British Cinematographer - Issue 17 by Open Box Media & Communications

CONTENTS

Pinewood Studios, Iver Heath, Buckinghamshire SL0 0NH, UK Tel: +44 (0) 1753 650101 Fax: +44 (0) 1753 650111

>> CONTENTS UK

Presidents’ Perspectives: from Phil Méheux BSC and Trevor Coop GBCT Production News: the latest cinematography and filmmaking news Who’s Shooting Who?: regular round up of DPs in action Shooting The Future: Cooke and The Pixel Farm collaboration BSC Show Review: hot picks from the recent exhibition International Feature: Titanic: 12,460ft beneath the sea Behind The Scenes: Harry Potter – four unique interviews

USA

EDITOR Ron Prince Email: ronny@dircon.co.uk

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P24 P25 P27

Presidential Address: a POV from the ASC president Richard P. Crudo ASC F-Stop Hollywood: update from the West Coast Camera Creative: Gabriel Beristain BSC on Hollywood

EUROPE

PUBLISHERS Alan Lowne Tel: +44 (0) 1753 650101 Stuart Walters Tel: +44 (0) 121 608 2300

P29 P30 P32 P34 P39

Imago News: what’s going on in Europe? Whose property is it anyway?: a look at authorship rights On The Job: a digital account of Nuit Noire by Louis-Philippe Capelle SBC Post & Techno News: news from around the business The Back Page: a book review of “Cinematic Storytelling”

SALES Alan Lowne Tel: +44 (0) 1753 650101 Email: alanlowne@britishcinematrographer.co.uk Stuart Walters Tel: +44 (0) 121 608 2300 Email: stuartwalters@britishcinematrographer.co.uk DESIGN Paul Roebuck, Open Box Publishing Ltd, info@openboxpublishing.co.uk contact: Stuart Walters Tel: +44 (0) 121 608 2300 PUBLICATION ADVISORY COMMITTEE Alex Thomson, Tony Spratling, Joe Dunton MBE, Mike Fox, Simon Mills, Alan Lowne, Stuart Walters, Ron Prince BRITISH CINEMATROGRAPHER incorporating International Cinematography is part of Laws Publishing Ltd, Pinewood Studios, Iver Heath, Buckinghamshire SL0 0NH, UK The publishers wish to emphasise that the opinions expressed in BRITISH CINEMATOGRAPHER are not representative of Laws Publishing Ltd but the responsibility of the individual contributors.

Cover Photograph: Image from The Sentinel, a 20th Century Fox, New Regency film. Photo credit: Doane Gregory

>> Editorial Team #01 Carolyn Giardina: is senior editor of post production at SHOOT newsweekly in the US; she previously served as editor of monthly Film & Video. Carolyn’s work has also appeared in The IBC Daily News, Digital Cinema, Post, Below The Line, and in the second edition of the book The Guide to Digital Television. #02 Madelyn Most: is an experienced camerawoman, filmmaker and journalist who writes about production and cinematography for a variety of European and US magazines. #03 Roger Paul: is a freelance entertainment writer based in Los Angeles. His work has appeared in both trade and international publications. In addition to reporting on the technical side of television and film production, he creates advertising campaigns and newsletters for many production and equipment houses. #04 John Keedwell: the GBCT’s Eyepiece Editor, is a documentary and commercials cameraman who has worked on many productions over all the world’s continents. He crosses over in both film and tape productions and has great knowledge of the new formats and their methods of production. #05 Ron Prince: has many years experience working in the film, TV, CGI and visual effects industries. He is the editor of British Cinematographer magazine and runs an international communications company (www.princepr.com).

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British Society of Cinematrographers – Board Members: President, Phil Méheux. Vice Presidents, Joe Dunton MBE, Gavin Finney, Alec Mills. Governors, John de Borman, Sue Gibson, Nina Kellgren, Harvey Harrison, Tony Imi, Dick Pope, Chris Seager, Mike Southon, Tony Spratling, Derek Suter, Alex Thomson, Clive Tickner, Robin Vidgeon, Nigel Walters. Secretary/Treasurer, Frances Russell. Guild of British Camera Technicians – Board Members: Trevor Coop (Chairman), Steve Brooke-Smith (Vice Chairman), John Keedwell (Vice Chairman), Jacob Barrie, Suzanne Clegg McGeachan, Mike Fox, Jamie Harcourt, Peter Hughes, Walter Kennedy, Keith Mead, Darren Miller, Barney Piercy, Tim Potter, Caroline Sax.

