and author/co-author of eight books about the blacklist, who oversaw UCLA’s Oral History Program on the blacklist – the story is far from black and white, good and evil. Ceplair says that “Communism, if left alone, could have stayed as a somewhat benign alternative belief for many Hollywood liberals of the era. But once the U.S. government’s witch hunt went out of control, fueled by fear, passion and political egos, people paid – with their careers.”
According to Ceplair – a Santa Monica College
The Hollywood Motion Picture
who fed the fuel and for what reasons. Ceplair examines what the lasting results have been. And, most fascinatingly, he has a deep and almost scary understanding that it can happen – and already may be happening – again.
The author brings together thoughts from his book The Inquisition in Hollywood and other written works to dig deeply into “the path to the motionpicture blacklist: its origins, its extent, its duration, its impact and its future prospects,” Ceplair writes.
The author’s take on the effect on producers, their alliances, and “how they could handle the Communist problem” is revealing. He even talks about how studio heads “stopped making ‘social problem’ films as they tried to navigate the crackdown on Communism, as well as movies that had pro-Soviet leanings.”
Chapter 1 is a detailed summary of what led to the blacklist through the eyes of various writers, one often contradicting the other and all espousing pathways to where we are today. But “what, then, was the blacklist, how did it function, and what effect did it have on the United States?” Ceplair wonders. “A blacklist is one of several mechanisms used by employers and government to proscribe and silence undesirable individuals and groups,” he writes. “It has a long and unsavory history that can be traced back to the early seventeenth century when the term was coined by Philip Massinger, an English playwright. It was first used politically during the English Civil War.” Ceplair goes on
Ceplair describes the Hollywood blacklist as “the first institutionalized, politically based proscriptive list. It was also the most highly publicized list that emerged during the domestic Cold War. But the Hollywood black-listees were a small percentage of those blacklisted during that era; thousands of professors and teachers, government employees, and trade unions were also proscribed during that period.”
“What was unusual about the motion picture blacklist (1947-1960),” he continues, “was that it was not a response to union organizing – albeit a blacklist had been used against some of the organizers of the Screen Writers Guild during the 1930s. But [it was more] a government-generated Red Scare…a domestic Cold War.”
Keeping to his promise of showing the era through the eyes of those caught up in it, Ceplair brings to life the lives of writers Dashiell Hammett, Isobel Lennart (an informer) and Ring Lardner Jr. He takes Hammett from Pinkerton agent to newspaperman to his novels, which feature “communist” values – The Op, “a man with stern but flexible values, is depicted as the last bastion against the collapse of all civilized values,” Ceplair says. “But he has no social vision.” What Hammett did have was a path to a vision – Communism. “The major question that looms above all others,” Ceplair adds, “was why would a loner, a flaneur, a louche individual, a man who rejected authority and dogma, join and remain a member of such a highly disciplined and doctrinaire organization?”
He goes on: “That chapter represents the final iteration of my long-standing belief that the history of the United States is replete with banishments of typed people from full citizenships, civil rights, and civil liberties. Although progress has been made on many fronts, the United States remains a racist, misogynist, nativist, and anti-Left country, dominated by huge media entities. And, as the Trump presidency has demonstrated, it does not take much for the pendulum of history to swing back to an intolerant, suppressive, and, frankly, scary phase.”
“These new chapters represent a change in my perspective about the blacklist,” he continues.
religious anti-Communism, “and it, like the other categories and sub-categories, displayed marked diversity,” Ceplair writes. “In general, Jewish AntiCommunists publicly declaimed a deep disdain for Communism as a theory and practice but harbored a hidden or, sometimes, not-so-hidden agenda [that was] focused on dissolving the public linking Jewishness and Communism [and] protecting and advancing thereby the interests of Jewish communities, both in the United States and abroad, while not calling attention to their Jewishness.”
filmography. [And] what I have learned over the years. I … include three previously unpublished essays and three previously published ones.
“There is much to learn about the complexities and contradictions of the blacklist era via personal life stories…there is no screenwriter type, no informer type, no unfriendly witness type, no producer type and no Communist Party member type. It is only through examining the lives and thoughts and motives of individuals that one can come to a genuine understanding of the blacklist era.”
There is so much more to learn from these scholarly pages, but what puts things in stark perspective is Ceplair’s final chapter – “Looking Ahead,” which he ends with this potent quote: “In the United States today, we have the curious phenomenon of raging intolerance and a cacophonous symphony of voices. The problem is not enjoying free speech: it is being heard (via speech or vote) and not being surveilled.”
to take the reader on a journey through the development of the term, the use in all areas of life, and the contradictory writings on this “motion picture blacklist” that still exist today.
“A blacklist is one of several mechanisms used by employers and government to proscribe and silence undesirable individuals and groups...”
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Chapter 2 is fascinating, focusing on “Jewish anti-Communism” as a distinctive sub-category of
ISBN: www.kentuckypress.com9780813195889 Hardcover $27.95 www.amazon.com Hardcover $27.95, Kindle $20.95 Publication date: August 30, 2022
WRITER/EXECUTIVE PRODUCER | BLACK BIRD
24 SEPTEMBER 2022 EXPOSURE
Dennis Lehane
Award-winning novelist Dennis Lehane burst onto the scene with his first book, A Drink Before the War (1994), which introduced his recurring characters, Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro, while also winning the 1995 Shamus Award for Best First P.I. Novel. Kenzie and Gennaro would return in Darkness , Take My Hand ; Sacred ; Gone, Baby, Gone ; Prayers for Rain and Moonlight Mile . But Lehane’s beefy résumé doesn’t stop there. He authored the acclaimed novels Mystic River and Shutter Island , both of which went on to become hit feature films (directed by Clint Eastwood and Martin Scorsese, respectively). The Boston native (Dorchester born and bred, whose parents were firstgeneration Irish) has written for television such Emmywinning shows as The Wire and Boardwalk Empire , as well as for regional theater. Lehane’s even made a name for himself teaching about writing, including Advanced Fiction at Harvard University. ICG Magazine chatted with the writer/producer about running a series ( Black Bird ) based on complex, real-life events, and why directing is in his future.
BY TED ELRICK PHOTO BY ALFONSO “POMPO” BRESCIANI / APPLE TV+
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Was it always planned to be six episodes? No, originally it was five, and all my producing partners and Apple pushed hard for me to write another episode, and I didn’t want to do it. Then after Jim McKay directed the fourth episode, I thought, “Oh, this works.” They asked me to write one more episode where we could get to know Jimmy and Larry (Paul Walter Hauser) in terms of their past and how they grew up. It’s what is known in the industry as a “bottle episode.” It’s got a beginning, middle and end and is self-enclosed. It’s all done in the aftermath of the riot in the prison, and it was fun to do because it became each playing the therapist to the other as they cleaned up this destroyed mess hall.
There are challenges, narratively and otherwise, when working from a true story. The first thing I wanted was to be sensitive to the families of the dead. That was so important. I said, “I guess I won’t do this if you want to do anything exploitive in terms of showing the serial killings.” And they said, “Great, no problem.” So, you never see the deaths of the girls. It was like [how] the Greeks [did it]. You keep it offstage.
The word was you were on the set quite a bit. Yeah, this was a truly collaborative effort, and we were all in sync. It was not just me and the actors, but the producers; Natalie Kingston, who was our director of photography and the entire crew. We’re all down there in New Orleans with this crazy heat and we became very tight.
And then… Well, I wanted to stay as true to the facts as I could, so that when I had to deviate, I could
How did you pick Black Bird for your first project as showrunner? It’s based on a nonfiction memoir – In with the Devil – essentially, of Jimmy Keene and Hillel Levin, who wrote the book with Jimmy. It just felt right.
ICG: Writing novels is solitary, and film and television are hyper-collaborative. What is the appeal for you jumping back and forth between them? I enjoy it. I do mostly television because television is the writers’ medium. Film, you’re just one little cog in the wheel. But with television, now particularly as a showrunner, it’s similar to the way you control the novel. What is different is you don’t obsess over every little part. You don’t micromanage the same way. A novel is a symphony. A script is a blueprint. It’s a technical document you give to everybody else, and they figure out what people are wearing, what the lighting is and all of that.
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The opening moments in the cornfield, through when Jimmy Keene’s buddy is under the gun, are visually striking. Is that how the book opens? In the true story, the stolen kilo of cocaine is because Jimmy is involved with a Mexican drug dealer, and I felt I’d seen that. If I do a scene where he goes to Mexico and is in this Mexican drug dealer’s house, it would be a cliché of every other drug movie. So, I said, “What if this guy was like a yuppie, and he was super-friendly but a little off?” Lee Tergesen is a terrific actor, and he came in and did a nice little cameo. I had to change the name of Jimmy’s friend because you can’t source some of this stuff. In Jimmy’s book, he believed this guy was the one who ratted him out to the feds. I don’t touch on that in the show. But I do touch upon his best friend being somebody whom he could never trust.
Your novels are quite filmic – from A Drink Before the War and onward. When I interviewed Clint Eastwood about Mystic River , I said the book grabs the reader from the beginning because it’s so easily visualized. He felt the same way. [Smiles.] Whenever I hear that, I think books were cinematic long before film existed. It’s the chickenor-the-egg thing. In this case, we came first, the books came first. When people say a book is cinematic, it’s because it conjures images in a reader’s mind in a very detailed way. That’s what we as authors do. Then somebody comes along and says, “Hey, we want to make it into a movie.” And we say, “Sure, go for it.” [Laughs.]
You had input into everything, even picking Natalie Kingston to be the DP? Yes, everything. I’m where the buck stops. Michaël Roskam, director of the first three episodes, went looking for a DP. We looked at more than 20, and Michaël kept returning to Natalie. We looked at her work, we interviewed her, and we’re so glad we did. She was a superstar for this show.
A novel is visualize]...”outelsegivedocumentablueprint.Asymphony.ascriptisaIt’stechnicalyoutoeverybodytofigure[howto“ SEPTEMBER 2022
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One of the things that grabbed me in the pilot is Brian Miller’s suddenly working on the lock of a window as he’s talking to another cop on the speaker phone. Yes, and that’s why I love television. You can’t do that scene in a movie. You can’t slow down enough to do that. I wrote that scene, and we fell in love with it right from the beginning. The moment I wrote that I thought: That tells us everything we need to know about this guy. He’s intelligent. He’s precise. He doesn’t like a mess. He gets the job done. That was something that Greg loved playing. When we saw the dailies, we all said, “We got the window scene!” There’s also a scene in Episode 2, between Ray Liotta (Jimmy Keene’s father) and Robyn Malcolm, who plays his second wife, where they are talking about her having a glass of wine and he supposedly needs to take his meds. It’s just this lovely, romantic scene between two
make a legitimate claim as to why I did. So, there’s a journey for Brian Miller (Greg Kinnear), whose real name is Gary Miller – we had three different Garys in the show. And the real Brian Miller did follow the path that you see in the show. He tracked Jessica Roach’s body to a field in Indiana, he tracked Larry Hall, he believed he caught a serial killer, he believed that he immediately had to claim jurisdiction as fast as possible because he believed the other police were going to grab it. In the second half of the real story, where they’re trying to thwart Larry’s appeal, the Brian Miller part didn’t happen. It was a series of other police officers. But we’d already established the character in the show, and now we’re going to introduce another character in the third episode. He teams up with Lauren McCauley (Sepideh Moafi), and that didn’t happen in reality. But I could now make an absolutely clear argument as to why I fictionalized it.
You work with actors as a showrunner – will directing be a deeper dive for you working with actors? I don’t think it’ll be a deeper dive. I’m so used to working with actors going back to Sean Penn on Mystic River. Sean and I spent all this time together. I’m used to working with actors on character work, and I’m always there for them from the first day on. I give them my cell and say call me anytime. We spend a ton of time on these characters, so I’m very comfortable dealing with actors. I look at some of the great directors and go, “I would never think to put the camera there!” I suppose I’ll be more of a Howard Hawks kind of guy. Pretty straightforward, and all about performance.
people who love each other. Those are the scenes I live for. Not the scene where Jimmy beats up a guy in prison, which is also great. But not the same.
So it was that easy of a give-and-take? [Laughs.] Oh, no! We had wonderful fights, and I mean that in the best possible way. I believe pure, artistic conflict is great and makes everything better. I was always watching the clock, telling her: “You got to go faster.” “I can’t.” “You got to.” “I can’t. It’ll compromise what we’re doing. And I don’t want it to look like every other TV show.” “Ok, sure, but can you do that and go faster?” [Laughs.] And she said, “Well, I’ll try.” It’s the constant tension with any great DP. The pressures on a showrunner are different from those on a DP. Very early on in the dailies, it was like, “Oh, my God! This looks so good.” But we couldn’t tell [Natalie] how good it really was because if we did she was going to go slower. [Laughs.] Natalie is incredibly talented. She’s got the world at her feet.
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Like the Dustin Hoffman character in Papillon is a composite of about four people. Exactly. You have to do that. Lauren McCauley is a composite of two characters. One of the reasons the real person wouldn’t go on record with us is that there were several mistakes made in terms of keeping Jimmy alive in prison. And one of them nobody can explain, and that happens in the sixth episode. I think anybody who was anywhere near that case when it went south will not go on record.
What were your discussions on establishing the look? Natalie had a book of Gordon Parks photos. We talked about Gordon Willis. But mostly I wanted all of the rural stuff to look pastoral, in the best sense of the word. I wanted it to feel like the Garden of Eden. We referenced Days of Heaven a lot. Terrence Malick’s film (shot by Néstor Almendros). It’s one of my favorite movies, and I wanted ours to have that burnished glow. We also talked about the Jimmy stuff having a sleeker, Michael Mann kind of look. It’s icier, cooler. Those were my suggestions. Then Natalie, who has an incredible eye, starts painting with light.
Shooting in a real prison is always challenging. Did you find that to be the case? Oh, yeah. We got locked in a corridor with Taron and Paul for about 20 minutes. Somebody shut the door and we didn’t have the keys! We shot in two different prisons. The main one we used was in the center of New Orleans, and it had been utterly destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. They’ve been using it as a set ever since. We took over the whole prison, and it was a mess! We also shot in a train station, and Natalie had these massive cranes outside to bounce the light. That’s beyond my pay grade. I look at it on a screen and say, “Looks great.” Which is what I always said. “Looks great. Looks great. … Could we go faster?” (Laughs.)
So no need for a graphic crime scene? The black and white photo of the girl’s face was it? Yes, and the look on Greg’s face when he looks off. You know he’s thinking about his daughter. He’s thinking about the senselessness of this, and he does the nice little thing where he moves the hair out of her eye. The darkness I write about is the darkness of the mind. I don’t need to see a bunch of gore. My stuff is disturbing enough already. [Laughs.]
You have been involved with some great directors – Clint Eastwood, Martin Scorsese, Ben Affleck, and Phillip Noyce among others. Is that your next step? I will be directing my next show, but it’s not a next step. If you’re a showrunner you don’t need to be a director. I’m going to because we discovered that DGA rules don’t allow the showrunner to see the cuts until the director has seen them. I didn’t like feeling that tension. I need to know what I’m doing. I need to carry these to speak to the next director and the next. I need to be able to see my cuts. So, because of the DGA rules, I think I’m going to direct the first two episodes of my next project. The showrunner cannot see the assemblies until the director has seen them and signed off on them. I’m fine with that. I’m a union guy and know the rules are there to protect the artist. But it was maddening for me to be switching directors halfway through the shoot, which is how it’s done in TV, and I could not say, “Look, this is what we’re doing.” I could only show them pieces.
FEATURE
BLONDE 1
Photos by Matt Kennedy, SMPSP / Netflix Framegrabs Courtesy of Netflix
By Valentina Valentini
Sixty years after the death of Marilyn Monroe, Chayse Irvin, ASC, CSC, and writer/director Andrew Dominik go searching for the bombshell’s ghost in Blonde
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After all, it’s no spoiler to reveal the sad, early death of Marilyn Monroe, as it is portrayed in Netflix’s new feature Blonde , written and directed by Andrew Dominik and adapted from Joyce Carol Oates’ 2000 biographical fiction novel of the same name. Monroe, surely one of the most iconic women of all time, passed away alone in her bedroom in Brentwood, CA from an overdose of barbiturates. At age 36, the light that had blazed across Hollywood’s firmament, so bright for so short a time, was extinguished.
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“I think the soul is captured in the image when you work out of a sense of instinct over intellect,” describes Blonde’s Director of Photography Chayse Irvin, ASC, CSC. Irvin is referencing Monroe’s death scene, where Ana de Armas – portraying the “Blonde Bombshell” – lies on a bed in the same room where Monroe died in Dominik1962. and Irvin had planned the final shot to have the camera traveling out the bedroom door, through the house, and out of the building. But Irvin recalls that “we tried that, and it felt uneasy,” he continues. “Not because of the idea, but because the architecture in the house made it feel jagged.” Irvin describes an improvised approach as a counter. “Ana had her dog, Elvis, there,” he continues. “And Andrew tried to pick him up and take him off the bed. But Elvis was scared because Ana was pretending she was dying, and the dog wanted to protect her. We were already rolling, so I told Andrew to back away from the bed. Then I started walking away from Elvis and Ana with the camera in my hand. I put [the camera] on the ground, with the corner of the bed in frame, and Ana’s leg dangled over. I told my apprentice, Iain Trimble, to bring over the Cinefade, and we started fading the image down until it went to black over the course of a minute. As soon as Andrew called cut, he came up and said: ‘That’s
the ending.’” Instinct, spontaneity and even creative chaos were the prevailing ethos for Blonde , which shot for 45 days in Los Angeles and utilized dozens of real locations from Monroe’s life, including her Brentwood apartment, her favorite L.A. hotel room, and the house she lived in briefly as a child with her mother. De Armas was joined on screen by Julianne Nicholson as Monroe’s mother, Bobby Cannavale as The Ex-Athlete [Joe DiMaggio], and Adrien Brody as The Playwright [Arthur Miller] in a nearly three-hour film that chronicles Monroe’s early childhood and rise to fame, her career highlights, her breakdowns, breakups, abortions, miscarriages and sexual assaults, all told in an aesthetic that is both beautiful and brutal.
TO REPLICATE MONROE’S FAMOUS DRESS FROM GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES
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LOCAL 783 COSTUME DESIGNER JENNIFER JOHNSON TESTED MANY DYES AND FABRIC SWATCHES. “THE FIRST PINK TESTED ON CAMERA WAS, TO THE EYE, A REPLICA OF THE ORIGINAL FILM,” JOHNSON RECALLS. “BUT WHEN WE TESTED IT WITH THE CAMERA, THE COLOR WENT PALE. CHAYSE AND I REALIZED WE HAD TO GO VERY HOT PINK SO HE COULD DRAIN THE COLOR IN POST TO ACHIEVE THE RICHNESS OF THE TECHNICOLOR.”
“ Blonde was a lucky movie,” reflects Dominik, who wrote the script in 2008 and waited for more than a decade for Hollywood to realize the project’s value. “Anytime something felt like it was wrong or anytime something fell apart, it was because something better was coming.” Luck may have also factored into Irvin’s shooting the movie. Dominik had worked with filmmaker Terrence Malick as well as the artist/filmmaker Kahlil Joseph, who was Irvin’s longtime friend and close collaborator with whom he’d made several large-scale exhibition
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1st AC Jimmy Ward describes the DPdirector duo bond as telepathy – fascinating to watch but hard for others to understand. Not that it troubled Ward, who had worked on a dozen or so commercials with Irvin and was prepared for Irvin’s instinctual approach on set.
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films. Joseph runs The Underground Museum in Los Angeles, where Dominik and Irvin connected in November 2018 and where a friendship ensued. To get the movie greenlit with de Armas, Dominik needed a screen test, so he called Irvin to help out.