YOUR INSURANCE POLICY Probably the biggest thing to have happened to the British filmmaking industry since we last published is the Government’s new tax relief system which, it is hoped, will reinforce the UK’s position as the most important film industry in the world after the US. From the people and companies we’ve been speaking to lately things now seem much more rosy; many more productions are being green lit, including one or two that were done-in two years ago when the then “much-abused” regime was suddenly axed. Whilst the last two years have been tough, there was a “coming together” that hopefully makes for an even rosier period ahead. Thanks to the diligence and hard work of industry leaders – from the main film studios, equipment houses and trade bodies – the film industry caught the attention of the DCMS, who in turn got the ear of The Treasury. With the Chancellor himself officially opening the impressive new Underwater Stage at Pinewood, you could say that from Whitehall to the White Cliffs of Dover, the UK has never been more film-friendly than it is today. The message from senior Government figures like Tessa Jowell MP is, “Come and make your films here”. The UK has a modern, internationally-competitive industry and a culture for production that stretches back as long as

filmmaking itself. As one studio boss once quipped to a producer caught in two minds, “Shooting in the UK is your insurance policy.” Further enhancing our international flavour, we're delighted to welcome a regular column from the ASC president, Richard P. Crudo ASC. In this edition Gabriel Beristain BSC talks about working at the heart of Hollywood, and the much-admired Belgian cinematographer Louis-Philippe Capelle SBC provides a fascinating, personal look at the sharp end of shooting digitally. We also have a unique set of interviews with the key heads of department on Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Our pages contain the latest advances in equipment and technology too. So along with a review of the BSC’s New Equipment Show, we have an in-depth look at the collaboration between British lens manufacturer Cooke and software developer Pixel Farm. This sort of pioneering work, in this case at the acquisition end of the cinematographer’s remit, is only going to become more widespread. Digits are endemic in an analogue world, yet they don’t signal the end of film. Perhaps, more poignantly, digital is coming of age, reaching a par with film, and if anything sustaining the useful life of film. More on this, and more exceptional interviews, in our next editions.

PRESIDENTS’ PERSPECTIVES

Constant vigilance required <<

Phil Méheux BSC President BSC Unofficial News came through as I write that the new contract between the Hollywood Film Unions and the Association of Motion Picture and Television Producers has been ratified. You may think that this has little to do with us but one clause in the new agreement makes the position of camera operator ‘non-mandatory’. Alright so you could argue that this fits in with several award winning cinematographers who prefer to operate for themselves, but if you think about it, it could have wide reaching implications. This will eventually give producers the right to ask a director of photography to operate on a low budget production and, if he declines, to replace him with a DP who will. A situation that has already come about in televison drama in Britain. Since the coming of sound in cinema in 1929, the notional camera crew has been four persons: director of photography, operator, focus, loader. This manning of the camera team has not varied much over the years and has been proved to be efficient and economical, while every other department

seems to me to have expanded exponentially. I remember once asking to have a radio for a night shoot and being told by the production manager that he was reticent because he already had 100 radios is use. ‘By whom?’, I wondered. You may think that the crew members you work alongside are on your side but in Los Angeles it does not appear to be the case. Although Local 600 union, the Camera Guild, overwhelmingly voted to overturn the agreement, those voting FOR the agreement, which admittedly has health and benefit improvements alongside the non-mandatory camera operator claus, included the following local union representatives: grips; film laboratories; editors; make-up Artists; lighting electricians, set painters; illustrators and matte artists; art directors; model makers; script supervisors; studio teachers; costume designers. So look carefully around you. Meanwhile, here in the UK, there are other issues which are of concern. The Home Office has been in consultation with the UK Film Council and BECTU regarding a Government initiative named The Managed Migration Strategy. This applies to all industry and appears to be aimed at ‘managing’ the inflow of Labour to Britain by limiting the numbers of ‘skilled’ immigration to employment of a long-term nature. Work of a short-term nature would not be ‘managed’ and of course, film production falls into that category. The Home Office is working on the assumption that all short term employment is not highly skilled. This patently does not apply to the film industry.