“If you were to work on something structured, like reshoots from a Marvel movie,” describes Ward, whose 1st AC credits include Game of Thrones ; I, Tonya and Ford v Ferrari , “you’d have to be regimented about what you need to shoot and what needs to be achieved. The way that Chayse and Andrew worked on this project was always with an element of experimentation and the ability to react to the unexpected.” Dominik in particular liked shooting 50/50, quietly rolling the camera outside of a take while de Armas was getting makeup done or while Ward was changing a lens. He also directed from over the shoulder of Ward, whom he calls “the most important person in the room” at any given moment. Because Irving and Dominik needed the ability to always be shooting, Ward had to be prepped at all times for any number of requests.
“I shot the screen test, but it wasn’t guaranteed that I would shoot the movie,” says Irvin. “It was sort of like a screen test for me too, and that’s how we initiated the bond.”
This didn’t mean that Ward had everything and the kitchen sink on set at all times – an impracticality at best, a disorganized mess at worst. But having worked with Irvin for more than seven years, the AC was well-versed in the tools the DP liked. And as Irvin attests, “[Jimmy] was always anticipating my needs, always in front of me, timewise.” In prepping for Blonde , the pair worked extensively with Panavision’s Dan Sasaki, who, Ward says, showed them “a bunch of deconstructed lenses from the 1930s” that complemented their whole lens package. “We pulled all these weird elements out and created these cases of different lenses,” recalls Ward. “I think we called it ‘The Crazy Wavy Case,’ and it gave us
“Chayse is fearless,” Dominick adds. “He’s got nerve, and he understood what I wanted to do. I had particular lenses that I wanted to use, and Chayse was like, ‘No’ I’ve got the same glass, and I can rehouse it better.”
“Anything that delays shooting what is suddenly asked for would disrupt the rhythm,” Ward continues. “So, me and my team helped the creative process by never slowing down an idea. If Chayse wants to put some diopter element on there because it feels right, that creative spark would be gone if I had to tell him to wait 15 minutes because that particular piece is on the truck.”
While the Petzval was a beloved tool, the Sony VENICE’s full-frame sensor was something Irvin felt less connected to because of its large magnification of the background, which limits its relative motion. “If you’re doing a Steadicam shot where the camera is traveling, it accentuates the perspective because as the lens travels, what’s in the background, middle ground, and foreground expand at a higher rate,” Irvin explains. “But there are images in Marilyn’s life that are 35mm still photography, which is the same image size as a full frame. So, we blended the two.”
different options that could get thrown in at a moment’s notice.”
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The “flash photo” was often used in sequences to emulate a black-and-white
IATSE Local 728 Chief Lighting Technician Cody Jacobs [ICG Magazine June/July 2022], who’s worked with Irvin on music videos, commercials and shorts over the last decade and whose credits include Netflix’s GLOW , FX’s Atlanta , and HBO Max’s Station II , was all in on making sure he and his team could respond to whatever the situation called for.
One such lens, utilized for a few key moments in the film to invoke Monroe’s feelings of confusion or fear, was the Petzval. Developed in 1840 by German-Hungarian mathematics professor Joseph Petzval, the lens was the fastest in its day, giving a super-sharp focus at the center and a blurred halo effect around the edges.
“We had lots of battery operated, and wirelessly controlled LED lighting, such as LED Dedo's and LiteGear LiteMats and LiteTiles that we controlled via an ETC lighting console, run by Mark Stuen and Jake LaPierre,” Jacobs recalls. “We had these ready on any given day to help create Marilyn’s subjective state, but that wouldn’t have to be rigidly assigned to locations or scenes. That way, Andrew and Chayse could feel out where things were going on the day and weren’t constrained by a specific piece of equipment for a specific date. We knew to have the “flash photo” oncamera light ready; we knew to make sure a lot of our lighting fixtures could be controlled remotely and made dimmable or pixelated on the fly, so if they wanted the world around Marilyn to fade in and out, we could do that fast. That’s the kind of planning we did in preproduction so that there could be a certain level of improvisation on the day. I found that the most creatively satisfying and fun thing about working on this film.”
Irvin chose Panavision PVintage lenses because they have characteristics – like focus roll-off – he feels contribute to depth. Irvin supplemented the PVintages with H-Series 5 0 mm for the wide-angle sequences and 14 mm for some of the car sequences, capturing almost everything in full frame and then doing a Super-35 extraction.
“I think Andrew was trying to attempt something different than he had done in the past in terms of violating certain cinematic traditions, even to the extent of continuity of image,” observes Irvin, pointing to the film’s many transitions from 1:1 to 2.39:1 aspect ratios, from black-and-white to color, from the Sony VENICE (the hero camera) to the ALEXA Monochrome or the Monochrome with an infrared pass filter.
Irvin leaned heavier into using the monochrome sensor, Johnson utilized her iPhone camera’s B&W mode as a second set of eyes. That helped her understand how colors translate to grayscale; like the super-hot-pink dress, the colors she chose preblack-and-white could be quite unsettling in person, and colors that were normally vibrant could become muddy and lack contrast. “Everyone had done an enormous amount of research,” Johnson adds. “Collaboration with Chayse and Andrew was ongoing in every aspect to create the best Marilyn.”
For makeup, it was de Armas’s lip color that took center stage. In prep, Kerwin had a long day of still photography to create prop photos that would match the iconic photos of Monroe to de Armas. Often, the lip color would look completely wrong in person but would translate perfectly to the screen, depending on format and color timing (done by Tom Poole at Company 3).
flash bulb going off (carried out through a scene or a shot), given Monroe was the most photographed woman of her era. Jacobs knew Irvin wanted something punchy but not necessarily a point-source, so rather than using an off-the-shelf option, he built his own out of LiteGear Hybrid LiteCards to the size Irvin wanted – roughly 16 by 12 in. with a port cut out to fit over the lens and range finder. Jacobs ran this back to the camera battery and controlled it wirelessly via a LiteGear Pocket Wireless Dimmer. Sometimes this was run from their lighting console, but most often they put it on a little pocket console device so that Irvin, Jacobs or one of their electricians could be on set in view of the action and help orchestrate any dimming. “Often,” says Jacobs, “we left the diodes undiffused because Chayse liked the quality it gave to skin tones and the quick fall-off it provided.”
With costumes, the challenge was recreating Monroe’s Technicolor films – such as the famous pink dress in the “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend” number from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes . Johnson says she and her team tested numerous dye and fabric swatches. “The first pink tested on camera was, to the eye, a replica of what we saw in the original film,” she recounts. “However, when we tested it with the camera, the color went limp, completely
pale. Chayse and I realized we had to go very hot pink so he could drain the color in post to achieve the richness of the Technicolor process.” Andwhenever
To get that “best Marilyn,” Irvin and his crew worked off of an 800-page bible that Dominik had made that documented Monroe’s life from the time she was born – as Norma Jeane Baker in Los Angeles in 1926. The bible was organized in chronological order with a mix of images of Marilyn and also images from each particular time or place she was in. These were hung in a production room covering all four walls in script order as if they were storyboards, so that if anyone needed information to indicate what was accurate to the time and what they were trying to capture on set on any given day, they could easily find it.
“[This was all in service] to articulating her psychological experience in absurd ways,” Irvin continues. I had been experimenting with similar things early in my career. Like using anamorphic lenses rotated at 90 degrees so [the image] would de-squeeze in a different ratio. Then I would blend that into a demo reel with more traditional footage, and it was like a collage [that began] to create a cinematic experience that’s slightly divergent. I like taking what the values of the collective of cinematographers are and flipping them.”
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“We shot both color and black-and-white just as we would for the film, and did about 36 different looks,” recounts Kerwin. “I tested many lip colors to determine how a dark red might show up or a coral might disappear in black-and-white, and compared them to the vintage photos. I carried around an enormous amount of lip color in order to change as the [format] changed. Ana’s foundation was also meant to simulate the vintage looks that bounced light back. It’s another product that doesn’t work in everyday life unless it’s used as a highlighter as it’s super reflective. But Chayse was able to light Ana to maximize the reflective, vintage nature.”
One of Dominik’s main motifs was to recreate specific images from Monroe’s life –and given just how many images there were, that meant a vast breadth of material from which to choose. Dominik’s bible contained thousands of such stills – mainly portraitoriented images – and the mandate to shoot in as many locations as possible that Monroe had been in for the selected images. “Andrew was trying to create a séance of sorts,” smiles
Shooting in black-and-white and color was an exciting challenge for IATSE Local 873 Costume Designer Jennifer Johnson ( I, Tonya ; Beginners ) and IATSE Local 706 makeup artist Tina Roesler Kerwin ( Boogie Nights , Top Gun: Maverick), as each needed to find a color palette that worked in both formats. Initially, the film was to be mostly in color, but as shooting began, Irvin and Dominik’s creative itch grew to include more black and white.
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TO EMULATE THE “POPPING FLASH BULBS” (LEFT) SURROUNDING THE MOST PHOTOGRAPHED WOMAN IN THE WORLD, GAFFER CODY JACOBS BUILT HIS OWN WIRELESS SOURCE THAT, VIA A POCKET CONSOLE, WAS DIMMED ON THE FLY. “WE LEFT THE DIODES UNDIFFUSED ,” JACOBS EXPLAINS, “BECAUSE CHAYSE LIKED THE QUALITY IT GAVE TO SKIN TONES AND THE QUICK FALL-OFF.”
Speaking for all of Blonde’s risk-loving production team, Dominik concludes, “What’s so great about this movie is that the aesthetic choices we made had a real idea behind them, and that was psychological. Although we made some very beautiful images, beauty was not the primary thing. What was important was to create a feeling of déjà vu, to harness the collective memory of Marilyn Monroe and subvert it in a way according to her internal drama. That was the big visual idea with this film.”
Adds Dominik: “There was a real sense of chasing her ghost around.”
we needed a fairly deep stop, and to give them the option of something that could dim in and out if they decided they wanted to, we initially bounced six 2K open-face tungsten units into the 6’ x 6’ that were all remotely controlled by our lighting programmer from an onboard dimmer. But after a few rehearsals, Chayse felt something wasn’t right about the setup, so he went to a much narrower shutter on the camera, which meant we suddenly needed a lot more light! With all hands on deck, we swapped the tungsten lights out for a 9K HMI unit and connected four head feeders so it had enough travel to get down the road with the dolly. It was exciting to see it all come together.” Irvinfound another way to improvise by taking the Matrix remote head that was used during the car tracking and putting it on a Condor. The result was a top-down shot just before the camera goes to Monroe’s POV inside the car and then follows her out onto the red carpet. “We never discussed it,” laughs Irvin. “It was a surprise for Andrew; it was always a dance on set like that.”
Ward’s contribution came in the last few moments when the camera cuts to inside the car – looking out and following Monroe’s exit, with horizontal flares courtesy of the
Irvin. “And in that way, our strategy was to take those images from her life and recreate them as staged scenes with dialogue and/or action.”
“Because we knew it was going to be black-and-white,” Jacobs continues, “and that
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“The main challenge was matching the quality of a flash bulb going off in an instant but carrying it throughout an entire dolly shot with a real car driving down a road,” says Jacobs. “Our key grip, Joey Dianda, designed a sort of cattle-catcher dolly rig that allowed the car to engage and start moving the dolly down the track. Chayse and I decided to build a six-by-six frame, up and over the camera and attached to the dolly, that had a silver fabric, which we thought would give the lighting that hard/soft mix and a drastic falloff that was in the original photograph.
“Raybender” (used on enough scenes to earn a nickname). To achieve the strong flares that wash horizontally through the image –seen from the very first frames all the way through and giving the illusion that the light is emanating from within Monroe’s body – Ward mounted a piece of clear fiberoptic cable in front of the sensor and behind the lens. He cut the fiber-optic cable slightly longer than the diameter of the baffle behind the lens mount so that it could be squeezed and held in place without the need for any tape or adhesives. Positioning it at a straight vertical ensured the flares were not slanted, and Ward would always check this with a flashlight before shooting and make small adjustments if needed.
One such scene is based on a black-andwhite flash photograph of Monroe, with The Producer (Darryl F. Zanuck) and The Playwright (Arthur Miller) in the back of a car as it arrives at a film premiere. This scene was discussed at length in prep because it had more than 100 extras, was being filmed at night on stage at Warner Bros., and was one of the most technically difficult sequences to achieve.
LOCAL 600 CREW Director of Photography Chayse Irvin, ASC, CSC A-Camera Operator/Steadicam Dana Morris A-Camera/Steadicam 1st AC Jimmy Ward A-Camera 2nd AC Sean Kisch Additional 2nd AC Max DeLeo Loader Farisai Kambarami Digital Utility Iain Trimble Still Photographer Matt Kennedy, SMPSP Unit Publicist Spooky Stevens
FEATURE
BLACK BIRD 2
Photos by Alfonso “Pompo” Bresciani / Apple TV+ Framegrabs Courtesy of Apple TV+
Rising Guild Director of Photography Natalie Kingston makes her episodic-series debut, facing down a real NOLA prison location for the intense new series Black Bird
By Ted Elrick
the memoir In with the Devil , by James Keene and Hillel Levin, the Apple TV+ miniseries Black Bird is the true story of Keene (played by actor and Executive Producer Taron Egerton), who is betrayed in a plea-bargaining agreement and must serve a much stricter sentence – 10 years – for his crimes. He is then offered an opportunity by the FBI to reduce his sentence if he befriends suspected serial killer Larry Hall (Paul Walter Hauser), elicits a confession, and discovers the locations of the bodies of as many as eighteen women, all in an effort to bring Hall to justice and provide closure for the victims’ families.
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Much of the prison sequences were shot in the Orleans Parish Prison, a federal prison in downtown New Orleans (standing in for Missouri’s Springfield Prison) that had been ravaged by Hurricane Katrina. “We shot the bulk of the final four episodes in the prison,” Ransbottom adds. “There’s no working elevator, and we shot on the second floor. We were able to build one false wall, but our operator and actors are not small people, and they’re in there with bolted-in beds. A lot of times it was just one crack from a window for any “Shootinglight.” in a real prison was challenging,” Kingston reflects. “It was not operational after Katrina, and all of
the fluorescent lighting fixtures were already built in. The bulbs in those fixtures were changed to cool white tubes before we started shooting, so they would be a consistent color temperature. It was very time-consuming to access the bulbs because the fixtures were bolted to the ceiling [so the prisoners couldn’t unscrew them]. To be able to have individual control of each fixture, we had the grip department create cutouts of ND gels, diffusion, and black foam core, which were attached with magnets and sized to the fixtures. That was our workaround if we wanted to manipulate one or more of those lights.” Chief Lighting Technician Andy Ryan says the challenge was mainly to get a good quality
This fast-paced, character-driven narrative was adapted by Writer/Executive Producer Dennis Lehane ( Exposure , page 24), acclaimed mystery novelist of the Kenzie/ Gennaro mysteries (among them Gone Baby Gone ), Mystic River (directed by Clint Eastwood) and Shutter Island (directed by Martin Scorsese). Lehane also has credits on television shows such as Boardwalk Empire and The Wire .
consistent throughout.”
“The subdued pastel color palette paired with rich contrast was something I wanted to infuse into Black Bird ,” Kingston explains. “It provided an atmosphere for a prison world that was prevalent in the 1990s.” Kingston adds that “during that time, wardens began to paint jails pink because it was believed to have a calming effect on aggressive male behavior,” she says, “and in a way, it’s more unsettling in the series because of that juxtaposition. [Parks’] use of available light is incredible. It sets a visceral tone in this prison world. Mixing color temperatures of institutional fluorescent lighting with daylight and tungsten informed my approach to lighting our prison location. I wanted it to feel enhanced from reality, but still very grounded in Shadowsnaturalism.”werealso an important part of Kingston’s cinematography. DIT Eric Ransbottom explains: “Natalie was fanatical about shadows and negative fill. Truly every frame she wanted to master the vibe she was going for.” To that end, Ransbottom had a mini-cart assembled that was placed behind the camera so that Kingston, who has considerable experience as a camera operator, could be close to the action and also have the captured footage as close as possible to her vision so that it would require less work in post. “Natalie hated a blank white wall, and that gets a little difficult,” Ransbottom continues. “For some of the pastel colors, we went for a lot of shadow and highlight balancing. We were going for a dirty palette, which was hard to balance and keep
The series featured three directors, Michaël R. Roskam, Joe Chappelle and Jim McKay, and Guild Director of Photography Natalie Kingston, making her television debut. Kingston, who opted to shoot with ALEXA Mini LF and Panavision H-series lenses, had many discussions with Lehane and Roskam about Black Bird’s look. She says what informed her decision most was The Atmosphere of Crime , a photo book by Gordon Parks, which she’d come across randomly shortly before she was hired for Black Bird .
Also featured prominently in the series are Greg Kinnear as Sheriff Brian Miller, Sepideh Moafi as FBI Agent Lauren McCauley, Robyn Malcolm as Jimmy Keene’s mother, and in his final television role, Ray Liotta as Big Jim Keene, a retired police detective and father of Jimmy.
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UNLIKE MOST OF THE SERIES, SHOT IN A REAL PRISON, THE MESS HALL SEQUENCE WAS DONE ON A STAGE, WHERE GAFFER ANDY RYAN COULD RECREATE SUNLIGHT. “SINCE WE HAD AN 18K COMING THROUGH EACH SET OF WINDOWS, “ HE SAYS, “WE SHIFTED THE LOOK THE OLD-FASHIONED WAY BY CHANGING GELS AND DIFFUSIONS.”
ABOVE/OPPOSITE PAGE: SHOOTING IN A REAL PRISON MEANT ALL OF THE LIGHTING FIXTURES WERE ALREADY BUILT IN – SO THE PRISONERS COULD NOT UNSCREW THEM. KINGSTON SAYS THAT TO HAVE INDIVIDUAL CONTROL OF EACH FIXTURE, “WE HAD THE GRIP DEPARTMENT CREATE CUTOUTS OF ND GELS, DIFFUSION, AND BLACK FOAM CORE, WHICH WERE ATTACHED WITH MAGNETS AND SIZED TO THE FIXTURES. THAT WAS OUR WORKAROUND IF WE WANTED TO MANIPULATE ONE OR MORE OF THOSE LIGHTS.”
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Kingston recalls how many scenes are inside the individual cells, “so getting cameras, a dolly and lighting in there was quite challenging,” she shares. “The art department created a 6-by-4-foot camera portal in one wall in Jimmy’s cell, and then one in Larry’s cell. It wasn’t huge, but it gave us a few more angles that we wouldn’t have been able to get otherwise. We were able to put a dolly with a small GF-Jib Arm that Key Grip Richard Ball owns through that portal. There were many similar workarounds. The grips had a couple of Bazookas, which were great for getting into tight spaces in the cells. It’s a stripped-down version of a tripod that still allows you to use a fluid head and get into tightBallspaces.” adds that because of the lack of an elevator, the only way to use Pettibones from
The following morning, Egerton and Kingston beckoned MacDonnell over to watch the shot. “I was like, ‘Whatever,’ thinking the worst,” he laughs. “And I go and look at it. Because Taron had the protein shake in his hand and it got blasted out across the counter and the frame holds on it just a bit too long, it almost looks like we had CGI. It’s spinning through the air and throwing shake everywhere, and I whip down to him, which was completely an accident. I remember, after watching it, thinking: ‘OK, I’m not mad anymore!’ It’s funny because the ideal version of that shot is still in my head. But the only one that exists is the one we shot, and it’s pretty cool as is.”