The upshot would be that any citizen worldwide applying for employment of a short-term nature would find it no problem to enter Britain in the future. The implications for our industry are obvious. We need urgently, before these proposals become law, to convince the Home Office that being skilled in our industry does not automatically mean long-term employment. Our skilled workers should be protected by recognising the peculiar nature of our work as being shortterm but skilled. Phil Méheux BSC President British Society of Cinematographers

“The camera team has proved to be efficient and economical while every other department seems to have expanded exponentially. I remember once asking to have a radio for a night shoot and being told they already had 100 radios is use”

Trevor Coop Chairman, GBCT I’ve got a plasterer working at the house at the moment and very good he is too, better still he reads his paper and makes the tea in his own time, not mine! “Why?”, I hear you ask, am I telling you about my domestic arrangements instead of the latest whizzo lens or the latest whacko producer who should be struck off? I’ll tell you why, it’s because until a short while ago he was an Assistant Director! Yes, that’s it, ‘turn over’…. ‘background action’, you know the ones. He trained and worked as a

“There are several brilliant colourists out there but without the input of the instigating cinematographer, I am sure they would agree it’s like asking an artist to paint a portrait without being allowed to see the subject”

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World class technicians plasterer straight from full-time education, and worked very happily as a jobbing plasterer, but as he worked his way up the ladder to run whole sites with dozens of guys working under him he became very disillusioned with the lack of respect accorded him for the responsibility he took, the financial package that did not keep pace as his responsibilities grew, and the amount of hours he had to put in, unpaid, in order to do the job to his own satisfaction. He decided to leave, I won’t bore you with the details, but through friends in the film industry he managed to get a job as an extra production runner, he watched and learnt, he is a bright conscientious lad and before long he was offered a 3rd AD position. He continued to watch and learn and so he progressed over the years through 2nd to 1st AD. He has now returned to his original trade. The reasons? The very same ones that drove him out in the first place only on a much greater scale. In simple terms, being treated as a mindless number, for less money than he was treated as a mindless number five years ago! In the last edition of the journal of the Association of Motion Picture Sound is published a letter from an experienced boom swinger, resigning not only from the association, but also from the film business altogether, for much the same basic

reasons. Just before Christmas I completed shooting on a feature in Europe. As 2nd unit DP I did not expect to be involved in the Digital Intermediate stage, at least not in a paid capacity, despite shooting 30% of the movie. But I have just heard that the 1st unit DP is now not going to be invited to contribute, paid or unpaid! As we all know the DI is part of the photographic process, even more so when shooting on HD as this project was. There are several brilliant colourists out there but without the input of the instigating cinematographer, I am sure they would all agree it’s like asking an artist to paint a portrait without being allowed to see the subject! There are some amongst you producers out there that appreciate the skill and experience of us ‘numbers’, but for those of you that still mercilessly exploit our talents (without which you cannot function), come on guys, you are driving out the very reason any foreign investor comes here, world class technicians! Tax breaks…Schmax breaks, if the cheapo guys you employ can’t come up with the goods you are wasting everybody’s time and money and you know it. But please keep it up for a few months yet as I need a plumber, an electrician, two carpenters and a painter and decorator by the end of the summer! Trevor Coop GBCT chairman

PRODUCTION NEWS

Huston, We have a problem Oscar-winning cinematographer Oswald “Ossie” Morris, whose films include Moulin Rouge, Moby Dick, Fiddler on the Roof, The Guns of Navarone, Lolita, The Hill, Oliver! and The Taming of the Shrew, looks back over his 58-film career as director of photography in Huston, We Have a Problem - A Kaleidoscope of Filmmaking Memories, a new book published with Geoffrey Bull. Morris worked with front-rank directors including John Huston, Carol Reed, Stanley Kubrick, Ronald Neame, Vittorio De Sica, Franco Zeffirelli and Sidney Lumet. The book illuminates on his working experiences with them and relates intimate anecdotes about such stars as Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Marlon Brando, Humphrey Bogart, Sophia Loren, Gregory Peck, Michael Caine, Sean Connery, Deborah Kerr, James Mason and many others. Additionally, he recounts his run-ins with legendary producer David O. Selznick and publishes for the first time many of DOS’s infamous memos sent during making of Stazione Termini, Beat the Devil and A Farewell to Arms. Morris also offers many technical revelations about making films in the pre-digital era, including groundbreaking

Mathieson gets BSC award for Phantom

John Mathieson BSC has been awarded the BSC Best Cinematography Award 2006 for Phantom of The Opera, the film for which he was also an Oscar nominee in 2005 for best cinematography.

innovations and camera tricks. For all those interested in the history of film, both at a personal and technical level, this is a rich and rewarding look into the world of cinema.

Mathieson said it was the opportunity of collaborating with director Joel Schumacher that first attracted him to the Phantom project. “Joel spoke about the film in a very excited and enthusiastic manner,” recalls Mathieson. “He explained how dark he wanted it to be, yet emphasised the opulence, decadence and gorgeousness of the overall look. He said he wanted a full-on gaudy, gothic fairytale.”

In 1972 Morris won the Oscar for Best Cinematography for his work on Fiddler on the Roof. In 1998, he was awarded the OBE for ‘services to cinematography and the film industry’. The new book is available from Scarecrow Press.

The award will be presented at the BSC Operators Night Dinner on Friday 8th December 2006. Mathieson’s recent credits include August Rush, Stoned and Kingdom of Heaven.

UK Film Council welcomes new tax relief system The UK Film Council has welcomed the Government’s new tax relief system for the British film industry, which it is hoped will help to consolidate the UK’s position as the most important film industry in the world after the US. The new tax relief system means: on low budget films (with production budgets up to £20 million), the tax credit level will be 20%; on higher budget films (with production budgets of £20 million and above), the tax credit level will be 16%. The level of tax credit applies to the expenditure within the UK in order to be EU State Aid compliant, and the lowering of the minimum UK expenditure threshold, from the proposed 40% to 25%, will allow more films to qualify for tax relief. The new system will provide a solid base for the production of independent British films such as Vera Drake, Pride and Prejudice and Mrs Henderson Presents, Internationally it puts the UK in pole position for continuing to attract big budget US studio films such as The Da Vinci Code,

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Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Miss Potter and Stardust, all of which have been produced or are in production in the UK. John Woodward, chief executive officer of the UK Film Council said, “This is good news for the British Film Industry and makes the UK an attractive place to make films. It provides the certainty the industry needs to operate and will help the UK consolidate its position as the most important film industry in the world after the US. “The lowering of the minimum UK expenditure threshold from the proposed 40% to 25% is great news as more films will be in a position to qualify for tax relief.” In 2005, thanks to home grown films such as Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, Pride and Prejudice and Valiant, audiences boosted the share of British films at the UK box office to 34%, compared to 23% in 2004, the highest figure in 10 years.

PRODUCTION NEWS

Haskell Wexler, ASC

Who needs sleep? Renowned cinematographer and director Haskell Wexler premiered his documentary film, Who Needs Sleep? at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival to packed audiences that had to be firmly ‘persuaded’ to leave cinema venues after intensive Q&As with the director, co-director Lisa Leeman, and producer Tamara Maloney. Seven years in gestation, the idea for the film began after the death of assistant cameraman Brent Hershman in 1997, who fell asleep at the wheel driving home after a week of long hours working on the Hollywood film Pleasantville. At the time, there was a fierce public outcry from both the IATSE Union’s membership and its leadership, supported by practically all of Hollywood’s craft guilds. Over ten thousand individuals signed a petition endorsing ‘Brent’s Rules’ that called for a drastic reduction in the number of working hours a film crew should work. In 2001, after having worked brutally long hours on Road to Perdition, Wexler’s close friend, cinematographer Conrad Hall, drafted a statement calling upon cinematographers and the American Society of Cinematographers to protect the wellbeing of their crews, and to encourage the industry at large to stop the practise of working excessive hours. In Who Needs Sleep? Wexler questions what has happened to Brent’s Rules and why, in 2006, conditions in the Hollywood environment have not even slightly improved. There have been more sleep related fatalities, and he finds some very uncomfortable answers within the relationships between union officials and large corporation bosses who own and control the movie studios. “In these times of deceit, telling the truth can be a challenging act” Wexler says.