HERC (Hertz Car Rental’s heavy-machinery segment that caters to the film industry) was to lift the 23-foot Scorpio Crane from All Access up to the second floor. “To do that we had to remove all the air-conditioning tubes, which was difficult on location and the rigging grips – there were a lot of tubes, and [they were] the only thing cooling off the sets,” Ball says. “There was a giant hole in the wall to get the crane in because the prison was under renovation. When we moved the dollies up and down the stairs, they had to be carried.” Ryan, who sourced all his lighting equipment from MBS, liked how the mess-hall sequence turned out because they were able to do more with the lighting. It was shot on a proper set built on a stage at The Ranch in Chalmette, Louisiana. Ryan explains that they “were able to put 18K’s outside the windows and blast it in like sunlight. Since we had an 18K coming through each set of windows, we shifted the look the old-fashioned way by changing gels and diffusions. The later in the day [it got], the more CTO we added. For the night footage, we’d turn off the 18K’s and light each window with a SkyPanel S60 programmed with a mercuryvapor look. Sometimes we would hang a 75watt household globe dimmed down outside the window in the shot. Just a little hotspot that lights only itself but reads so beautifully on camera. Inside the space, we also utilized the practical hanging fixtures with tungsten bulbs.”One spectacular shot in Episode 1 came
of light on the actors in that confined space. “I said, ‘Let’s swap the tubes out to a color we all agree upon, and outside the window build little light boxes, put rainbow tubes in them, so we can control the time of day,’” Ryan recalls. “The windows in jail aren’t real windows. They’re four inches wide and four feet long and heavily frosted. Most of these windows had been so scratched up from real prisoners. As for the lighting fixtures, they would take toothpaste and put it over the fixtures to try to knock down the level of the light because the lights are on 24 hours. We also had 18K’s pushing through the windows of the hero cell units for daytime scenes.”
by default when the crane couldn’t fit into the apartment set. The scene features Jimmy being abruptly nabbed by the DEA. He’s thrown roughly across a kitchen-island counter after he’s mixed an energy drink. Lacking the crane on the day, Steadicam/ACamera Operator Colin MacDonnell felt he could get the shot if the grips put some boxes or a ramp alongside the island. MacDonnell would follow Jimmy being manhandled and jump up on the island as Jimmy was thrown over“Weit. ran it at half speed with the actors in rehearsal,” MacDonnell recalls. “But it was trickier at full speed. I was mad I couldn’t get the timing right in terms of keeping the crosshairs on his head like if we’d been able to use a Technocrane. I left pretty bummed that day, thinking: ‘Damn, I had a chance at a really cool shot, and I screwed it up.’”
Photos by Greg Lewis / S5
Francis adds that he enjoys shots that challenge his focus pulling abilities, “and there were many shots like that in Black Bird ,” he notes. “One example is where we were focused on the fire inside of this huge boiler, with [A-Camera Dolly Grip] Scott [Delane] and [A-Camera Operator] Colin [MacDonnell] pulling back quickly as I rack into an ECU of Larry’s character in foreground, the exterior of the boiler behind him. Days prior, Natalie and I were in discussion as to if we needed a 24-millimeter Laowa Probe lens for this shot because of the two-inch diameter of the glass located on the boiler. But our 65- millimeter macro ended up working out perfectly.”
B-Camera 1st AC Lisa Long notes that because of Kingston’s background as an AC and operator, there was an almost instinctive synch between her, MacDonnell, and B-Camera Operator Matt Bell. “There were certain times where Natalie didn’t even have to tell Colin or Matt what to do,” Long recounts. “They instinctively knew what she
A-Camera First AC Robert “Tweedy” Francis has a long work history with Kingston, dating back more than a decade. “Natalie
“I remember reading that episode and thinking, ‘Why do we need all that? It’s a simple back-and-forth phone conversation,’” MacDonnell smiles. “As a camera operator, I’m imagining having to get all these piddly little shots – a close-up of the handle, the tool bag, et cetera. And then when we shot it, I thought, ‘That was so worth it! I can’t believe I ever doubted it.’ To show how completely wrong I was, everybody talks about that sequence.”
One pastoral sequence, shot in the 100-degree-plus heat and humidity of Southern Louisiana, where Kingston was born and raised – involved a cornfield. Lehane referenced Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven , shot by Oscar-winner Néstor Almendros, for the look of many of the exteriors. The problem? There are few cornfields in Louisiana, which stood in for farm-rich Indiana. So, Production took over a sugarcane field, pulled the sugarcane, and planted corn for the beautiful yet disturbing moments when young Jessica Roach (Laney Stiebing) looks back over her shoulder at some menacing presence, and when Sheriff Miller (Kinnear) imagines what happened to her and what could happen to
Another surprising moment was when Kinnear, as Sheriff Brian Miller, is talking with another law-enforcement official via speakerphone. Kinnear can’t get a window open, and while he’s talking with the other official, he unscrews the window lock, removes it, cleans it, replaces it, and opens the window to let in the fresh air.
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was ACing when we first worked together,” Francis remembers. “She was the first AC, and I was the second. After that, she completed [a cinematography intensive at Maine Media Workshops], where she won a set of Zeiss lenses for her award-winning short film. She came back to work in our area, in Lafayette, and we picked up again, with me moving up to first AC. Bios are the types of projects I enjoy watching, and Black Bird is one of my favorite shows to date. It had the real Jimmy Keene in a small role, helping to put the actor playing his character on lockdown.”
his daughter. “Thatcornfield was very impressive,” A Camera 2nd AC Amy Waksmonski observes. “There are a few shots where there are sugarcane fields in the background, but you can’t tell if you don’t know sugarcane fields. Most of those cornfield shots are the ones Production made. There was also a Chicago unit that went around and got a bunch of B-roll.” “Dennis and I talked a lot about Days of Heaven for those scenes that contrasted the prison,” Kingston adds. “That shot where Jessica looks back was the martini shot of the whole shoot, and we set out to get it on day three. But weather wasn’t on our side that day, so we didn’t get to that sequence. We shot other footage with Jessica on the bike when Greg is imagining her – a long lens shot, and he’s on the phone with the Wabash Police Department. So, the martini shot kept getting punted down the schedule.
“The reason it became so hard to go back,” she continues, “is because we shot that in Thibodaux, which is about an hour outside the city. It was hard to schedule and then gamble on getting a great sunset. But the film gods were in our favor, and we made it out on day 95 – since the Art Department did that sugarcane-to-corn transformation so early in prep, the corn had grown nice and tall! We got a stunning sunset, got our Technocrane out there, and it all just magically came together.”
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DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY NATALIE KINGSTON
“THE SUBDUED PASTEL COLOR PALETTE [REFERENCED FROM GORDON PARKS’ THE ATMOSPHERE OF CRIME] PAIRED WITH RICH CONTRAST WAS SOMETHING I WANTED TO INFUSE. IT PROVIDED AN ATMOSPHERE FOR A PRISON WORLD THAT WAS PREVALENT IN THE 1990S.”
Black Bird Colorist Natasha Leonnet ( Spiderman: Into the Spider-Verse , Limetown ), who was working with Kingston for the first time, was delighted by the DP’s specific references from the Parks book and other sources. “We followed that, and I think we were successful,” Leonnet recalls. “The color palette was unusual, being so soft for such difficult dramatic circumstances. We used Da Vinci Resolve, and Natalie was very hands-on, very present and an absolute joy to work with. Seriously, it was one of the best experiences of my career! There is something about Natalie where you want to give her 110 percent.”
The operator also notes that Kingston is one of the first people he talked to when he started his career. “To see Natalie take this step up, and with this talent level, I’m overthe-moon proud,” he says. “We go back to the DSLR music-video days. Both starting out, she was a half generation ahead of me in the industry, somebody I looked up to when I started. We’ve worked on a lot of commercials, music videos, low-budget features, and short films.”
Kingston says her lens choices also played a big“Somethingrole. about character-driven stories, and that’s what Black Bird is, feels spherical to me. Not necessarily for every story, but for this it just felt instinctively right,” she concludes.
because the talent level was so massive.”
“And Natalie was so open to letting us be creative with our focus pulls,” Long continues. “We would pick and choose our moments. You may begin the shot focused on the obvious central figure but shift to another focal point because of something you saw in rehearsal. By allowing us to make some choices as focus pullers, it makes us feel like we’re contributing to the look, and Natalie was great in encouraging our input.”
“When everything is flowing so well on set, as this show was, with this invisible type of camera capturing these incredible performances, your first thought, based on experience, is: ‘Who cares how good it was on the set? They’re just going to chop it up!’ But they didn’t do that! All those moments that felt right on set – for me, Natalie, the directors and the actors – every time one of those moments happened, if you watch the episode, the whole shot is there, intact. It’s very satisfying, as an operator, to see your work align with the editors’ weeks, even months, after you shot. Everybody was on the same page – what was good on set was good in post.”
“I wanted the 2:1 aspect ratio because that, in conjunction with large-format’s wider field of view, created the perfect canvas to transport you into the nuanced complexity of the characters’ psyches. Dennis and I had a fantastic collaboration. I love how it all came together in the end.”
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MacDonnell says he “can’t even describe how great” the editing team was.
Bell says the scripts were so well written, and there was so much talent on the set, the challenge was mostly to keep up and do your part. “To ensure that you’re properly complementing what everyone else is doing,” Bell describes. “Making sure that their work looks best. It’s a different world from the network TV movies that I might do from time to time. Just keeping up with everybody
wanted with composition and movement. Every choice made was intentional and for a purpose. Whether it was framing the subject in a jarring way within the environment to reflect the fear and loneliness of the character, or by changing the velocity and speed of the camera move to help intensify yet not overshadow the performance – at one point it was almost like they were reading her mind.
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LOCAL 600 CREW MAIN UNIT NEW ORLEANS Director of Photography Natalie Kingston A-Camera Operator Colin MacDonnell A-Camera 2nd AC Amy Waksmonski B-Camera 1st AC Lisa Long B-Camera 2nd ACs Victoria Gonzales Jack Khorram Loader / Digital Utility Danika Andrade DITs Eric BrianRansbottomStegeman Still Photographers Alfonso “Pompo” Bresciani Ryan Sweeney Unit Publicist Julie AndrewKuehndorfLipschultz2NDUNITILLINOIS Director of Photography Tony Cutrono Camera Operator Dean Morin A-Camera 1st AC Keith A. Jones A-Camera 2nd AC Koji Kojima B-Camera 1st AC Rachel Donofrie Loader Bayley Pokorny DIT PJ Russ Head Tech Peter Tommasi RF Tech Benton Ward AERIALILLINOISUNIT Aerial Director of Photography Dylan Goss Aerial Tech/Assistant Camera Dave Arms 2ND UNIT NEW ORLEANS Director of Photography Tony Cutrono 1st AC Keith A. Jones 2nd AC Dumaine Babcock
ERIC RANSBOTTOM SAYS SHOOTING IN ORLEANS PARISH PRISON – WHICH HAD BEEN RAVAGED BY KATRINA – MEANT NO WORKING ELEVATOR TO ACCESS THE SECOND FLOOR. “WE DID BUILD ONE FALSE WALL, BUT OUR OPERATOR AND ACTORS ARE NOT SMALL PEOPLE, AND THEY’RE IN THERE WITH BOLTED-IN BEDS,” HE RECALLS. “A LOT OF TIMES IT WAS JUST ONE CRACK FROM A WINDOW FOR ANY LIGHT.”
DIT
FIVE DAYS AT MEMORIAL
FEATURE 3
By Pauline Rogers Photos by Russ Martin / Apple TV+
Nearly 20 years after Hurricane Katrina, a new TV series retells the systemic breakdown inside a NOLA public hospital.
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“It’s called ‘The Fridge,’ Nickell describes. “It’s four feet wide, 18 inches deep and just over seven feet tall. The sides are Ultrabounce, and the front is Magic Cloth. It’s loaded with Astera Titan LED tubes, so we have full, wireless control of the color and intensity and no cables. We could stand it next to windows to help wrap the light for close-ups. We could lay it sideways, or go to ‘Deep Freeze’ mode, setting it on apple boxes, countertops, and even the occasional gurneys. When the city power went out, the hospital did have generators, but they only ran emergency lighting and life support. That meant darker hallways and no A/C. It was extremely hot and humid. And, when the levees broke, the generators flooded, so the hospital lost all power. We shot countless scenes using only window light, practical fixtures or practical lanterns. Those are generally my favorites.”
Nickell lobbied for shooting large format with spherical lenses cropped to 2.35:1. He felt the combination would allow them to use longer, more flattering lenses for the proximity to talent. They tested ALEXA LF with Panavision Primo V 70 lenses as well as Panavision Artiste lenses. Both had great depth and character, but the Artistes were not as readily available, so they went with the PV 70s.
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committing to the project, Local 600 and Local 667 crew members read Sheri Fink’s 2013 nonfiction book Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital . But even that didn’t quite prepare them for what it would take to capture Apple TV+’s Five Days at Memorial , written by John Ridley, Carlton Cuse and Sheri Fink and directed by Cuse, Ridley and Wendey Stanzler. The physical challenges alone included being up to their necks in the floating mud and detrius and battered by wind and water stirred up by massive Ritter fans, all amidst recreating the true-life pain and loss that occurred after flood waters from Hurricane Katrina turned the busy community hospital into an isolated, floating island of suffering and desperation.
With authenticity being paramount, the team wanted the locations and sets to be as practical as possible. “Even when I’m on a set, I hate pulling walls,” Nickell confesses. “And that meant we would often be in tight quarters. We also wanted to be extremely present with our characters – and John [Ridley] loves close-ups. There was also a lot of VFX, with the main hospital stage in Toronto. Ordinarily, when I work with John Ridley, I shoot on ARRI ALEXA with anamorphic lenses from Panavision. However, I was concerned about using anamorphic because of the tight quarters and extensive VFX work.”
Utilizing Canadian tax incentives, Production re-created Memorial and its surroundings with unbelievable accuracy. Nickell continues: “We used a period-correct hospital in Toronto for most of the work that was in hospital rooms and the connecting hallways, but we had to build the hospital
“The show was broken into two parts: the first five episodes were about Katrina and the aftermath as [they] pertained to Memorial Medical Center, and the last three were about the investigation into those events,” Local 600 Director of Photography Ramsey Nickell explains. Nickell shot Episodes 1−5, with Marc Laliberte (a member of Local 600 and Local 667, Toronto) taking on Episodes 6−8.
The overall look for the first five, according to Nickell, was authenticity. “There was tremendous suffering, and many deaths inside Memorial,” Nickell stresses. “And we owed it to the victims and the survivors to honor that. We wanted the look of the show to follow the path of events. So, each of the first five episodes represents one day of the five inside the medical center.”
“They also helped tremendously with the practical lighting,” Nickell adds. “I always try to light with as little impact as possible. I want the actors to walk onto the set and feel like they’re in the place and time of the scene. I hate C-stands and flags and light stands and all the ‘gack’ that we rely on to make everything beautiful. I wanted to be as invisible as possible. This meant using practicals and lighting through windows wherever we could.”
Nickell says that over the years, he and his crews have been developing a self-contained free-standing light that he could use without stands and flags. And, as Nickell shares, his chief lighting technician, Randy Brown, and key grip, John Tennant, perfected that effort.
lobby, admitting area, ER entrance, pharmacy, surgical area, administration offices, waiting areas and hallways – including the elevated hallway that connected two wings of the hospital that nearly collapsed during the storm. I cannot give enough credit to Production Designer Matthew Davies and Art Director Scott Cobb for the 20,000-plus square feet of sets to fit in and around that forest of vertical support beams in the warehouse we had to use as a stage.
OPPOSITE: TO RECREATE THE HOSPITAL’S EXTERIOR, A TWOSTORY FAÇADE WAS BUILT INSIDE THE 27,000-SQUARE-FOOT TANK THAT WAS FOUR FEET DEEP AND HELD ONE MILLION GALLONS. “WE HAD TO USE A CONSTRUCTION CRANE TO PUT IN AND TAKE OUT ALL THE HIGH-WATER TRUCKS, BOATS AND AIRBOATS THAT WE USED,” EXPLAINS DP RAMSEY NICKELL.
“WE RECREATED THE STORM WITH RAIN TOWERS, RITTER FANS, AND RAIN DEFLECTORS – AND A DOZEN BLUE SCREEN–RIGGED TELEHANDLERS FOR THE EXTENSIVE VFX WORK.”
Day three into Katrina was when Memorial Hospital began evacuations, first by high-water rescue vehicles, then by boat and helicopter. Davies and his team designed and built a “15,000-square-foot helipad that [measured] roughly 125 by 80 feet and 10 feet high,” recounts Key Grip John Tennant. “It was 10 feet high and engineered to support a Blackhawk helicopter – and it did.”
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boats overtake her and carry the viewer to a flooded Memorial Hospital in the distance –all in one uninterrupted take. Matt figured out how to break off the shot into several pieces that utilized the full length of the tank. And it turned out Whelangreat.” saysthe unique thing about Five Days was the amount of previs.
Tennant recounts how the tank essentially created a half-block-long section of NOLA in East Hamilton, Ontario. “We built platforms and placed them in the pool, six inches above water level,” he describes. “On one platform, we placed a dolly. On the second, we placed a 27-foot Filmotechnic crane and an Active head. Then, we had a team of grips in wetsuits move the platforms about for various shots.
To recreate the hospital’s exterior, a two-story façade was built inside the 27,000-square-foot tank that was four feet deep and held one million gallons. “We had to use a construction crane to put in and take out all the high-water trucks, boats and airboats that we used,” Nickell explains. “We recreated the storm for a few different scenes. Lots of rain towers, Ritter fans, and rain deflectors –and we used a dozen of our blue screen–rigged Telehandlers for the extensive VFX work.”
“The VFX team was awesome, especially Matt Whelan,” he continues. “John Ridley had this opening shot in his head that started with a close-up of a person in a boat that pans into her POV of a path of destruction. The other
Tennant and Rigging Key Grip Mark Greenberg built six 20-by-30-feet blue screens mounted on modified Telehandlers that could be positioned around the helipad as needed. “The blue screens were rigged to 12,000 pounds-56 feet Telehandlers,” Greenberg adds. “We did wind-load testing with another Sikorsky helicopter to determine how close we could park our blue screens and not have them affected by the downwash wind forces the helicopters created. Usually, we lower blue screens down and err on the side of caution when high winds are in play. This was the polar opposite and a fun project for our team.”
“Because we had to build a three-story helicopter pad in a field and a ‘flooded New Orleans’ in a huge tank, VFX Supervisor Eric Durst, VFX Producer Danny McNair, and I spent a lot of time talking about camera moves and angles with Ramsey, John and Carlton,” Whelan recalls. “They are amazingly talented and incredibly collaborative film makers. The process continued seamlessly when Wendey Stanzler and Marc Laliberté joined the project for the final three episodes.”
Whelan adds that “the VFX ask was fairly massive, so we were very lucky with our vendors. The bespoke big-water simulation and destruction shots were either shot onlocation in New Orleans and augmented with CG or built entirely in CG. These high-complexity shots were completed by Stormborn Studios. And we segmented the other shots via set with UPP [VFX] handling the helicopter pad and El Ranchito the ER ramp.” Healso cites the opening scene of the boat crew and audience discovering Memorial as his favorite in the show. “John is a very austere filmmaker,” Whelan continues. “He doesn’t shy away from showing hard truths, and he credits the audience enough to stay in a oner while he does it. What I love about this shot is that it wasn’t a oner. It couldn’t be. The tank wasn’t big enough, and the boats weren’t screen-worthy enough over a long distance. There are two stitches: the first occurs when we leave the woman’s face, and the second when the boat pans to the stranded dog. None of the deep background is real. We had drones capture NOLA houses that we reconstructed in CG via photogrammetry, with Rafael Solórzano’s amazing team at El Ranchito completing the shot.”
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“The night of the hurricane, the galeforce winds with the rain looked amazing – it felt real,” adds Weeda, who holds Canadian, Argentinian, and Dutch passports. “Ramsey warned he was going to ask for more wind and more rain; he wanted the true feeling of being in a hurricane. I have to give kudos to the camera assistants for having a great system in place to keep the cameras dry. A problem we ran into during the rain sequences was that the rain deflectors in the Hydroflex splash bag would fog up. A combination of the cold water and heat from the camera caused the fogging. The assistants had a great system using dry ice to keep the temperature inside the splash bag cool, and an air-powered rain-deflector system kept the lens from fogging.”