Wexler interviews some of Hollywood’s most respected professionals and A-list celebrities, including Julia Roberts, Paul Newman, Tom Hanks, John Sayles, Sam Mendes, Billy Crystal, Annette Bening, Vittorio Storaro and Richard Zanuck, some of whom recognize the lifestyle “madness of part-time work”, others, the dilemma of mega- budget production costs and a short shooting schedule. He then travels around the US meeting with doctors and scientists who study the long term effects of sleep deprivation which affects a large percentage of American workers. These specialists conclude that people with a large “sleep debt” perform exactly in the same way as people who are drunk. Wexler then visits film crews in Europe who express a disdain for overtime, and who place a higher value on the quality of life and family, often refusing to work “American hours”. While informative and disturbing, Who Needs Sleep? is a sharp but entertaining wake-up call to the film industry around the world that, sooner or later, might become infected with this “American disease”. Haskell Wexler plans to attend screenings of Who Needs Sleep? at film festivals around the world. The film will be available on DVD. For further information visit www.whoneedssleep.net.

LETTERS

ARRI Master Prime lenses There were a couple of errors in your last edition (No.16). In the Production News section Polish DP Ryszard Lenczewski commented that he still can’t use the new ARRI Master Prime lenses as there is only one set in the USA. I just wanted to clarify that Master Prime lenses have been available from ARRI Media in the UK since September 2005 and that DP Emmanuel Lubezki used them on the recent feature Children of Men.

Secondly, there is a mention of DP Henry Braham BSC using Panavision’s Genesis Camera previously on The Da Vinci Code, this feature film was one of the most high profile features shot in the UK in 2005, and was serviced by ARRI MEDIA and shot on 35mm using ARRICAM Lites ARRICAM Studio and 235 cameras. Judith Petty Group Marketing Manager, ARRI UK

E d ’s R e p ly Thanks to Judith for your letter. To further clarify about The Da Vinci Code and Henry’s work, our Who’s Shooting Where column stated, “Henry Braham BSC recently completed shooting Fly Boys using Panavision’s Genesis digital camera. Henry was only the third DP to use this camera (previously used on Da Vinci Code and Superman).” From our own investigations it would appear that Genesis was tested for The Da Vinci Code, and the DP on that film was Salvatore Totino.

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Alwin Kuchler BSC e-mailed in with details about Sunshine, Danny Boyle’s latest, shot at 3 Mills Studios. “I had the greatest fun of my life on this film,” says Alwin, who is rep’d by PFD. “The project was great because it felt like the best combination of American and European cinema. It is meant to entertain a bigger audience, but at the same time seems to be author driven by Danny Boyle. We did so much experimentation with film stocks and had to build interesting rigs for the cameras and lights. We had fantastic sets by Mark Tildesly. We used a company called Lighting By Numbers; they have the most modern dimmer system in the country. Due to a lot of post work Sunshine will not be ready till the end of the year,” Alwin has also recently finished spots for VW with directors Blue Source and Vodafone with director Dougal Wilson, through Blink Productions. Casarotto Marsh’s… Seamus McGarvey BSC has finished the $70m World Trade Centre, Paramount Pictures’ true story of courage and survival, as two NY Port Authority police officers become trapped under the rubble of the twin towers. Directed by Oliver Stone, starring Nicholas Cage, Maria Bello, and Maggie Gylenhall, the film was shot in New York and Los Angeles, and is set for an August 2006 release. Seamus shot Super 1:1.85 Panavision Primo lenses, on Kodak 5218, Ektachrome 5285 100D and did the Digital Intermediate at EFilm in L.A. It was also a significant outing for Panavision’s new Hylen lens on certain sequences. Dench Arnold’s DPs have been up to the following… Jonathan Bloom just shot a new Ford corporate for Pretzel Films. Lol Crawley is filming Ballast a feature for director Lance Hamme on location in Mississippi. David Johnson recently shot a campaign for Sunsilk on location in Denmark in one of Europe’s oldest studios. Nic Knowland BSC has lensed Miss Marple – The Sittaford Mystery for director Paul Unwin. Simon

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ICM's Swedish DP Mattias Montero at work

Nic Knowland on the snowbound set of Miss Marple – The Sittaford Mystery.