As for what the IATSE camera crew felt about the shoot, Local 667 Operator Onno Weeda recalls a powerful scene when W. Earl Brown fires a pistol into the air to scare away desperate survivors that are looking for shelter in the hospital. “John Ridley, in conjunction with the gun wrangler, checked that every chamber in the cylinder of the gun was empty,” Weeda explains. “He was asked to witness the process, being a third set of eyes. John repeatedly stressed that everyone’s safety is paramount.” Andthatwasn’t just around guns, as the team was dealing with a lot of moving parts.
“We shot running sequences in the hospital hallway,” he continues. “They were fun but super-hard. We used the ARRI LF on a Ronin 2 in a dual-operator-mode configuration; I carried the gimbal rig using an Easyrig STABIL vest. The speed at which we led or chased actors was fast. The summer heat and humidity in the building was intense. The leading portion of the running sequence was challenging. I’d run forward, pointing the camera behind me over my shoulder, keeping an eye on the framing. I’d also have to look out for low-ceiling obstacles.”
emergency ramp was powerful. “We tried to capture sullen faces of patients waiting to be taken to safety and engaging with the main characters,” White remembers. “It was a lot of long-lens work. Sometimes Onno would lead and frame someone who caught his eye, and I would follow with the focus. Or sometimes I would lead with the focus, and Onno would follow with the framing.”
On the emergency ramp, Susan Mulderick (Cherry Jones) was helping get people onto boats to be evacuated out of the hospital. The character Diane Robichaux (Julie Ann Emery) is a pregnant nurse, overwhelmed and exhausted but conflicted by this chance for evacuation – leaving the yet-to-be evacuated behind. AsWhite tells it, “B-Camera was on a longer lens to capture this moment: the camera positioned to have Robichaux sit in the boat on the right of frame and Mulderick on the emergency ramp on the left. The challenge in camera is that you are doing it without rehearsal – the technical part is in place, and then it is time for the storytelling. You are deciding who the focus is to be on – on-the-fly.”
For 1st AC Barrett Axford (who worked in Canada and NOLA), one sequence stands above
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Another key element is the patients who could not be evacuated.
“The character of Emmett Everett (Damon Standifer) is bedridden,” White describes. “His considerable size and related health problems make his evacuation improbable, if not impossible. For this part of his story, we used diopters and longer lenses to create a shallow depth-of-field. Using dolly offsets and a slider, we positioned the camera over the bed to get in close to his face. Make-up covered him in sweat before we rolled, and we isolated elements of him – beads of sweat rolling down his face, his eyes trying to stay open, his nose and mouth and their labored breathing. These shots put you in his shoes – you realize he is at the mercy of the people caring for him, and his fate is literally in their hands.”
Weeda recounts that even scenes outside the tank were challenging.
For B-Camera focus-puller Brian R. White (Local 667), the evacuation from the
“I WAS ONE OF THE FIRST PEOPLE BACK INTO NEW ORLEANS [AFTER KATRINA]. I WAS HIRED BY PANAVISION TO LOAD ALL THEIR GEAR INTO AN 18-WHEELER AND GO TO DALLAS UNTIL NEW ORLEANS CAME BACK TO LIFE. ODDLY ENOUGH, 16 YEARS LATER, I FOUND MYSELF BACK IN THE SAME OFFICE WITH [LOCAL 667] AC BARRETT AXFORD PREPPING TO HELP TELL THIS TRAGIC STORY.”
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LOCAL 600 1ST AC JEFF TAYLOR
“WE SHOT RUNNING SEQUENCES IN THE HOSPITAL HALLWAY WITH THE ARRI LF ON A RONIN 2 IN DUAL-OPERATORMODE. THE LEADING PORTION WAS CHALLENGING. I’D RUN FORWARD, POINTING THE CAMERA BEHIND ME OVER MY SHOULDER, KEEPING AN EYE ON THE FRAMING. I’D ALSO HAVE TO LOOK OUT FOR LOW-CEILING OBSTACLES.”
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LOCAL 667 OPERATOR ONNO WEEDA
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crew members. This helps with the crowding around the monitors and keeps everyone socially-distanced.” ToJang,QTAKE is even helpful when it comes to VFX. “On the day, I can do a quick edit if anyone needs to see the shots cut together,” he adds. “One of the great tools is to be able to key out the green or blue screens and put in the actual background plate so we can see how it will look on set. Plus, I can overlay many layers for quick comps or 50/50 splits, which helps VFX be able to see, instead of assuming the shots will match. So many other handy, helpful things that QTAKE can help provide to make the VFX days go smoothly.”
Laliberté says there was a conscious choice to juxtapose the darkness of the first five episodes with a warmer, brighter feel to the investigation. “We wanted to photograph a city trying to get back on its feet and thought the warmth of sunlight was a good metaphor for that,” he explains. “We also knew from the scripts that a big portion of our episodes would be interviews of people recalling the events, so we had to deliver something engaging.”
This included connecting to the doctors and nurses under scrutiny by using closer and wider lenses than in standard TV interviews. “We even tried a pass using the Errol Morris
“I knew my approach to framing and camera movement would be quite different from Ramsey and John’s committed POVdriven approach,” he adds, “so I decided against any radical changes to the look. I did use a slightly softer LUT and added black Glimmerglass filtration to soften my look a little further than the first block.”
The work of DIT Mehran Jabbari (Local 667) was also crucial. “We were to record ProRes 4444 XQ with the ARRI Mini LF and Panavision glass,” says Jabbari. “We had a lot of VFX. But, shooting RAW isn’t always necessary. We used Company 3, Toronto. I used Pomfort Livegrade Studio and Silverstack for daily live grade and ingesting and reporting tasks. We kept the cameras at 1600 ASA and 4000K and ran the entire five episodes at T2.8, with a 2.39:1 aspect ratio. The decision to shoot at a higher ASA aided the darker scenes in the hospital hallway and, of course, that grainy look. The LUT that we used with Ramsey was so specific and dark that there was a joke that we were using the Game of Thrones LUT,” he smiles. “All of episodes one through five were shot using the one LUT and same camera settings. When we switched to episodes six through eight, with Marc Laliberté’s post-Katrina scenes, we devised a completely different, softer LUT, rated for 800 ASA, with less grain and more robustAnothermid-tones.” mustwas using QTAKE. Local 667 Video Assist Monty Jang feels that it is often overlooked but can be helpful to all. “I would record all the rehearsals and takes on a hard drive for playback on-the-fly for the director or DP, plus any other department that might need to see back what we’d shot, so the higherups could decide if we could move on to the next setup,” Jang shares. “I would also make sure all the monitors on set had live images to view and be able to play back on the day. In addition to the monitors, we now do livestreaming to individual iPads of approved
the others that highlight Ridley’s passion for character. “It’s in the first episode where John had planned a six-page oner through the hospital following a staff member moving through her morning routine,” he recounts. “This was her introduction, and it was so much fun doing this shot. We stayed with her about two to four feet away. John asked me to watch a specific reference he had for his shot. We held focus on her until the very end, when she turned into the camera. This was a great opportunity for me to play with focus.”
Episodes 6-8 were intentionally more traditional with Director of Photography Laliberté given the freedom to choose a different camera and lens package. “Even changing aspect ratio was up for discussion during my prep,” he shares. “But ultimately, I chose to keep my work in the same cinematic sphere as the earlier episodes, hoping for some unity in the two very different stories.
“However, after seeing the trailer and some of the footage,” Taylor states, “I don’t know how it would have gone over filming in New Orleans. Katrina is part of this city’s soul, and even us doing some post-Katrina scenes with dressed sets brought back a lot of memories for those that were Taylorhere.” sayseveryone on the Local 600 NOLA team has their own Katrina stories.
B-Camera Operator Tony Politis had a similar experience. “At first it was odd a Canadian production crew was in New Orleans telling a story that was clearly not something they had dealt with,” Politis reflects. “Most of the projects we work on have nothing to do with our personal experiences, and as professional filmmakers it is our job to turn in the best product we can. But this one was different. As a camera operator, you often find yourself having to make decisions that help tell a story. In any given moment an actor might shed a tear or turn a head and we have to be ready, knowing what we do with that camera at that moment can amplify those emotions.”
Politis says that although the Canadian crew was not in Louisiana for Katrina, they approached the subject with respect and empathy. “They were conferring with the local crew members about respecting their experiences,” he adds. “We were shooting with two cameras where possible and, as should be expected, both cameras were always communicating to make sure each captured the best possible opportunities. Director Wendey Stanzler and the DP’s were always specific about their requirements while also giving the camera operators the latitude to find the story. That is refreshing, particularly with such a sensitiveLalibertéproject.” says the NOLA locations were key to telling the “Productionstory. Designer in NOLA, Chris Stull, in close conjunction with our amazing Toronto Designer Matthew Davies, did an incredible job in recreating the aftermath of a few months passed in the Lower Ninth Ward,” Laliberté points out. “It’s true some of the locals found it very hard, as our sets brought up so many painful memories. But they were glad the story was being told so people would not forget all they had endured. The blending of the IATSE camera departments in NOLA was seamless; it is a testament to the quality of our technicians and their desire to make good cinematic television,” Laliberté concludes.
A real-life story of this scale requires the best of the best across the board. It was a tremendous privilege for me to work with so many talented, passionate people to recall a time when good people were caught in the most difficult conditions imaginable.”
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One of Laliberté’s favorite sequences was the recreation of the Morley Safer interview with Dr. Anna Pou, the head-and-neck surgeon who was arrested by the Louisiana DOJ in connection with the deaths of four Memorial patients. “It was important the tone of the 60 Minutes interview be truthful, as it propelled this story forward onto the national stage,” he adds. “Our lead actor, Vera Farmiga, was so committed to delivering an exacting performance, and I didn’t want the camera work to distract from the moment in any way. I spent hours dissecting countless 60 Minutes interviews to help me ground the scene in reality and also help build the tension she feels surrounding this moment.”
teleprompter technique,” Laliberté remembers. “We had all the performers do a take looking straight down the lens while talking to the investigators.” For flashbacks that appear throughout the later episodes, Laliberté went wide with the close-ups, embracing the optical distortion and trying to connect to the characters’ discomfort of those moments.
clear they would stand beside us, no matter what, and we just continued our prep. Once shooting started, we fell into a rhythm and did our part to tell the story.”
Ramsey agrees. “Often, people get locked into the channel of only what they are doing, as in, ‘That’s not my job.’ But every department on this show had a stake in telling this story as they knew how important it was. They read the book – sometimes twice. They talked to each other about what everyone was trying to achieve. The physical challenges and the need for innovation were embraced as both IATSE Locals on both sides of the border joined together.
“It was during the contract talks [with producers],” Taylor adds, “and there was a real possibility of a nationwide [IATSE] strike. When we broached the subject to the Canadian camera crew members, all of them made it very
NOLA-based 1st AC Jeff Taylor (Local 600) joined the project after the majority of the devastation was finished in Canada. He says he remembers “feeling slightly upset” they filmed a story, the heart of which was Louisiana.
“The house I was renting was one block from the 17th Street Canal breach and remained underwater for over two weeks,” Taylor reflects. “I was one of the first people back into New Orleans. I was hired by Panavision to load up all their gear from the newly opened Panavision New Orleans office and put it into an 18-wheeler to head to Dallas until New Orleans came back to life. Oddly enough, 16 years later, I found myself back in the same office with [Local 667] AC Barrett Axford prepping to help tell this tragic story. My job was to get as much of a feel from Barrett as to how they shot the previous footage [as I could] and to try to seamlessly keep the flow going with as few hiccups as possible.” Like Taylor, Local 600 2nd AC’s Amy Waksmonski and Kye Ruddy, along with DIT Robert Barr, coordinated with their respective Canadian counterparts to make sure nothing slipped through the cracks. However, while the Guild camera team was prepping the NOLA portion, another huge storm was brewing.
73SEPTEMBER 2022
LOCAL 600/667 CREW LOUISIANA UNIT LOCAL 600 Directors of Photography Ramsey Nickell Marc Laliberté, CSC (Local 600 & 667) A-Camera Operator Steven French, SOC (Local 667) A-Camera 1st AC Barrett Axford (Local 667) A-Camera 2nd AC Amy Waksmonski B-Camera Operator Tony Politis B-Camera 1st AC Jeff Taylor B-Camera 2nd AC Kye Ruddy DIT Robert Barr Still Photographer Sam Lothridge Unit Publicist Maureen O’Donnell (Local 667) TORONTO UNIT LOCAL 667 Directors of Photography Ramsey Nickell (Local 600) Marc Laliberté, CSC A-Camera Operator Steven French, SOC A-Camera 1st AC Barrett Axford A-Camera 2nd AC Christina Louie B-Camera Operator Onno Weeda B-Camera 1st AC Brian White B-Camera 2nd AC Kristin Mombourquette DIT Mehran Jabbari Q-Take Operator Monty Jang Utility Mark Harris Camera Trainees Liam Forde JoeyLaurenFitzmauriceTrudeau Still Photographer Russ Martin
PRODUCTION DESIGNER MATTHEW DAVIES AND HIS TEAM DESIGNED AND BUILT A “15,000-SQUARE-FOOT HELIPAD THAT [MEASURED] ROUGHLY 125 BY 80 FEET AND 10 FEET HIGH,” EXPLAINS KEY GRIP JOHN TENNANT. “IT WAS 10 FEET HIGH AND ENGINEERED TO SUPPORT A BLACKHAWK HELICOPTER – AND IT DID!”
It’s always interesting to compile ICG Magazine’s annual Product Guide.
By Pauline Rogers
All of these dedicated professionals agree there are no guarantees in this post-COVID landscape when it comes to product development and delivery. But these four eyes-on-the-prize pros all gave it their very best shot.
Pre-pandemic, scouting the floor at NAB, Cine Gear Expo, and other shows provided a clear picture of what was Buttrending. thatisn’t the case anymore, given impacted global supply chains and the lack of a reliable parts pipeline that vendors, once upon a time, never doubted. Even as trade shows began a return to in-person events in 2022, it just hasn’t been the same.
As Erik Schietinger, co-owner with his brother Oliver of TCS in Brooklyn, describes, the pipeline problem is persistent and troubling. “Sometimes we think it’s improving, but then we’ll run into a situation where the supply-chain issues rear their ugly heads, and we’re waiting again for spare parts to repair or enhance our equipment. “Whileit may be improving,” Schietinger adds, “we’re not seeing a significant change for at least another year and longer if these new COVID [variants] continue. Many factories and warehouses have become short-staffed. Companies are still struggling, and production and distribution speeds have been greatly impacted. One of our vendors recently confirmed that their new timeframe until normalcy for orders is 18 months!”
All of these outside factors create a good/bad
To help fl ush out those unknowns, this year we connected with an industry expert in each of the anchor sections – Cameras, Lenses, Lighting, and Support – to provide an accurate (or as accurate as possible) lay of the land. Schietinger, whose TCS (www.tcsfilm.com) is a busy rental service based in Brooklyn, has a good handle on camera. Bianca Halpern of up-and-coming lens-rental house BECiNE (www.becine.com) in Culver City, CA, takes us through lenses. Jakob Ballinger , inventor of the LightBridge , has a unique take on lighting from his travels worldwide, working with major lighting designers. As for the always challenging area of support, given the category’s reliance on movable parts, we talked to another rising star, Ryan Halsey, Serious Grippage and Light (www.seriousgrippage.com), out of Albuquerque.
problem in compiling this 2022 Product Guide. While ICG Magazine has built strong relationships with vendors and manufacturers worldwide, our antennas are always up for potential new announcements, and the timeliness of when those products will become available for Guild members is spotty at best. We want you to know what’s coming and we’d all love to know when they are here to use on set.
Continued uncertainty – mixed with cautious optimism – marks the prevailing tech landscape in this (for real?) post-COVID era.
SUMOLIGHT SUMOLASER
BLACKMAGIC DESIGN’S POCKET CINEMA CAMERA 6K G2 WITH EVF LENS MOUNT
As for specialty cameras, Schietinger’s tuned into the slimmed Rialto version of the VENICE and the RED Komodo, “showing themselves to be indispensable for drone work and tight spots, to make the subject more immersive.” Andwhat’s popped up on our radar?
“As far as VR and AR [go], it will be interesting to see how various cameras are adapted to serve that market,” he continues. “We foresee significant demand from the next generation of content consumers, who are heavily focused on the gaming part of the entertainment business. We are already witnessing the adoption of certain protocols for cameras on LED stages and volumes. For example, we have collaborated with Car Stage in New York [ICG Magazine October 2021], an LED stage at the
As for those always reliable vendors, such as Ikegami (www.ikegami.com), that company announced the new UHK-X750 , a multi-resolution and multi-media system at NAB 2022. The camera supports HFR capture for slow motion and can be pedestal- or tripod-mounted or held over the shoulder. It utilizes three ⅔-inch CMOS UHD sensors with global shutter to minimize artifacts when shooting LED screens and offers a choice between BT.202 and BT.709 color spaces. HFR shooting is up to 2× speed in UHD or up to 8× speed in HD. Ditto for Blackmagic Design (www.blackmagicdesign.com) and its newly announced Pocket Cinema Camera 6K G2 . The next generation of the 6K includes an adjustable
Canon’s new EOS R-series – EOS R7 and EOS R10 (www.usa.canon.com) – provide a step-up camera for travel for the former, and a dedicated small footprint for sports photography from the latter. Enhanced video functions and accessories, such as a multi-function shoe, powerful telephoto reach, dual memory cards, autofocus, full-width 4K 32 million to 24 million pixels and more, are part of the EOS R line. And while there was no splashy new Sony camera launched at the trade shows this year, the Sony FX6 (www.sony.com) was definitely on the mind of rental houses and users, with many calling it a “go to” on sets. The new software upgrade gives it a thumbs-up for those who love Sony’s cinema line and its compact, full-frame-image Exmor R™ CMOS sensor and 10.2 megapixels. BIONZ XR™ image processing offers minimal latency and realtime processing. Sony’s S-Cinetone look, which began with the FX9, allows for beautiful images to be achieved in-camera. It captures full 4K (QFHD) up to 120 fps. And the presets in the Scene File function provide more color interpretation in camera and offer custom 3D LUT imports.
Schietinger says his house sees the popularity of ARRI ALEXA Mini and Mini LF because the ARRI ALEV sensors simply produce great images. He also says much improvement has been made by RED’s significant inroads into high-resolution sensor devices, such as Gemini, Helium and Monstro. But, where there is excitement is “the new ARRI 35 and RED’s Raptor XL,” Schietinger adds. “Both represent significant leaps forward in form factor and sensor technology.
OptiTrack’s CinePuck camera-tracking tool (www.optitrack.com/systems) is an interesting new tool that enhances real-time workflows and incamera visual effects, providing volume tracking in a 30-by-30-foot space. CinePuck allows the use of 3D environments in camera and in real-time. And it removes worry about occlusions, markers falling off the ceiling, or adding unnecessary weight to Technocrane/Steadicam/TRINITY rigs.
touchscreen for easier framing and a larger battery for longer shooting without the need to change batteries, and it will support an electronic viewfinder. There’s a multi-function hand grip with all controls for recording, ISO, WB and shutter angle at your fingertips. It has a larger 6144 × 3456 Super-35 sensor and lets users employ larger EF lenses.
“The Sony VENICE cameras have become quite popular with DP’s and AC’s,” Erik Schietinger begins. “The built-in full-range IRND’s have made life simpler for the camera crew because it is a push-button change as opposed to stopping to change filters in front of the camera or play with the ISO. The dualISO feature of both the VENICE 1 and 2 captures beautifully clean images in low-light situations, and the Rialto function allows the lens and camera head to be placed in a position that would be difficult to do with any other high-end motion picture camera.”
forefront of adopting this technology for productions.”