Kossoff shot the BBC drama documentary entitled Ward 4 about the notorious baby killer Beverly Allitt. Nanu Segal has been filming a raft of commercials, Weetabix for Godman, then a PJ Smoothies ad with Partizan and most recently Muller Vitality commercial for Red Bee. Peter Sinclair has just finished shooting on Life Begins III with director Jeremy Webb for Granada. And Adam Suschitzky, a new signing to the agency, finished Middletown for director Brian Kirk on location in Ireland.

completed Momentum’s The Good Night in London and New York, written and directed by Jake Paltrow, starring Martin Freeman, Simon Pegg, Gwyneth, Paltrow and Sienna Miller.

Meanwhile at ICM, John Daly has completed Life ‘n Lyrics, a feature for MTV Europe, directed by Richard Laxton in London. It stars Ashley Walters. Ben Davis recently finished Young Hannibal in Prague, directed by Peter Webber, starring Li Gong and the voice of Anthony Hopkins. Shaun O’Dell was on 2nd Unit. Davis is now on Stardust directed by Matthew Vaughn, for Paramount. Filming started in March in Iceland, with regular filming scheduled to begin early May at Pinewood.

Dick Pope BSC has also been working in Canada on Barry Levinson’s Man of the Year, with Robin Williams and Christopher Walken in the plum roles. Over in Vancouver Ashley Rowe BSC has been lensing Butterfly on a Wheel directed by Mike Barker, with Pierce Brosnan and Maria Bello. Nigel Willoughby recently completed Sharpe’s Challenge, largely shot in India, with Sean Bean returning in the lead.

After lensing a Danish short, Anthony Dod Mantle BSC has been doing grading on The Last King of Scotland‚ in London, directed by Kevin MacDonald and starring Forest Whitaker. It’s a Fox Searchlight / DNA / Film4 and Cowboy feature. Jess Hall has just started work on Hot Fuzz in the UK. From Shaun of the Dead creators Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg, it’s the story of two Somerset policemen in Somerset teaming together to combat rural crime. Martin Kenzie did 2nd Unit work in the Isle of Man on the Geoff Sax directed Stormbreaker, whilst Darius Khondji has begun working in the US on Blueberry Nights, directed by Wong Kar Wai. Dan Landin finished the Working Title feature 66 just before Christmas. Directed by Paul Weiland, it stars Helena Bonham Carter, Catherine Tate and Edward Marsan. Giles Nuttgens

Meteoric Roman Osin BSC enjoyed the Canadian winter in Toronto where he started work on Fox/ Mandate Pictures’ Mr Magorium’s Wonder Emporium. The film is written and directed by Zach Helm, Dustin Hoffman and Natalie Portman starring.

ICM’s Lawrence Gardner is on BBC1’s Ripley’s Gold, the sequel to Blackpool with director, Catherine Morshead, and producer, Sally Stokes. John Mathieson BSC was due to finish August Rush at time of publication. It’s a Warners’ feature written and directed by Kirsten Sheridan, starring Robin Williams and Freddie Highmore. David Odd is lensing Losing Gemma on location in India for Granada. Based on the novel by Katy Gardner, Maurice Phillips is directing, with Shefali Malhoutra producing. Ben Smithard completed The Street, a six-parter for Granada shot in Manchester. Mark Waters is shooting Vital Signs a six-part drama for Tiger Aspect, starring Tamsin Outhwaite, directed by Charles Palmer and Renny Rye. New Swedish client Mattias Montero has moved to London to concentrate on expanding his UK contacts. Having had a

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New signing at Wizzo, Ben Cole shooting One Giant Leap, comes with his own HD kit.