EOS R7/R10 FULL-WIDTH 4K MIRRORLESS CAMERASIKEGAMI UHX-750
CANON’S
For Zooms, Halpern’s current favorite is the Cooke Varotal/i Full Frame – with two focal lengths, 30-95mm and 85-215mm. “They have beautiful characteristics, and I have seen them matched with different prime, vintage and modern lenses,” she shares. Regarding the vintage craze, which shows no
Sigma (www.sigmaphoto.com) announced a product so new it was “technically” embargoed at this writing. The 24mm F1.4 DG DN Art lens is a full-frame, wide-angle prime lens designed exclusively for photo and video. It offers improved sharpness and enhanced portability, and adds a newly introduced Manual Focus Lock, a rear fi lter holder and more. The company also has a 20mm F1.4 DG HSM Art lens designed exclusively for mirrorless cameras, with super optical clarity, dust- and splash-resistant structure, Manual Focus Lock, Lens Heater Retainer, a rear filter holder, and a front filter thread. Both are available for Sony E-mount and L-mount systems.
“Between S35 and full-frame, established brands and new smaller brands, there’s a different flavor for everyone,” Halpern describes. “The new ability to customize lenses is also very exciting, as well as the infinite possibilities of rehousing old lenses. I am even seeing more people creating their own lenses, which is a unique trend.”
sign of slowing, Halpern says that “people are looking for moments of nostalgia and belonging. Old lenses are rehoused for new camera sensors, but also to function with current camera-assistant accessories and the demand for wireless digital focus pulling,” she adds. “These days, the lens housing and mechanisms need to be able to handle the strength of motors; whereas, in the past, focus pullers would use manual focus.” Halpern is also seeing vendors adapt, i.e., keeping modern accessories in mind. It’s about creating a strong and smooth housing that can go through months of shooting with zero to little maintenance. “Since cinematographers are looking for unique looks, sometimes a lens is chosen for the characteristics,” she states, “but the design doesn’t handle the demand of the production. For example, I have seen vintage lenses on an action film set, but the crew has to add more modern lenses to keep up with the days and situations.” Asfor our lens takeaways, there are new concepts from companies like Freelensing Cine (www.freelensingcine.com), which offers a system that leaves the lens virtually suspended in front of the camera sensor, allowing the operator a fast and intuitive movement. The device allows for shifts parallel and perpendicular to the focal plane, rotation of the optical center, and a combination of both pan
Relative newcomer Bianca Halpern’s BECiNE in Culver City, CA, has a reputation that is growing stronger across the country, mostly because Halpern knows lenses. She says the most exciting thing these days is the wide array of options.
New offerings from Canon (www.usa.canon.com) include the Flex Zoom series of EF Cinema Lenses with F2.4 Aperture for Full-Frame cameras. The CN-
A visitor to both NAB 2022 and Cine Gear 2022, Halpern spent a lot of time with the Angénieux Optimo Primes . “They have IOP’s, where you can change the character of a lens by changing an internal glass element, a rear filter or the number of blades in the lenses,” she explains. “Special tuning like that used to require an advanced lens technician. With this modular lens, it gives the freedom to lens technicians and cinematographers of all levels to do some modifications and create their own look.”
There’s also been a buzz about Chrosziel’s (www. chrosziel.com) “Future-Proof Lens Test Projector,” P-TP7 II . It’s for lenses with a diameter up to 60mm (ARRI XPL, Hawk, Panavision), PL, EF, E and other formats. The package includes a power cable, LED light source (about 5000K) with compound parabolic concentrator, 2× multiport connector – and even a filter insert with a filter. Nothing like checking for yourself!
and tilt movements, as well as the ability to choose where to position focal planes in the frame to either increase the depth of field or minimize it.
BLACKWING7 TRIBE7 LARGE FORMAT PRIME SERIES
COOKE VAROTAL/I FULL FRAME 85-215 MM ZOOM LENS
E20-50mm F2.4 L F/FP wide angle and the CN-E45135mm F2.4 L F/FP telephoto zoom cover the same range as Canon’s six existing prime lenses. They leverage a camera’s shallow depth-of-field look and provide smooth and natural background blur, while maintaining a bright F2.4 aperture across the entire zoom range, helping to reduce the need for intricate lighting setups. They are compatible with EF mounts as well as iTechnology from Cooke Optics.
On the “What are ICG members loving these days?” front, we came back with BLACKWING7 TRIBE7’s lenses (www.blackwing7.com). Designed for large-format motion-picture work, they are a new range of tuned optics that exhibit unique imaging properties created from the introduction of controlled distortion in the manufacturing process. The distortion is modular and allows a level of tunability over key parameters such as sharpness, contrast, roll-off, spherical aberration, fi eld curvature, edge halation and flare. Also touted by members and technologists alike are Cooke’s S8/I (www.cookeoptics.com) fullframe lenses, which will initially comprise seven focal lengths – from 25 to 135mm – and nine more added by the end of 2022. These lenses open to a maximum aperture of F1.4 and feature 270-degree rotation for focus and 90-degree rotation for iris. Lightweight, they feature an all-spherical design, which enables the “Cooke look” for modern cinematography.
FULL-FRAME/WIDE-ANGLEDN�ARTPRIMELENS
SIGMA 24-MM F1.4 DG
QUASAR RR50-OMS-16-2021
CREAMSOURCE VORTEX
LITEPANELS GEMINI 2×1 HARD
effects. The integrated power supply has a maximum power draw of 500 W. Seven times brighter than its smaller sibling, it creates a larger volume of punchy light that can be easily softened with a range of diffusers. With no ballast, it’s safe to rig and features onboard controls and wired and wireless control options, including DMX, CRMX and RDM. Newcomer CHAUVET (www.chauvetlighting.com) is showcasing its onAir IP Panel 2 . First used on MBL’s broadcast of the NLCS, it is bright with great dimming properties and color. And the IP65 rating is huge when you’re outside in the elements and Mother Nature sends you rain and everything else. It’s even a timesaver – no bagging or wrapping when loading out.
Science (www.quasarscience.com) debuted its Rainbow 2 and Double Rainbow Tubular LED lights, both of which boast a new color science. The company’s goal is “intense, realistic lighting with multiple individually controllable pixels,” high-quality white light, and saturated color in the tightest spaces with low profiles. Both units use RGBX Spectral Science, with more than one quintillion diode combinations, producing greater than one billion unique colors. Spectrum Control grants the ability to choose the spectral quality of any color point the light can produce.
Jakob Ballinger, a former gaffer and founder of Lightbridge, which manufactures the CRLS Cine Reflectors (www.thelightbridge.com), says there are a lot of lights (and accessories) on the horizon that will be impacting the industry. “Creamsource nailed it this year with the Vortex ,” Ballinger describes. “The IP rating, intuitive software, 20-degree lenses, and their CNC milling have always been out of this world. The proof that this light is here to stay was when colleagues started to put multiple units next to each other to build bigger fixtures. Their new, intuitive rigging option [LNX], to rig multiple units together, is safe, easy, and fast; it pays tribute to the creativity of our community.” Ballinger heads straight for a trusted industry name – Matthews – for lighting support. He calls the Air Climber “a pneumatic piece of joy. By pushing air into the mast with a compressor, you can safely raise the stand and release the air, and your gear will smoothly come back down. It’s the industry’s tallest stand – and it’s starting to show up everywhere.” He’salsogot his eye on Sumolight’s new prototype – a laser. “It has a punchy three-inch beam angle with a crazy throw at 150 Lux at 100 meters with 6000K. They are still tinkering with it. But this is a light to keep an eye on.” So are Leko lights, about which Ballinger notes that “for ARRI to make the docking ring for the Orbiter made sense. Especially with the volume stages on theBallingerrise.” is encouraged by how well his community has come together over the last few years. “Like Mike Bauman, Raffi Sanchez, and Martin Smith starting a ‘discussion’ during COVID,” he notes. “And the ICLS [International Cinema Lighting Community] not only pushing creative ideas but also dedicating itself to networking and professional growth – as well as addressing the lack of women and people of color in the fi lm community around the world. Those are all things to be proud of.”
Astera (www.astera-led.com), which has been a popular product in this magazine in the last year, premiered its new HydraPanel , which provides beam shaping with six included light modifiers (attached via their magnetic corners and adjustable beam from 40 to 100 degrees). Since this 13-lumen output light runs on battery power, you can put it anywhere – floors, tables and surfaces – and even angle it using the included FlexBase accessory. HydraPanels can also be combined via a connector plate. The SyncControl lets connected panels communicate with each other – color or brightness settings are controlled from any panel.
As for the 2022 trade shows, where lighting was undoubtedly the strongest category, Quasar
On the live-event side, everyone’s talking about Sumolight’s SUMOLASER (www. sumolight.com), a daylight point source that can put precision beams of light on a stage or project miles into the sky. It weighs only 10.8 lb/4.9 kg, but it rivals the output of traditional 18-kW HMI daylight sources that weigh ten times more. It’s modular, with individual units in a hexagonal form that are individually controlled by DMX or touchscreen. Each includes a seven-engine laser module producing three-degree beam angles that unite to form a tight, homogenized beam. Industry LED pioneer Litepanels (www. litepanels.com) is always adding and expanding. Its most recent offering – the Gemini 2×1 Hard RGBWW LED Panel – delivers up to 23,000 lux at 10 ft/3 m of output. Like the 1×1 released last year, it produces full-spectrum white light as well as RGB output and a range of cinema
RGBWW LED PANEL
CHAPMAN/LEONARD’SRANGEFINDERM7EVOWITH ORBITER, ON SCORPIO 45-FOOT CRANE
Companies like Chapman/Leonard , of course, are always looking to help a production move forward. And when they come up with something new in support, like the M7 EVO (www.chapmanleonard.com), a state-of-the-art, 4-axis carbon remote-controlled camera-head system that allows unrestricted camera movement in all axes, it’s a solid win. The EVO achieves a perfect horizon, and is a quick mount for all rigs that offers full motion record and playback. (It’s part of Orbiter, allowing head flip from underslung to cantilever to over-slung).
CINE GEAR EXPO 2022 AWARD-WINNER: MOON SMART FOCUS
Circling back to Matthews (www.msegrip.com), in June of 2022, Mark Irwin ASC, CSC, along with Matt and Ray Irwin, partnered with the company on the 3iSpreader , which filled a void in the market.
Real talk? When we asked rental houses that specialize in support what’s new in 2022, we mostly received blank stares. True, small houses are joining larger ones, but the same problem – a broken supply chain – remains. And so does, at times, a muddled message as to what is needed in this changing marketplace.
Halsey is enthusiastic (and cautious) when it comes to the future of support, which is in undeniable flux. “It’s even more important now for the support community to work together,” he concludes, “hopefully looking to a future where the pipeline becomes stronger and we can facilitate the mass of productions we see building today.”
Ryan Halsey of Serious Grippage & Light was at the 2022 trade shows and surveyed the bulk of lighting vendors. He says the trend seems to be camera and grip technicians’ “venturing away from traditional vendors and beginning to fabricate their equipment that’s fully customized to serve their own needs and purposes.” Although self-tinkering is a mainstay of this sector, the pandemic placed manufacturing issues out of everyone’s control. By default, people started joining a local “marketplace” (an accessible co-op machine shop that is nationwide) to machine and even 3D-print their equipment and parts. Suddenly, customization became a trend.
“Local New Mexico fabricator/welder/inventor Marc Terrien is a perfect example,” Halsey reveals. “He has become a go-to person for car trailer...[a self propelled trailer driven by a Tesla drivetrain Terrien calls the ‘Zephyr’] that’s on many shoots today.” With the use of battery-powered motors and vehicles, Halsey sees people repurposing this tech to drive-assist film carts that are used by almost every department on set. “I’ve already heard of some clever AC’s who have found a way to modify hoverboards and e-bike motors to drive-assist their Yager carts,” he describes. In fact, Halsey’s company is developing electric-powered grip and electric carts for outdoor terrain.
Even so, he says some companies have managed to keep the supply chain going with “the new and the reliable,” despite the challenges of our time. Halsey points to Matthews for the 3iSpreader (see below), as well as Motorized Precision (www. motorizedprecision.com), from whom he says he’s always excited to see new updates and info. “Robotics is the future workhorse of our industry,” Halsey shares, “and while its evolution has been slow at times, the more field applications that emerge, the better the tech can adapt and become more multi-functional. I dream of the day that a Kira arm is mounted on a J.L. Fisher chassis and can be remotely controlled in a virtual space, all in real time.”
New on the communications side is Bolero from Riedel (www.riedel.net), a wireless intercom system capable of supporting up to 250 beltpacks and 100 antennas in a single deployment. It’s a game changer, with features like ADR (Advanced DECT Receiver) with multi-diversity and anti-refl ection technology for greater RF robustness. It has “touch and go” NFL beltpack registration and operates as a wireless beltpack, a wireless key panel, or – in an industry first – a walkie-talkie. And more. The belt pack has six intercom channels – with a separate button for a quick reply to the last caller.
DJI (www.dji.com) is one company that seems to have fi xed its pipeline. It’s brought a few new improvements to the Ronin series with the RS 3 and RS 3 Pro. Since speed of setup is now paramount, the redesigned axes-locking system makes the process automated. Turn on the gimbal, and the automated
beltpack, a wireless key panel, or – in an industry brought
Keeping ICG focus pullers in mind, we have the Cine Gear Expo 2022 technical award-winner, the Moon Smart Focus (www.moonsmartfocus.com) rangefinder. The product is being demoed in the U.S., but AC’s and productions call it their new “best friend.” It features multi-person distance measuring in realtime; AI-powered tracking of eyes, bodies, or objects and visual feedback in the app. Such challenges as actor improv, moving cameras, not hitting marks, no prep time, dolly shots and handheld cam are handled with ease. Many Guild members who have had a chance to use it call it a “true game changer.”
axis locks release and unfold the gimbal, allowing the operator to get started in seconds. Tapping the power will send the device into Sleep mode. Balance is faster, touchscreen better, and the LiDAR Range Finder gives focus extra support. Brand new is its first independent wireless video solution, DJI Transmission – which combines reception, monitoring, control and recording in one. It offers a 20,000-ft on-the-ground distance with end-to-tend low latency, a massive upgrade from traditional Wi-Fi. Video is transmitted in 1080p/60 fps and live audio monitoring at 16-bit 48 kHz. To cope with the complicated signal and environment, DFS band has been added on top of the traditional 2.4 GHz and 5.8 GHz settings. Monitoring is wireless and supports transmission for multiple receivers.
Power is always on everyone’s minds, and when searching for what’s new in this area, three hit our radar. The IDX ZENITH (www.idxtek.com) series debuted at NAB 2022. These 3-Stud Mount batteries are a robust replacement for any three-stud pack. The C150G has a high-capacity 145-Wh newly added USB-C PD port for two-way power and charging. It’s cube style for use with cinema cameras. The C98G is another replacement three-stud battery with 97 Wh. It is IATA compliant, with a USB-C PD port for twoway Frompower. industry leader Anton Bauer (www. antonbauer.com) comes the VCLX NM2 NiMH 600Wh free-standing battery. This 600-Wh unit drives a high-current camera and lights with power at 14.4, 28 and 48 V for cinema productions. One XLR3 and two XLR4 connectors provide dual simultaneous 24A current. Real-time onboard diagnostics via the 2.4-inch LED screen mean the battery and equipment can be monitored for peak performance. Finally, from CORE SWX (www.coreswx.com) comes a just-announced rapid charge – the MACH4 . With four independent charge bays, it is capable of charging four batteries simultaneously and individually, achieving a full charge in just 90 minutes. It’s low-profi le and thinner than comparable models, supports 9-240-V-AC input and is globally compatible.
The unit solves three common, annoying and potentially dangerous problems. First, it eliminates scratching and wobbling – common side effects of old-fashioned aluminum spreaders that rest on the floor. Secondly, it removes the need for bungee cords, which are unstable, sloppy and prone to stretching and detaching. Finally, it raises the spreader off the floor, eliminating scrapes and the location-department requirements for layout boards and location mats.
New on the communications side is with multi-diversity and anti-refl ection technology
FSI, which manufacturers in China and sources panels from China, Korea and Japan, has also been updating its LED displays, including the new 31.5-inch XM312U 5000-nit 5K mastering monitor, which offers a 20-percent improvement in the ratio of backlight zones to pixels, twice the panel static ratio, and a peak luminance that’s 2000 nits brighter than its predecessor’s. The XM312U is Dolby Vision qualified and has support for PQ and LG ETOF’s and a contrast ratio above 5,000,000:1, making it one of the brightest HDR monitors on the market. Desmet says HDR mastering monitors like the XM312U are “typically only brought onto set in the first few days of production, with the remainder of production done in SDR or HDR simulation displays. These displays are expensive, so it’s often just the high-budget shows that can afford to bring them on to set. The ability to monitor true HDR on set [with current LCD displays] is not comparable to a mastering display like the XM312U, at least not yet.”
directly into the monitor. It’s very simple, very accurate, and it doesn’t require an engineer.”
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substrate without the use of a “shadow mask.” The former tech generated significant material waste and the risk of contamination. “These new OLED panels are quite good and more affordable than in the past,” Desmet shares. “The DM220 is $1,500 less than our previous DM250. The move back to OLED is, quite simply, because there are now panels available again, after a gap of no panels when the one and only OLED supplier pulled out.”
Like every other category in this 2022 Product Guide, bringing new display products to market was impacted by logjams in the supply chain, specifically with shipping and parts sitting dormant in far-away ports for months on end (hello China and Korea). But that doesn’t mean there haven’t been changes for display vendors and makers at the tail-end of a more than twoand-a-half-year global pandemic. The most surprising shift has been a move back to OLED (organic lightemitting diode) display technology for both on-set and high-end mastering applications due to a new run of OLED panel-makers coming to market (after the largest – and only – OLED panel supplier pulled out completely). Twoyears ago [ICG Magazine Product Guide 2020] in this space, I wrote about a move away from OLED to LCD (liquid crystal display) panels that use dual-layer cell technology to improve viewing angles and offer OLED-like blacks. And while LCD still dominates for cost-conscious users, long-time display veterans like Bram Desmet, with Georgiabased Flanders Scientific International (FSI), says his company has done a reboot on OLED displays, mainly because of new OLED panel-makers in the market, all using a new inkjet printing technology that precisely deposits the organic materials onto the
Recently, FSI morphed all of its technology into two platforms (DM and XM) to better account for the rising costs of display components and to consolidate improving technology, particularly for production displays. The flagship of those is FSI’s new 22-inch RGB OLED [DM220] , debuted at NAB 2022. “It’s extremely lightweight and is one of the most colorcritical [and] accurate monitors we’ve ever made,” Desmet describes. “The main feature is an autocalibration functionality, which allows users to plug a probe directly into the monitor and, in seven minutes, generate calibration LUT’s for any color space – on the fly. If you want Rec.709 with 2.4 gamma, you can do it; if you want P3 with P65 white point, you can do that. Users get a much higher degree of calibration accuracy than in the past because it’s a true volumetric analysis. There’s no software required as it plugs
With new OLED suppliers in the market, vendors look to blend the tech’s “wow factor” with prevailing LCD’s for quality displays across all departments.
By David Geffner
POWER TO THE PEOPLE
What has gotten better, according to Desmet, is HDR “preview” on high-contrast SDR monitors like the DM220, which has a peak luminance of 335 nits. “If you feed this display a PQ signal,” Desmet adds, “it will perfectly map PQ from 0 to 100 nits, and with anything
“The 24-inch option is a good size for looking at content, without being too small to see detail or too large to be practical,” Hendriks adds. “I’ve always valued the black levels of Sony’s OLED monitors, and while LED didn’t offer the exact same experience, it still gave me a really good on-set view of HDR.” Hendriks says working in HDR in an on-set environment is “a relatively easy workflow to adapt to, as the highlights are fairly precise.”
over 100 nits it will do a ‘soft roll.’ It won’t map 1 to 1 over 100 nits, but you will still see high and low light detail and differentiation, as HDR typically appears, just without the brightness you’d have in a mastering suite. Of course, DP’s are concerned with highlight details, and this soft-roll emulation accounts for that. But, more importantly, the low light tracks differently in PQ than in SDR, and with high-contrast displays like the DM220, you can exactly map those bottom ten nits of luminance and see those shadow details as with an HDR mastering display.”
In terms of workflow, Hendriks takes a log feed out from the camera and enables a log feed on his monitor. “Then I use a live grade to add a LUT to the feeds,” he shares. “I use my scopes in Watch mode, primarily to review my false color for exposure. The false-color setting is an extremely valuable feature, as is the ability to upload and compare user LUT’s.” Hendriks tends to work on projects that have a darker look, “so it’s helpful to have a monitor” that can handle the blacks and shadows as well as the highlights. “I find that Sony’s monitors don’t give you a bleached-out image – they give you deep blacks,” he concludes. “Every camera and monitor can do bright, but it’s how they behave in the dark, can control shadows and can balance highlights that are most important.”
(VP) sector. Kevin O’Connor, senior director, New Media and Business Development, Sony Electronics, observes that “traditionally, cameras and LED walls [for VP] are developed independently. But, as the only company in the world that manufactures highend digital cinema cameras and LED walls, [Sony is] uniquely positioned to solve problems, streamline workflows, and innovate. From the color science of our flagship digital cinema camera, VENICE 2, to the color accuracy of our award-winning video wall, the Crystal LED B-Series, we unlock these technologies to deliver outstanding cinematic imagery and optimize post-production efficiency. As a result, filmmakers can focus on storytelling instead of allowing technology to slow them down.”
LG’S DVLED (DIRECT VIEW LIGHT EMITTING DIODE) TECHNOLOGY IN A VP/XR STUDIO SETTING
4K CINE 18
and the PVM-X2400 met most of his requirements.
North Carolina-based SmallHD has always had storytelling tools at the top of its product list. Recently the company added a versatile new display to its lineup, the OLED 27 4K Reference Monitor Introduced at Cine Gear Expo 2022, it offers on-set HDR preview as well as color grading in post. Specs on the OLED 27 include 10-bit, true-to-life OLED accuracy in a lightweight, durable chassis; a contrast ratio of 1,000,000:1; 110-percent DCI-P3; 135-percent Rec.709; 3840-by-2160 resolution; and brightness up to 550 nits. The OLED 27 is powered by the company’s
HDR simulation on set, particularly for gauging shadow detail, as Desmet describes, is where industry leader Sony Corp. has been targeting its on-set LCD technology. Local 600 DIT Jeroen Hendriks recently used Sony’s PVM-X2400 4K HDR monitor for the dramatic feature Where the Crawdads Sing In a follow-up report for Sony, Hendriks notes that “after having positive experiences with Sony’s OLED monitors for years,” he chose the PVM-X2400 for a variety of reasons. “I had worked with other HDR monitors in the past, which were too big, too heavy and too expensive,” he writes. “Due to the wear and tear monitors experience, I prefer to own my technology,”
Sony has also been busy in the virtual production
SMALLHD
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light the display without the need for a filter. According to LG, the DVLED panels are “lighter, last longer, emit less heat than LCD panels,” and can account for virtually every broadcast need, from HD on-screen displays to wall-sized backdrops, and ceiling and floor products that enable the creation of immersive digital spaces. “From the newsroom to the control room, LG’s DVLED displays are delivering performance benefits to improve both on-the-air and behind-the-scenes operations,” observes Dan Smith, vice president, business development, LG Business Solutions USA. “With the ability to build custom displays with unique shapes, sizes and curvatures, DVLED can be used virtually anywhere a digital display is desired. And with pixel pitches as small as 0.9 millimeter in our MicroLED line, LG can now deliver Ultra HD and HD DVLED displays in various sizes, opening endless possibilities for use on news, weather and sports sets or in editing or control-room settings.”
Boland Communications has been a mainstay at the NAB Show for decades. The Lake Forest, CAbased display vendor introduced the first LCD monitor for the broadcast community nearly 30 years ago (after getting feedback from users at the 1995 NAB Show). Boland’s X series of OLED 4K monitors was a Best in Show Award Winner at NAB 2022. Featuring contrast ratios of 1,000,000:1, low latency, and ultra-wide viewing angles, the durable and versatile production displays range in size from 16 to 65 inches.
Smith says LG’s assortment of DVLED products “allows set designers to think outside the box and consider custom displays, enabling creative branding and presentation options for a variety of on-camera needs. There are virtually no limitations on size,” he adds, “so almost any set can add a wall-to-wall
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Like Sony, LG Electronics is a longtime industry leader in consumer displays, and now the Korean firm has set its sights on capturing a growing segment of the professional market, specifically display solutions for the ever-changing broadcast field. The newly formed LG Business Solutions USA made a splash at NAB 2022 with its DVLED (direct-view light-emitting diode) technology, which, unlike LCD’s, does not need backlights, edge lights or a shutter – the LED’s directly
proven PageOS software platform, the latest of which includes tools like Waveform, Vectorscope, Color Pipe HDR color rendering, Monitor Calibration Wizard, and Livegrade
SmallHDintegration. wasalso touting its new 4K Cine 18 , which it describes as “the new monitor for everywhere,” and they may just be right. Big enough for Video Village, bright enough for daylight viewing, and light enough (and durable enough) for challenging location shoots, the Cine 18 features a 10-bit color depth and 1100 nits of brightness, and will render 100 percent of Rec. 709 and 98 percent of DCI/P3 in even the sunniest of exterior locations. With a budgetfriendly list price of $5,999, the display fills a muchneeded niche for quality exterior monitoring in 4K.
backdrop that delivers crisp, bright HD imagery, while curved models can be fitted to almost any curved wall or pillar in either convex or concave orientations.”
LG’s NAB 2022 booth included the 136-inch LG AllIn-One DVLED display, which ships in a flight case, as well as multi-feed video wall displays for control rooms and on-set displays for news broadcasts, live stage performances and VR/XR production. All LG DVLED displays feature V-sync adjustment, custom color-gamut mapping, bezel-less design, high refresh rates, high contrast and deep blacks. The product line includes models with pixel pitches ranging from 0.9 to 4.6 mm and brightness of up to 5,000 nits. LG was a co-developer of the ATSC 3.0 next-generation broadcast standard and was named an “Official NEXTGEN TV Partner” for NAB 2022.
SAMSUNG CINEMA LED
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Des Carey, Global Head of Cinematic Innovation for Samsung, notes that “emerging theatrical trends that include HDR content deliver the best contrast, brightest whites and darkest blacks,” providing a perfect fit for LED Cinema screens. “Over the last few years,” Carey adds, “LED technology continues to develop, replacing older projection technology. LED technology is customizable and scalable, allowing cinemas to transform theaters into entertainment destinations.” Careysays that as picture quality gets better for the home, “cinemas and studios need a reason to get people off their couches and into theater seats. Whether watching a blockbuster movie on the Onyx or providing an immersive background for a theater/ dine-in experience, Samsung’s The Wall allows theaters to be more creative. The emergence of 8K
But the use of LED technology for theatrical exhibition is an undeniable game-changer that may ultimately allow for HDR and ultra-high-resolution content to be delivered to audiences on a grand scale.
Desmet says LCD/LED technology has always been a mainstay of production displays, and the tech continues to improve each year. “We can provide global production access to tools like HDR preview modes with these cost-effective LCD’s,” Desmet notes. “They allow everyone, from Video Village to Hair and Make-Up to the DIT, to see a normal HDR image without having to bring a bunch of 35,000-dollar monitors onto the set.”
consumer TV’s, such as Samsung’s 8K QLED , is a driving factor in studios looking to develop 8K content for future theatrical releases.”
The company’s most recent catalog – which includes displays for virtually every industry application from mobile broadcast trucks to jib, Steadicam and crane operators – notes how critical a role monitors play in the world of broadcast television. “They provide preview for multiple cameras; assist with camera shading; allow the T.D., A.D., director, and operators to frame a shot; and provide multi-viewing control options for large production – they can even monitor signal with built-in scopes.” To that end, Boland’s current Broadcast line, including the X4K31HDR5-OLED and 4K55-HDR , and the BHB09x2-HDR and BHB07x2HDR rack monitors, offer 178-degree off-axis viewing, with uniform calibration colorimetry, and “are easy on the eyes after 14-hour days” in the studio or the truck.
(theoretically) can provide an infinite contrast ratio. With only about 40 Onyx Cinema screens worldwide, the platform is still nascent. (China, which accounts for nearly half of all the digital cinema screens in the world, has more than 10 percent of all Onyx screens.)
Speaking of easy on the eyes, five years ago, Samsung Electronics Co. brought forth a unique solution to seeing HDR-versioned content in theaters with its Onyx Cinema . Introduced in 2017, the backlit LED projection technology offers brightness levels of 146 foot-lamberts (500 nits) compared to 14 foot-lamberts (48 nits) of digital front-projection technology. Onyx Cinema allows for ambient light inside the theater without any degradation to the onscreen image and
So why the need for a 5000-nit display like the one FSI recently introduced? “That display is meant to address the need for 4000-nit Dolby Vision masters,” Desmet continues. “Ninety-nine percent of requested Dolby Vision masters are 1000 nit. But there are places that want 4000-nit deliverables for premium content, which is essentially future proof. It’s a niche segment of the market, but with Dolby no longer making its own displays, the higher luminance options are something we’re going to continue to explore because we feel strongly about helping to push HDR forward in the industry. If you’ve ever seen a 1000-nit grade next to a 4000-nit grade on a 4000-nit capable display, there’s no denying the impact is significant.”
SONY’S CRYSTAL LED WALLS FOR VIRTUAL PRODUCTION
Data clouds were everywhere at NAB 2022. There were big clouds, limited clouds, private clouds and live production platforms that were live clouds. This isn’t simply a reflection of an industry trying to figure out how to work through COVID, but a vision for production that some technologists have been predicting for 20 years. In
a digital world, everything the crafts generate throughout a project is a data set. The value of having those data sets reside in some type of cloud somewhere becomes obvious when compared to physical workflows. A prime example is the handling of lens metadata; the old-school way is to put it on a USB stick and put that in an envelope with the camera card or drive along with the camera report. That means someone in postproduction first has to notice it (which isn’t a guarantee with 14-hour days), have the time to load it and attach it to the shots correctly and then pass it through any number of hands in editorial and post until someone in VFX says: “Hey, can you send me the lens metadata?” How could that possibly fail?!
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accessible to anyone (with the right permissions) at anytime and anywhere they might need them is the essence of cloud workflows. That accelerates logistics, reduces the chatter and opens the possibility for Production to work with people and vendors across a national and global market where time zones have less and less meaning. While not necessarily the best news for those working in some of the highly portable support positions in postproduction and VFX, that’s how production is evolving.
Putting a system in place to make sure that files can be found and access granted eliminates the mindnumbing chore of tracking them down and the chain of emails and phone calls to get them to the people who need them. Making a production’s data assets
And this software will be integrated with their other important software tools.” MovieLabs, a joint venture of the major studios, released a 2030 vision whitepaper concluding that production will move into the cloud across the next 10 years. Michael Cioni, SVP of Global Innovation for Frame.io, anticipates that by 2028 it will be practical to push camera-original images, not proxies, straight into the cloud. What this all means is we are witnessing an evolution that has many moving parts and challenges that will be addressed a few at a time. Even with its current imperfections and limitations, the cloud is impacting every aspect of production.
When it comes to core technology, Amazon Web Services Color in the Cloud, highlighted at NAB 2022 and winner of an HPA Engineering Excellence Award, has leveraged the JPEG XS codec to provide visually lossless streaming color from the cloud. This is a core technology that enables streaming proxies to be visually identical to the camera original. While Local 600 members are not likely to handle this technology directly, it enables cloud workflows for tools our members do use, like FilmLight’s Baselight. The AWS MediaConnect service is currently supporting 4:2:2
The hurdles to realizing this vision aren’t trivial. The software and hardware we use has to be interactive with the cloud resources. Productions have to realize that efficiency still comes at a cost and that various people will now have to do the work of setting up the network, moving the files and managing the data, which is a real change for crafts that are not accustomed to having to move their work products off-set. And then there’s the internet connectivity challenge of what’s called “the first mile” and “the last mile.”
SEEDING THE CLOUD
When I asked if these challenges will be met, the answer was a resounding “Yes!” Local 600 DIT Ryan Prouty, creator of Colorspace technical production vans, says, “If you ask any 100-million-dollar company whether or not they use productivity software that’s connected to the cloud, the answer will be, ‘Of course.’
By Michael Chambliss
After more than a decade of “exploration,” a torrent of virtual workflows is raining down upon Local 600 sets.
browserThere’sdevices. also
One of the grails of cloud workflows is securely sharing the camera image moments after “cut” is called. This is more of a problem for the internet service providers to solve than it is an issue for camera or wireless video companies. When the bandwidth is there, the hardware will follow. What we can do right now involves creating proxy files while shooting, and those can be fairly good. They include Teredek’s Cube 655 Encoder , an AVC (h.264) video encoder with a built-in wireless router that enables live streaming over the internet, encoder-to-decoder workflows, local wireless video monitoring and proxy file uploads for camera-to-cloud workflows. The Cube can encode at fixed bitrates up to 15 Mbps (near Blu-Ray quality) or be operated in an adaptive bitrate mode that adjusts the size of the stream to the available bandwidth. The encoded image can also be stored on an SD card as a back-up or for later uploading. The router connects with up to six devices locally and is compatible with Frame.io’s C2C (camera-to-cloud) features with camera metadata transfer that include filename, timecode and reference audio. It’s also fully integrated with Core, Teredek’s low-delay encrypted video village in the cloud that can connect with an unlimited number of users on iOS, Mac OS, Apple TV, Android and web
Discussing full workflows in the cloud, Michael Cioni, SVP of Global Innovation for Frame.io, says that “Frame.io is not a tool to play assets; we’re the collaboration layer that blankets an entire cloud workflow. Frame.io is integrated into more than dozens of professional tools so users can move assets to and
10-bit JPEG XS streams in Rec. 709 and Rec. 2020 with 4:4:4 12-bit in testing.
on different displays.
Under the hood, an AWS Color in the Cloud workflow relies on the AWS Cloud Digital Interface, AWS Elemental MediaConnect, AWS Elemental MediaLive for video encoding and AWS Elemental MediaPackage for content packing and delivery. But on the user side, all we see is a JPEG XS decoder that converts the data stream to uncompressed video connected to the grading monitor. The output from AWS MediaPackage can also be HEVC (h.265) or AVC (h.264) with digital rights management for compressed direct
Forstreaming. criticalviewing in the cloud, there’s Colorfront Streaming Server Mini launched at the 2021 HPA Tech Retreat. It’s a small (1 RU form factor) appliance that can simultaneously stream up to four channels of 4K 4:4:4, AES-encrypted, reference-quality video with up to 16 channels of 24-bit audio over public internet. This software application for creative workstations is designed for artists to stream work-in-progress content to their remote clients. And on the client side, Colorfront’s Streaming Player enables color-accurate viewing on 4K reference displays and HDR-capable notebooks, tablets and smartphones. 2022 updates include the ability to target various luminance levels
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ATOMOS Connect , a streaming appliance for the ATOMOS Ninja V or Ninja V+ recorders. It has a 12G SDI input, ATOMOS AirGlu for wireless timecode sync across multiple devices, WiFi 6, gigabit ethernet and Bluetooth LE connectivity. The dual-record feature on the Connect/Ninja combo creates a “hero” Apple ProRes or Avid DNxHR/HD file along with a proxy HEVC (h.265) file with matching timecode and metadata. It’s a fully integrated Frame. io camera-to-cloud (c2c) device and works with ATOMOS Studio, which was also announced at NAB 2022. ATOMOS Cloud Studio is a collection of three cloud-based services: ATOMOS Stream for direct connection to YouTube and Twitch, ATOMOS Capture to Cloud and ATOMOS Live Production, which is a virtual control room for live video and multi-camera production.
HPA ENGINEERING EXCELLENCE AWARD WINNER AND NAB 2022 HIGHLIGHT: AMAZON WEB SERVICES COLOR IN THE CLOUD
AVID NEXIS HYBRID STORAGE SYSTEM FOR LOCAL / CLOUD EDITORIAL
EVERTZ MICROSYSTEMS LTD BRAVO STUDIO VIRTUALIZED PRODUCTION SUITE FOR LIVE EVENT PROGRAMMING
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Other developments by Sony for 2022 include a new commenting system; clipping from the cloud for publishing in social media; mobile applications; live streaming with scrubbing and commenting and viewing via Apple TV. In a significant move, Ci introduced EDL (edit decision list)–based automation for VFX
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Sony Ci was launched in 2013 as a “one cloud” approach to collecting digital assets, producing and then archiving content that can connect to everyone, anywhere. With time to develop, CI has provided Sony with valuable experience to help shape the MovieLabs 2030 vision. The platform is a big toolbox with specialized functions for narrative, news and live production. David Rosen, Ci’s VP of Cloud Applications and Solutions, explained in his NAB 2022 presentation that the working philosophy is to put the file in one place and bring the people to the file, where they can work independently without copying or moving data. That contains the data explosion that can happen across production, which impacts time, communications, asset tracking, security and archiving.
from their favorite integrations while keeping Frame. io as the secure center. Adobe has tens of millions of customers, and we’re listening to the community and inventing entirely new ways to work.”
pulls. Rosen explained that generating and delivering VFX pulls can take using as many as seven different applications with files in ten different locations. That means the VFX editor can upload an EDL, and Ci will automatically find the media, transcode it into the specified format and deliver it to the VFX house in one package without moving files. Similar automation is in development for editorial, conforming and archiving pulls. Building on the move to IP video (video as a data stream versus a signal), it’s becoming practical for live productions to move some of the infrastructure we’re accustomed to seeing in trucks, in fixed locations, into the cloud, which might even be partially staffed by a remote workforce. Those firms enabling these live production clouds include Evertz Microsystems LTD., which demonstrated several products enabling live-event and sports productions to move away from hardware to virtualized cloud-based and blended location/cloud approaches to production.
Evertz’s BRAVO Studio Virtualized Production Suite provides all of the traditional components of a production control room directly in the cloud. This enables remote users to be located anywhere and to use any cloud provider to handle standard live production functions such as live switching, live graphics, slow-motion replay and clipping. The system is like a virtualized production trailer with empty racks that get filled with software modules instead of physical components to meet the needs of the production and playout to broadcast centers. There is a lot of code devoted to ensuring that the encoding/decoding and transport processes happen with minimal latency and high reliability. Evertz was also showing cloud-based multi-viewing and monitoring systems that can be configured using local computer hardware or cloud data Location-basedcenters.
AVID’s NEXIS was one of the first network storage devices for editorial teams. NEXIS | EDGE, which was first announced at the 2022 HPA Tech Retreat, couples the venerable NEXIS local storage system to cloud services for a hybrid local/cloud editorial network. The system is tightly integrated with AVID’s Media Composer, allowing for the automatic generation of EDGE proxy files with the ability to toggle between proxy and source-file editing without re-linking or conforming. When working remotely, Media Composer can use a mix of proxy and local source files as well. The EDGE browser allows viewing access to viewing files and elementary cuts without requiring the user to have Media Composer on their computer. Finally, Amazon Studios recently announced a joint project between AVID, Amazon Studios and Amazon Web Services relying on NEXIS | EDGE for editorial work on Amazon Studios productions.
Partnering with Teradek, ATOMOS, AATON, Viviana Cloud, Sound Devices and FDX, Frame.io officially released C2C (camera to cloud) in March 2021. Cioni says that Frame.io has now supported about 5,000 productions with C2C, and hundreds of new productions deploy a camera-to-cloud workflow each month. Where connectivity is a challenge, he reports that more than 4,000,000 takes have been uploaded to Frame.io via high-speed cell or satellite in conjunction with its technology partners Sclera and First Mile Technologies.
The CGP 500 Creative Grading panel is an expansion of the CGP 400, that when paired with the camera control server provides a wide range of assignable options for direct control of the camera image. The joystick simultaneously controls four parameters of choice, such as iris, master black, variable gain and variable color temperature. The knobs are also software-assignable. The Creative Grading app provides graphic representations of the control parameters and can be used on a tablet without the CGP 500. Camera settings can be arranged in logical groupings, enabling a camera to toggle from one look to another, even on-air. The same look can also be shared across multiple cameras controlled from the same tablet.
Specialized Hybrid Clouds include a set of computing and storage resources that can be accessed from anywhere. In the case of large cloud providers, that’s a huge network of data centers. But local storage can become its own smaller scale data center or linked to larger providers. The LumaForge (now a part of OWC Computing) Jellyfish line of workflow servers is a well-established line of network-attached storage devices that are specifically designed for editors and postproduction teams. Building on the concept of what we call “the cloud,” which is really a set of remote servers and storage, Jellyfish Remote Access skips the work of interfacing with the large cloud providers by turning their servers into remote-from-anywhere private clouds. The workflow from camera is the standard ingest. When going remote, the Media Engine creates internet-friendly proxy files that are relinked to the original files when the work is complete. Kyno for Jellyfish is a workflow assistant that connects directly with Frame.io for review and approval and Archiware P5 for archiving.
With its open API (application programming interface) architecture, Frame.io wants to give users the option to choose their favorite tools, design their workflow, assign teams, and then assemble workflow in a secure end-to-end cloud-based studio. This flexibility allows for department-level organization in the cloud; enabling Camera, Sound, Art, Props, and Wardrobe to have their own work areas along with Editorial, VFX and Post. The execution can be basic or extensive, giving productions from documentaries to features and broadcast the ability to move into the cloud. For flexibility beyond the open API, Frame.io works with Zapier, an automated workflow tool that connects applications without the need for custom coding. At the time of NAB, Frame.io was connecting to twenty production tools including Baselight, Colorfront, Pomfort Livegrade & ShotHub, ZoeLog, the Magic ViewFinder app and FiLMiC Pro. That count is expected to double over the next year. File viewing is via browser, handheld devices, and Apple TV.
camera and encoding work are known as “on the edge” in the new language of live cloud production. Edge computing is a concept that first came into widespread use with 5G networks; it refers to a local network that handles immediate tasks and then feeds that work to a remote main network. Grass Valley’s AMPP live cloud production platform won NAB’s 2021 Product of the Year Award and this year featured Creative Grading for its Focus and LDX camera series. The AMPP platform is cloud-native, meaning that the applications have been built to run in a public cloud. The system’s architecture is based on five core technologies that handle the engineering chores of digital media distribution, connections between processing devices, media timing, media identity and stream management based on the type of media itself. It’s a virtual control room where such functions as audio mixing, web capture, recorders and multi-viewers are added and configured as apps.
ATOMOS CONNECT: A STREAMING APPLIANCE FOR THE ATOMOS NINJA V OR NINJA V+ RECORDERS.
FRAME.IO ‘S MICHAEL CIONI, SVP OF GLOBAL INNOVATION SAYS, “FRAME.IO IS NOT A TOOL TO PLAY ASSETS; WE’RE THE COLLABORATION LAYER THAT BLANKETS AN ENTIRE CLOUD WORKFLOW.”
99SEPTEMBER 2022
ManFirst McFaddenDanielbyPhoto/McFaddenDanielbyPhoto/ 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 Still Photographers, Publicists, Additional Units, etc.). Please note that the deadline for the Production Credits is on the first of the preceding cover month (excluding weekends & holidays). Submit your jobs online by Anywww.icg600.com/MY600/Report-Your-Jobvisiting:questionsregardingtheProductionCreditsshouldbeaddressedtoTeresaMuñozatteresa@icgmagazine.com PRODUCTIONCREDITS
101SEPTEMBER 2022 PRODUCTION CREDITS
DIGITAL UTILITY: SPENCER ROBINS REMOTE HEAD TECH/OPERATOR: BRUCE PASTEL
“AMERICAN HORROR STORY AKA BANDANA” SEASON 11
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: GARY BAUM, ASC OPERATORS: JAMIE HITCHCOCK, DEBORAH O’BRIEN, DAMIAN DELLA SANTINA, ALLEN MERRIWEATHER ASSISTANTS: BRADLEY TRAVER, SEAN ASKINS, YUKA DIGITALKADONOIMAGING TECH: DEREK LANTZ
“GODFATHER OF HARLEM” SEASON 3 DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: JACK DONNELLY, JAY OPERATORS:FEATHERGERARD SAVA, GEB BYERS
DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: JEFFREY HAGERMAN LOADERS: ETHAN FERNANDEZ, LAWRENCE ODUSANYA STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: KYLE TERBOSS
“GREY’S ANATOMY” SEASON 19 DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: BYRON SHAH, JEANNE OPERATORS:TYSONSTEPHEN CLANCY, APRIL KELLEY, GREG ASSISTANTS:WILLIAMSNICK MCLEAN, FORREST THURMAN, CHRIS JONES, KIRK BLOOM, LISA BONACCORSO, J.P. STEADICAMRODRIGUEZOPERATOR: STEPHEN CLANCY
STEADICAM ASSISTANT: NICK MCLEAN LOADER: MARTE POST
“HOW I MET YOUR FATHER” SEASON 2
DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: DARYN OKADA, ASC, BRIAN OPERATORS:GARBELLINIHARRY GARVIN, LISA STACILAUSKAS, SOC, DAVID ASSISTANTS:MUN TONY SCHULTZ, GEORGE MONTEJANO, III, SALVADOR VEGA, DUSTIN FRUGE, ANDREW DEGNAN, HANNAH LEVIN
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: STANLEY FERNANDEZ OPERATORS: CARLOS GUERRA, AILEEN TAYLOR ASSISTANTS: CHRISTOPHER ENG, NICALENA IOVINO, RONALD WRASE, MARIA GONZALES
2ND DIRECTORSUNIT OF PHOTOGRAPHY: BERND REINBARDT, STEVE GARRETT
“JIMMY KIMMEL LIVE!” SEASON 19 LIGHTING DIRECTOR: CHRISTIAN HIBBARD OPERATORS: GREG GROUWINKEL, PARKER BARTLETT, GARRETT HURT, MARK GONZALES STEADICAM OPERATOR: KRIS WILSON JIB OPERATORS: MARC HUNTER, RANDY GOMEZ, JR., NICK CAMERAGOMEZUTILITIES: CHARLES FERNANDEZ, SCOTT SPIEGEL, TRAVIS WILSON, DAVID FERNANDEZ, ADAM BARKER VIDEO CONTROLLER: GUY JONES STILL PHOTOGRAPHERS: KAREN NEAL, MICHAEL DESMOND
“9-1-1” SEASON 6
20TH TELEVISION
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: TIMOTHY GILLIS OPERATORS: MICHAEL BRIAN HART, GREG ASSISTANTS:LUNDSGAARDSHARLA CIPICCHIO, WILL WACHA, KAIMANA PINTO, MATHEW MEDEIROS STEADICAM OPERATOR: MICHAEL BRIAN HART STEADICAM ASSISTANT: SHARAL CIPICCHIO LOADER: BLANE EGUCHI
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY:JOAQUIN SEDILLO, ASC OPERATORS: RICH STEVENS, DUANE MIELIWOCKI, SOC, DALE VANCE, SOC ASSISTANTS: KENNETH LITTLE, CLAUDIO BANKS, TOBY WHITE, STEPHEN FRANKLIN, MELVINA RAPOZO, JIHANE MRAD CAMERA UTILITY: PAULINA GOMEZ DIGITAL UTILITY: BRYANT POWELL
“STATION 19” SEASON 6
“UP HERE” SEASON 1
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: ASHLEY CONNOR OPERATORS: JUSTIN FOSTER, PETE KEELING ASSISTANTS: GUS LIMBERIS, ROSSANA RIZZO, TOMMY SCOGGINS, MIKE SWEARINGEN LOADERS: OFELIA CHAVEZ, WILLIE CHING STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: CRAIG BLANKENHORN
“DOOGIE KAMEALOHA MD” SEASON 2
ABC STUDIOS
ASSISTANTS: JEROME WILLIAMS, JOHNNY SOUSA, BEHNOOD DADFAR, CHRISTOPHER CHAVES LOADER: PARKER RICE
CAMERA UTILITIES: DAN LORENZE, RICHIE FINE LOADER: KIERSTEN DIRKES VIDEO CONTROLLER: JOHN O’BRIEN STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: PATRICK WYMORE
DIGITAL UTILITY: KAHEALANI KAHAULELIO STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: ZACH DOUGAN
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: ROBERT HUMPHREYS OPERATORS: CHRIS CUEVAS, JEFF TOMCHO ASSISTANTS: JUSTIN WATSON, JOHN RONEY, PATRICK SOKLEY, KAT SOULAGNET DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: MICHAEL KIM LOADER: LAURA SPOUTZ UTILITY: CHRISTIAN HAWKINS STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: CHRIS REEL
CMS
DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: RYNE NINER DIGITAL UTILITY: TAYLOR O’NEIL STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: RON JAFFE
DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: MICHAEL G. ASHLEY
CBS
“THE TALK” SEASON 13
“NCIS” SEASON 20
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: NEWTON THOMAS SIGEL, ASC OPERATORS: SCOTT SAKAMOTO, SOC, TOMMY TIECH ASSISTANTS: MICAH BISAGNI, RUDY SALAS, BEN DIGITALBRADYIMAGING
COOLER WATERS
CHELSEA TRAIL, LLC
“SWEETWATER”
“A DIFFERENT MAN”
“CANDY CANE LANE”
CINDY HSIEH, EASTON CARVER, GREG MARSHALL DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: JUSTIN WARREN DIGITAL UTILITY: CHILE MANUEL
TECH: JASON BAUER LOADER: DAMON MOSIER
“THE FRONT ROOM” DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: AVA BERKOFSKY, ASC OPERATOR: JESSE SANCHEZ-STRAUSS ASSISTANTS: BECKI HELLER, CHRISTINA CARMODY, KRISTINA LALLY DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: ZACH SAINZ LOADER: AMANDA LETTIERI STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: JON PACK
LOADERS: JOHN CONQUY, SYDNEY BALLESTEROS, MADELEINE KING, AMELIA MCLAUGHLIN, BRIAN PUCCI STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: ERIC ESPINO PUBICIST: JACKIE BAZAN CRANE OPERATOR: PAUL MCKENNA BEHIND-THE-SCENES: PAUL MCKENNA
“HELL OF A WEEK WITH CHARLAMAGNE THA GOD” DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: PETER GORDON OPERATORS: CARLOS GONZALEZ, ROBERT YORK, ANDREW ROBINSON, GERARD CANCEL, ED STAEBLER ASSISTANT: DIANA PATRICIA RODRIGUEZ CAMERA UTILITIES: FRANCO COELLO, ROBERT PATTERSON, MAURICE WILLIAMS JIB ARM OPERATOR: RICHARD S. FREEDMAN
“HONDO” SEASON 1 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: STUART DRYBURGH OPERATORS: CHRIS HAARHOFF, ROBERT CAMPBELL ASSISTANTS: JOE MARTINEZ, JOHN OLIVERI, ADAM RUSSELL, ANDY HENSLER LOADERS: DANIEL RODRIGUEZ, ALEC FREUND STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: JOJO WHILDEN
BIG INDIE LITTLE ROCK, INC.
“MUSICA”
“MR. & MRS. SMITH” SEASON 1
CASH QUICK PRODUCTIONS
COLTRANE PRODUCTIONS
LIGHTING DIRECTOR: MARISA DAVIS PED OPERATORS: ART TAYLOR, MARK GONZALES, ED HANDHELDSTAEBLEROPERATORS: RON BARNES, KEVIN MICHEL, JEFF JOHNSON JIB OPERATOR: RANDY GOMEZ
“ZIWE” SEASON 2 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: LAUREN MARIE GUITERAS OPERATORS: NADINE MARTINEZ, CAI HALL, MICHAEL STAMPLER, MICHELLE SUN ASSISTANTS: ELIZABETH CASINELLI, PATRICK BRACEY, TRICIA MEARS, BRITTANY JELINSKI, BRIAN LYNCH, IVANA STEADICAMBERNALOPERATOR: MICHAEL STAMPLER DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: HUNTER FAIRSTONE LOADER: SKYE WILLIAMS STILL PHOTOGRAPHERS: FRANCISCO SANCHEZ, GWENDOLYN CAPISTRAN
HEAD UTILITY: CHARLES FERNANDEZ UTILITIES: MIKE BUSHNER, DOUG BAIN, DEAN FRIZZEL, BILL GREINER, JON ZUCCARO VIDEO CONTROLLER: RICHARD STROCK STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: RON JAFFE
“TAKOVER”
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: TODD BANHAZL OPERATORS: DOMINIC BARTOLONE, JESSICA LAKOFF CANNON, JUSTIN CAMERON ASSISTANTS: DAVID EDSALL, SCOTT JOHNSON, ARTURO ROJAS, GARY BEVANS, JASON ALEGRE, RYAN JACKSON, RIO ALLEN STEADICAM OPERATOR: DOMINIC BARTOLONE STEADICAM ASSISTANT: DAVID EDSALL LOADER: EMILY GOODWIN DIGITAL UTILITY: BRANDON JOHNSON STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: WARRICK PAGE
“CSI: VEGAS” SEASON 2 DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: CHRISTIAN SEBALDT, ASC, FERNANDO ARGUELLES, ASC OPERATORS: JENS PIOTROWSKI, GARY TACHELL ASSISTANTS: HEATHER LEA-LEROY, NICK NEINO, NICK BIANCHI, CHAD NAGEL
DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: RYAN DEGRAZZIO LOADER: NAOE JARMON
“PAX”
BEACHWOOD SERVICES
“ENTERTAINMENT TONIGHT” SEASON 41 LIGHTING DESIGNER: DARREN LANGER DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: KURT BRAUN OPERATORS: JAMES B. PATRICK, ALLEN VOSS, ED SARTORI, BOB CAMPI, RODNEY MCMAHON, ANTHONY SALERNO JIB OPERATOR: JAIMIE CANTRELL CAMERA UTILITY: TERRY AHERN VIDEO CONTROLLERS: MIKE DOYLE, PETER STENDAL
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: WYATT GARFIELD OPERATOR: JOHN DAVID DEVIRGILIIS ASSISTANT: LUNA BURNS LOADER: AMANDA LETTIERI STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: MATTHEW INFANTE
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: ANDREW WHEELER OPERATOR: JOHN C. LEHMAN ASSISTANTS: SEBASTIEN THIBEAU, MARY-MARGARET PORTER, DARELL BURKE, CHRISTOPHER RYAN MARLOWE, ANTHONY SCOPINO STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: DANA KATHLEEN HAWLEY
BIG INDIE SMITH, INC.
BIG INDIE MUSICA, INC.
DIGITAL UTILITY: RAINEY ZIMMERMANN STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: RON JAFFE
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: CHRISTIAN SPRENGER OPERATORS: MICHAEL FUCHS, REBECCA RAJADNYA ASSISTANTS: CRAIG PRESSGROVE, JAMES SCHLITTENHART, MABEL SANTOS HAUGEN, KELLON INNOCENT DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: CHRIS HOYLE DIGITAL UTILITY: STEPHANIE SPINDEL LOADER: RUBEN HERRERA STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: DAVID LEE
BIG INDIE HONDO, INC.
CRANETOWN MEDIA, LLC
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: JAMES KWAN OPERATOR: ALEX JOSEPH ASSISTANTS: WARREN BRACE, PEDRO ESCOBAR,
“BARRY” SEASON 4 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: CARL HERSE OPERATORS: DON DEVINE, NEAL BRYANT ASSISTANTS: PETER GERAGHTY, ANDREW DICKIESON, BRENT EGAN, DAISY SMITH STEADICAM OPERATOR: NEAL BRYANT STEADICAM ASSISTANT: ANDREW DICKIESON DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: GREG GABRIO LOADER: BOB EGAN
“DAYS OF OUR LIVES” SEASON 56 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: VINCE STEIB OPERATORS: MARK WARSHAW, MICHAEL J. DENTON, JOHNNY BROMBEREK, STEVE CLARK CAMERA UTILITIES: STEVE BAGDADI, GARY CYPHER VIDEO CONTROLLER: ALEXIS DELLAR HANSON
STEADICAM OPERATOR: HARRY GARVIN STEADICAM ASSISTANT: TONY SCHULTZ DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: ANDREW LEMON UTILITIES: GRANT JOHNSON, BELLA RODRIGUEZ CRANE TECHS: CHRIS DICKSON, DERRICK ROSE
“NCIS: LOS ANGELES” SEASON 14 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: VICTOR HAMMER OPERATORS: TERENCE NIGHTINGALL, RICHIE HUGHES ASSISTANTS: KEITH BANKS, JIMMY FERGUSON, PETER CARONIA, JACQUELINE NIVENS, WILLIAM SCHMIDT
“ERIC LARUE”
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: SHANE HURLBUT, ASC OPERATORS: SCOTT MAGUIRE, JASON ROBBINS, GLEN CHIN, ALAN PIERCE, SAM ELLISON ASSISTANTS: ERIC SWANEK, MICHAEL GUTHRIE, RORY HANRAHAN, ADAM DIETZ MILLER, TYLER SWANEK, EMMALINE HING, MATTHEW PHILIP ORO, SYDNEY BALLESTEROS
“MEN OF DIVORCE” OPERATORS: DOUG DURANT, ZACH RUBIN ASSISTANTS: JASON BROWNRIGG, GOVINDA ANGULO, HAROLD ERKINS, MASA JANKOVIC
SEPTEMBER 2022 PRODUCTION CREDITS102
“WINNING TIME: RISE OF THE LAKERS DYNASTY” SEASON 2
BIG INDIE CANDY, INC.
APPLE STUDIOS, LLC
“BOSCH: LEGACY” SEASON 2 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: RODNEY TAYLOR, ASC OPERATORS: ERIC SCHILLING, GARY HATFIELD ASSISTANTS: DAVID LEB, RYO KINNO, NATHAN CRUM, BENNY BAILEY STEADICAM OPERATOR: ERIC SCHILLING STEADICAM ASSISTANT: DAVID LEB DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: TIM NAGASAWA LOADER: SONIA BARRIENTOS DIGITAL UTILITY: JARED WILSON
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: WILLIAM WEBB, ASC OPERATORS: GREG COLLIER, CHAD ERICKSON ASSISTANTS: JAMES TROOST, NATE LOPEZ, HELEN TADESSE, YUSEF EDMONDS, ANNA FERRARIE LOADER: MIKE GENTILE
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: DONALD THORIN OPERATORS: STEPHEN CONSENTINO, GEOFFREY FROST ASSISTANTS: NICHOLAS DEEG, GLEN CHIN,
STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: DENNIS MONG
ASSISTANTS: ALEX CASON, PATRICK TSCHARSKYJ, CHRIS DANIEL, MATTHEW BOREK LOADER: BRIAN WINIKOFF
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: ELISHA CHRISTIAN OPERATORS: KOREY ROBINSON, ALAN WOLFE, GREG STEADICAMMCMAHONOPERATOR: KOREY ROBINSON DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: MICHAEL POMORSKI STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: MICHAEL SOFOKLES
“SATURDAYS”
STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: ANDREW CASEY
DAVID SCHULTZ
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: CARLOS GONZALEZ, SVC OPERATORS: GREG MATTHEWS, BLAINE BAKER ASSISTANTS: MATT ROZEK, MATT MIELE, MATT FEASLEY, ELLA LUBIENSKI
“TRANSPLANT”
DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: TOM ZIMMERMAN LOADER: EVA JUNE DIGITAL UTILITY: LANEY NALING
IMPROBABLE VALENTINE, LLC
FULL OF HEART, LLC
DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: MARCELL REV, CHRIS NORR
ENDEAVOR CONTENT
DOREY’S FILM PRODUCTION, INC.
STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: CRYSTAL POWER
EYE PRODUCTIONS, INC.
“O HORIZON”
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: ERIC LIN OPERATOR: DANIEL FRITZ
FLATCH PRODUCTIONS, INC.
“SWAGGER” SEASON 2
KENNETH MARTELL, JONATHAN SCHAEFER, MICHAEL GUTHRIE, MAXWELL SLOAN, MATEO GONZALEZ, HAROLD ERKINS, MYO CAMPBELL LOADERS: NANDIYA ATTIYA, MICHAEL PARRY STILL PHOTOGRAPHERS: LINDA KALLERUS, ALYSSA LONGCHAMP, EMILY ARAGONES
“BLUE BLOODS”
STEADICAM OPERATOR: BLAINE BAKER
“THE GAME” SEASON 2
“MAYOR OF KINGSTOWN” SEASON 2 DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: KENJI KATORI, STUART OPERATORS:CAMPBELLLAWRENCE KARMAN, RICH SCHUTTE ASSISTANTS: JON JUNG, BENEDICT BALDAUFF, BRIAN BRESNEHAN, KEVIN GALLOWAY CAMERA UTILITIES: KAYLA LUKITSCH, JUSTIN ILLIG LOADER: DAN SOTAK
STILL PHOTOGRAPHERS: DANA KATHLEEN HAWLEY, BROWNIE HARRIS
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: WOLFGANG HELD OPERATORS: NICK TIMMONS, MEGAN MASUR ASSISTANTS: CALEB DUTTON-PLUTZER, MAJA FEENEY, KYRA LOADER:KILFEATHERJEFFREY
“FAMILY”
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: DARREN GENET OPERATORS: GREG FAYSASH, KEN ORTIZ ASSISTANTS: GERAN COSTDANIELLO, AUBREY STEVENSON, AMANDA KOPEC, BENJAMIN EADES
ELI WALLACE-JOHANSSON, DARWIN BRANDIS, PALMER ANDERSON, CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE CAMERA UTILITY: PAIGE ELIZABETH MARSICANO DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: ANDY BADER LOADER: CORRYN ANN DIEMER
GWAVE PRODUCTIONS/DISNEY
“IMPROBABLE VALENTINE” SEASON 1
LOADERS: BILLY HOLMAN, ANDREW HWANG STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: PHIL CARUSO
103SEPTEMBER 2022 PRODUCTION CREDITS
DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: CLIFFORD CHARLES, GREGORY OPERATORS:GARDINERKERWIN DEVONISH, JUSTIN UCHENDU, JOHN FRANK LYKE, MAX FISCHER, WILLIAM YOUNG ASSISTANTS: JAMIE MARLOWE, ELIZABETH SILVER, CHRISTOPHER GLEATON, MARK BAIN, JASON REMEIKIS, ERIC EATON, DAVID GLEATON, ZAKIYA LUCAS-MURRAY, PATRICK JOHNSON, SEAN SUTPHIN CAMERA UTILITIES: BRANDON EASTMAN, LARRINA ELLISON
“WELCOME TO FLATCH” SEASON 2 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: SHANA HAGAN, ASC OPERATORS: GRETCHEN WARTHEN, ASHLEY HUGHES ASSISTANTS: NICHOLAS GOWIN,
STEADICAM OPERATOR: GREG FAYSASH LOADER: ALANA MURPHY DIGITAL UTILITY: NATHANIEL POBLET STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: BORIS MARTIN
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: GAVIN KELLY OPERATORS: ELI ARONOFF, BLAKE JOHNSON ASSISTANTS: DEAN MARTINEZ, CHRIS WIEZOREK, BRIAN GRANT, ADAM DEREZENDES
“LADY IN THE LAKE AKA FLAMING”
“LAW & ORDER” SEASON 22
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
DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: TERRENCE BURKE, RON OPERATORS:FORTUNATOJOSPEPH BLODGETT, TODD SOMODEVILLA, JASON MASON, RICARDO SARMIENTO ASSISTANTS: ADAM GONZALEZ, JOHN FITZPATRICK, JELANI WILSON, BRYANT BAILEY, JAY ECKARDT, WARIS SUPANPONG, MICHAEL LOBB, JASON RASWANT,
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: CRAIG DIBONA, ASC OPERATORS: CHRIS HAYES, TOM WILLS ASSISTANTS: ALEX WATERSTON, IAN BRACONE, DEREK DIBONA, EMILY DUMBRILL LOADERS: MAX SCHWARZ, MATT ELDRIDGE
REMOTE BROADCASTING, INC.
NBC UNIVERSAL TELEVISION, LLC
JAY SQUARED PRODUCTIONS, LLC
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: ATTILA SZALAY, ASC OPERATOR: BUD KREMP, SOC STEADICAM OPERATOR: BUD KREMP, SOC
“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
“THE RIGHTEOUS GEMSTONES” SEASON 3 DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: PAUL DALEY, MICHAEL SIMMONDS, STEPHEN THOMPSON OPERATORS: FRANZISKA LEWIS, PETER VIETRO-HANNUM, DANIEL SHARNOFF, JAMIE SILVERSTEIN, BARRET BURLAGE ASSISTANTS: MARK BAIN, DAMON LEMAY, MATTHEW MEBANE, JUSTIN URBAN, DARWIN BRANDIS, OREN MALIK, EMILY RUDY, NICHOLAS BROWN, JAMES THOMAS TECHNOCRANE TECH: JOHN SLADE CAMERA UTILITIES: DOUGLAS TORTORICI, OREN DIGITALMALIKIMAGING
“UNTITLED NOVELIST PROJECT”
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: BART TAU OPERATORS: AFTON GRANT, MICHAEL LATINO ASSISTANTS: LEE VICKERY, YURI INOUE, GEORGE LOOKSHIRE, NKEM UMENYI LOADERS: RAUL MARTINEZ, CONNOR LYNCH
SEASON 1
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: FELIKS PARNELL OPERATORS: JON HERRON, CHRIS DEL SORDO ASSISTANTS: MIKE GUASPARI, CHRISTIAN CARMODY, RYAN HADDON, MARY NEARY LOADERS: LIAM GANNON, JAMES WILLIAM STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: ALYSSA LONGCHAMP
SECOND FAILURE, LLC
PIONEER STILLKING FBI KFT
TECH: MICHAEL TUCKER LOADER: DOUGLAS TORTORICI STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: JEREMIAH NETTER
DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: SARAH CAWLEY, ANDREW OPERATORS:PRIESTLEYRYANTOUSSIENG, JOHN ROMER
“CLAIRE”
SALT SPRING MEDIA, INC.
“LAW & ORDER: SPECIAL VICTIMS UNIT” SEASON 24
“THE GOLDBERGS” SEASON 10
NO TICKETS PRODUCTIONS, LLC
“WU-TANG: AN AMERICAN SAGA” SEASON 3
PASSENGER PRODUCTIONS, INC.
SHELTER S1 PRODUCTIONS
NETFLIX PRODUCTIONS, LLC
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: CRISTINA DUNLAP OPERATORS: XAVIER THOMPSON, JULIA LIU ASSISTANTS: JILL TUFTS, FELIX GIUFFRIDA, AUDREY STEVENS, KEENAN KIMETTO DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: MATTIE HAMER STILL PHOTOGRAPHERS: SEACIA PAVAO, CLAIRE FOLGER
“MANIFEST” SEASON 4
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: JASON BLOUNT OPERATORS: SCOTT BROWNER, NATE HAVENS ASSISTANTS: TRACY DAVEY, GRETCHEN HATZ, GARY WEBSTER, TOMMY IZUMI DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: KEVIN MILLS LOADER: DILSHAN HERATH
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PACIFIC 2.1 ENTERTAINMENT GROUP, INC.
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DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: PATRICK CECILIAN LOADERS: SIERRA NICOLE COSSINGHAM, MATTHEW SULLIVAN STILL PHOTOGRAPHERS: JESSICA KOURKOUNIS, CLAIRE PUBICIST:FOLGERBROOKE DI BONAVENTURA
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“BEVERLY HILLS COP: AXEL FOLEY” DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: EDU GRAU, ASC OPERATORS: ARI ROBBINS, SOC, MICHAEL MERRIMAN ASSISTANTS: STEPHEN MACDOUGALL, JORDAN PELLEGRINI, DAN MING, ROBBIE JULIAN LOADER: MATTHEW EWING DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: JESSE TYLER UTILITY: SAM NAVARRO STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: MELINDA SUE GORDON
“UNTITLED HART/ROCK DOCUMENTARY”
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“THE EQUALIZER” SEASON 3
“FBI” SEASON 5
“BROTHERS SUN” DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: KIM MILES, ASC, CSC, MYSC, ANDREW MITCHELL OPERATORS: ERIC CATELAN, MIKE VEJAR ASSISTANTS: RAY MILAZZO, KEVIN SUN, RYAN PILON, GARY JOHNSON STEADICAM OPERATOR: ERIC CATELAN DIGITAL UTILITY: DANTE TOTINO LOADER: CRISS DAVIS
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DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: PAUL SCHILENS LOADER: DAN BROWN
MIXED BAG PRODUCTIONS, LLC
NIALANEY RODRIGUEZ, DANTE CORROCHER, ALEJANDRO LAZARE DIGITAL IMAGING TECHS: TIFFANY ARMOUR-TEJADA, NATHANIEL SPIVEY LOADERS: NAJOOD ALTERKAWI, TOM FOY, JAMAR OLIVE, SAM SHOEMAKER STILL PHOTOGRAPHERS: MICHAEL GREENBERG, ALYSSA LONGCHAMP
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: MAURO FIORE, ASC OPERATORS: DAVE EMMERICHS, SEBASTIAN SLAYTER, WILLIAM GREEN, HENRY CLINE ASSISTANTS: STEPHEN WONG, STEVE CUEVA, JAMIESON FITZPATRICK, JASON CLEARY, JILL TUFTS, GREG WIMER, TREVOR CARROLL-COE, AUDREY STEVENS
PICROW STREAMING, INC.
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“LAW & ORDER: ORGANIZED CRIME” SEASON 3 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: JIM DENAULT OPERATORS: JON BEATTIE, JAY SILVER ASSISTANTS: KEVIN WALTER, ALEKSANDR ALLEN, KEVIN HOWARD, KJERSTIN ROSSI LOADERS: BRANDON OSBORN, VINCE FERRARI
ASSISTANTS: ANDREW PECK, ALEKSANDR ALLEN, WESLEY HODGES, KELSEY MIDDLETON, PATRICK MCKEOWN, PATRICK O’SHEA LOADERS: STEPHANI SPINDEL, ROSE FORMAN STILL PHOTOGRAPHERS: PETER KRAMER, SCOTT MCDERMOTT, GIOVANNI RUFINO
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CAMERA UTILITIES: MATTHEW SULLIVAN, KEENAN KIMETTO
SEPTEMBER 2022 PRODUCTION CREDITS104
UNIVERSAL CONTENT PRODUCTIONS
“THE PENDULUM PROJECT AKA COMMAND Z”
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STAGE MIGHT, INC.
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SUMMER 1, LLC
JIB ARM OPERATOR: STEVE SIMMONS
WONDER STREET PRODUCTIONS
CAMERA UTILITY: RAY THOMPSON VIDEO CONTROLLER: JEFF MESSENGER VIDEO UTILITIES: MICHAEL CORWIN, JEFF KLIMUCK
“TED TV”
WARNER BROS.
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: JEFF MYGATT OPERATORS: BILL BRUMMOND, TOBY TUCKER, MICHAEL FREDIANI, SOC ASSISTANTS: DENNIS SEAWRIGHT, DALE WHITE, SCOTT BIRNKRANT, RENEE TREYBALL, CHUCK WHELAN, BROOKE MAGRATH STEADICAM OPERATOR: BILL BRUMMOND LOADER: MAYA MORGAN STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: TRAE PATTON
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“WHEEL OF FORTUNE” SEASON 37
“EAST NEW YORK”
SOREN NASH, TREVOR WOLFSON, ALISA COLLEY, ROB KOCH, ELIZABETH CASINELLI, KATIE GREAVES, SUNIL DIGITALDEVADANAMIMAGINGTECH: DAVE SATIN
STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: CAROL KAELSON
STALWART PRODUCTIONS , LLC
DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: ZEUS MORAND, JENDRA OPERATORS:JARNAGINJULIEN ZEITOUNI, PETER NOLAN, DAVID ISERN, ALAN JACOBSEN, LUKE OWEN ASSISTANTS: SAMANTHA SILVER, VINCENT TUTHS, ERIKA HOULE, EVAN WALSH, MARC CHARBONNEAU, ELIZABETH CASINELLI, ANABEL CAICEDO, KYLE TERBOSS, CORY MAFFUCCI, NOLAN MALONEY, JAMES KATHERINEDEMETRIOU, RIVERA, CHRISTOPHER PATRIKIS DIGITAL IMAGING TECHS: MATTHEW RICHARDS, JESSICA LOADERS:TAMANUEL GARCIA, TOM FOY, ALEX LILJA, DAVID TECHNOCRANEDIAZ TECH: JORDAN HRISTOV STILL PHOTOGRAPHERS: SCOTT MCDERMOTT, PATRICK HARBRON
“THE SUMMER I TURNED PRETTY” SEASON 2
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TECHS: STUART ALLEN, PAUL MCKENNA DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: ANTHONY HECHANOVA LOADERS: TOM FOY, BRIAN PUCCI, JUAN QUIROZ-VIZHNAY, MOXIE HARFELD STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: PETER KRAMER
STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: CAROL KAELSON
“OBLITERATED” SEASON 1
DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: RAUL RIVEROS
SONY PICTURES TELEVISION
“ISLE OF THE DEAD” SEASON 1 DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: VANESSA SMITH, TERRY STACEY, KIP BOGDAHN OPERATORS: PARRIS MAYHEW, MICHAEL BURKE, CONNIE HUANG, JOSHUA KRASZEWSKI, KATE LAROSE ASSISTANTS: CASEY JOHNSON, RORY HANRAHAN, STEPHEN MCBRIDE, IAN SCHNEIDER, MARC LOFORTE, HOLLY MCCARTHY, MAXWELL SLOAN, JONATHAN DAILEY, JON SANDIN, KELLON INNOCENT, JOSEPH ROBINSON, BRIAN PUCCI, JIEUN TECHNOCRANESHIM
“YOUNG SHELDON” SEASON 6
DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: CHRISTOPHER RATLEDGE LOADERS: BRANDON ROBEY, PAIGE MARSICANO DIGITAL UTILITIES: CORRYN DIEMER, HAILEY NELMS STILL PHOTOGRAPHERS: ERIKA DOSS, JOHN MERRICK
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: JEFF ENGEL OPERATORS: DIANE L. FARRELL, SOC, MIKE TRIBBLE, JEFF SCHUSTER, L. DAVID IRETE
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: JEFF ENGEL OPERATORS: DIANE L. FARRELL, SOC, L.DAVID IRETE, RAY GONZALES, MIKE TRIBBLE HEAD UTILITY: TINO MARQUEZ
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: ABRAHAM MARTINEZ OPERATORS: BRIAN NORDHEIM, DAVID SAMMONS, MICHAEL KALE BONSIGNORE ASSISTANTS: CHRIS NORRIS, ROB SALVIOTTI, ARTU ARIN, JULIAN QUIAMBAO, DORIAN BLANCO, JESSE HEIDENFELD, DIANA DE AGUINAGA UTILITY: KATE DENMAN
“JEOPARDY!” SEASON 36
105SEPTEMBER 2022 PRODUCTION CREDITS
STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: MICHAEL PARMELEE
LOADERS: HOLDEN HLINOMAZ, ROBERT STACHOWICZ LIBRA HEAD TECH: SEAN FOLKL
“GRIFOLS” DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: MATT DORRIS ASSISTANTS: JILL TUFTS, MICHAEL RODRIGUEZ TORRENT DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: MATTIE HAMER
THE CORNER SHOP
SEPTEMBER 2022 PRODUCTION CREDITS106
TASTE
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: KAI SAUL OPERATOR: SAM ELLISON ASSISTANTS: NICOLAS MARTIN, ALAN CERTEZA STEADICAM OPERATOR: JUN LI DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: BEN MOLYNEUX
HONOR SOCIETY
“KFC”
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: DANIEL STEWART ASSISTANTS: PATRICK BOROWIAK, JILL AUTRY, WILLIAM L. POWELL
SWEET RICKEY
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: LUKE MCCOUBREY ASSISTANTS: WALTER RODRIGUEZ, SARA BOARDMAN DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: ILYA AKIYOSHI
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: MIKA ALTSKAN OPERATOR: SAM ELLISON ASSISTANTS: FILIPP PENSON, SANCHEEV RAVICHANDRAN STEADICAM OPERATOR: YOUSHENG TANG
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“NJM INSURANCE GROUP”
BISCUIT
“NBC”
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: ERIC SCHMIDT OPERATOR: VINCE VENNITTI ASSISTANTS: JOHN CLEMENS, RICK GIOIA, JORDAN LEVIE DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: JEFF FLOHR
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: KIP BOGDAHN ASSISTANTS: KEN THOMPSON, NATHANIEL PINHEIRO DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: TYLER ISAACSON
COMMERCIALS
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: MAX GOLDMAN ASSISTANTS: BRIAN AICHLMAYR, ANDRES QUINTERO
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: MARTEN TEDIN ASSISTANTS: CHEVY ANDERSON, DARNELL MCDONALD DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: JOE BELACK
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“NFL”
CMS PRODUCTIONS
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“DRAFT KINGS”
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STATION FILM
MISSING PIECES
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DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: ERIC SCHMIDT OPERATOR: REMI TOURNOIS ASSISTANTS: LILA BYALL, BILL ROBINSON, LAURA GOLDBERG, GAVIN GROSSI, NOAH GLAZER STEADICAM OPERATOR: YOUSHENG TANG DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: JOHN SPELLMAN
BELIEVE MEDIA
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“Z2 POOLOUT”
“VIIV HEALTHCARE CABENUVA”
“SONIC”
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“FOOD LION”
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RAKISH
SUPERPRIME
RESET CONTENT
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CREW PHOTO
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107SEPTEMBER 2022 PRODUCTION CREDITS
108 SEPTEMBER 2022
STOP MOTION 09.2022 E. Gunnar Mortensen 11/10/82 – 7/4/22 108 SEPTEMBER 2022
“One of the good guys” is how everyone describes E. (Erik) Gunnar Mortensen, who tragically left this world from injuries sustained while riding his HarleyDavidson near Hemet, CA this past Fourth of July. Anyone who ever met this gifted, exuberant, passionate 1st AC knows no truer words were ever said. The energy the 13-year Local 600 member gave off – for the camera craft he first fell in love with as a youngster in Denver, CO, to the welfare of his IATSE brothers and sisters – was, as Waris Supanpong (who cochaired ICG’s Active Engagement Committee with Gunnar) says, “infectious.” Supanpong and Mortensen met in 2013, at what was both men’s first ICG National Executive Board Meeting. They were placed on a committee tasked with finding new ways to connect with young union members – “a perfect fit,” as Supanpong recalls. “What can you say about a person who spent his free
time going to arbitrations to fight for the tech rate or being a Goodwill Film Ambassador to Jordan? Gunnar loved his craft, his union, and especially his wife, Keely, and their son, Lars, who was born during COVID, and whom we all watched grow on Zoom.” Gunnar was a career focus puller with credits that included The Morning Show , Transparent , Sons of Anarchy and 90210 He co-founded the Society of Focus Technicians and created such events as the Annual Camera Assistant Field Day. April Kelley, SOC, who worked on his last project, the rom-com feature Your Place or Mine , says Gunnar was not only a “really, really good focus puller and top-notch technician” but a “really good soul. He was intuitive, compassionate, the proudest of papas and an amazing human. I feel so lucky to have spent the time I did with him on set. Gunnar was one of the good ones. He will be greatly missed.”
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