good start in London last year with Matt Kirkby at RSA with the Basement Jaxx promo “Oh My Gosh”, he recently shot The Observer with Rupert Sanders at MJZ and Landrover with Mathijs Van Heijningen at MJZ. Simon Coull recently did an enormous Schwarzkopf shoot with Hamburg based production company, Tempo Media, shooting two scripts on location in Cape Town and Sydney. Ed Wild has been working with some interesting directors including Corin Hardy on a Fightstar promo with The Whitehouse and Marcus Tomlinson’s World Swim for Malaria. Dan Landin has finished a Levi’s spot through Outsider with Anthony Atanasio on location in Argentina. PFD’s roster of DPs… Alex Barber shot Daniel Barber’s BMW ‘It’s Only A Car’ through Knucklehead. Simon Chaudoir graded Alien Autopsy, starring Ant & Dec and directed by Jonny Campbell, which he lit last year. He has been very busy with commercials too, shooting Giuseppe Capotondi’s new BMW Series 1 through Mercurio Cinemagrafica. Brendan Galvin should soon be grading Blood And Chocolate which he shot in Romania with live wolves in the studio – there were signs everywhere saying ‘no food whatsoever on set’. Paul Sarossy BSC, CSC will soon finish work on Blaze. Eduardo Serra ASC, AFC is in South Africa lighting Ed Zwick’s strong political tale Blood Diamond until June. Word is spreading fast on Michael Winterbottom’s Road To Guantanamo, which was shot by Marcel Zyskind. Haris Zambarloukos has just finished on Venus, directed by Roger Michell. Peter Middleton BSC is once again moving straight on from New Tricks to a couple more episodes of Foyle’s War. Andrew Dunn BSC is on Miss Potter directed by Chris Noonan and starring Renée Zellweger and Ewan McGregor. He has also shot a new Suncom commercial in the US with Robert

Altman through Villains. Danny Cohen shot the Arctic Monkeys’ number one hit ‘ When The Sun Goes Down’ through Warp Films with director Fraser Scrimshaw whilst Marcel Zyskind has shot Jonathan Glazer’s new Massive Attack music video ‘ Live With Me’ through Academy Music Videos. Over at Sara Putt Associates… Nick Dance is lensing Sorted, 6 x 60 mins about postmen for the BBC in Manchester until the end of May. Mary Farbrother has just completed Prima Primavera, and Ipso Facto Films production, shot on35mm in Hungary. It’s the story of a retarded 55yr old man who loses his mother; his only support is a gypsy girl who joins him on a border-crossing journey. At time of writing Peter Greenhalgh BSC is on Perfect Parents, for Granada (1x2hr) shooting on 16mm in London. Also shooting in London, David Marsh is on BBC’s One Day in July – the London bombings seen through the eyes of children in a London school on that fateful day. John Sorapure is on Dead Ringers, and Derek Suter BSC has been lensing Granada’s The Last Detective, the offbeat detective series set on the streets of Willesden, directed by Sandy Johnson and Nick Laughland, producer Nick Hurran. Graham Smith has been shooting Beau Brummell - The Ultimate Dandy a Flashback TV production for BBC4 (1x75mins). Based on recent book by Ian Kelly, it tells the story of the 19th century fop who achieved fame when he joined the circle of the Prince Regent. McKinney Macartney Management’s Balazs Bolygo is shooting an hour-long film for BBC4 about Laurel and Hardy with Jon Sen directing. The story revolves around Stan sitting at Olly’s deathbed as it examines the relationship between

the two iconic comedians. Balazs is then back on for another series of the hit BBC comedy drama Life on Mars. Ben Butler, Mick Coulter and Denis Crossan have all been jetting around the planet shooting commercials. John de Borman BSC recently completed grading Fade To Black and then shot off to Argentina shooting a commercial with JJ Keith. Gavin Finney BSC has just started The Hogfather, a Sky One film adaptation of the massively popular Terry Pratchett novel of the same name, which is due to air at Christmas. Book twenty in the world-famous Discworld series sees Death take over the Hogfather’s duties of delivering presents at Christmas in Pratchett’s twisted version of holiday spirit. The Hogfather is shooting at 3 Mills Studios using ARRI D20 HD cameras. Sue Gibson BSC is looking to light Paul Cowan’s exciting new feature entitled Soothsayer, a psychological thriller set in Suffolk, but dates are as yet not confirmed. Richard Greatrex BSC is shooting Michael Radford’s new picture Flawless, with Michael Caine and Demi Moore. This exciting 60s-set thriller is about a jewel heist bringing ruin to a world-famous diamond exchange, shooting in London and Luxembourg. John Lynch has recently returned from South Africa where he was shooting commercials with Jason Smith. Phil Méheux BSC continues globetrotting on the new adaptation of Casino Royale, with Daniel Craig as 007 James Bond. Word has it the film promises to take Bond back to his earlier, simpler roots of spying, and hopes to kick off a new era of the global franchise. John Pardue is currently busy on a project for Pilsner with Coast Productions. Tony PierceRoberts BSC is gearing up on pre-production of Home of the Brave, which is being directed by the legendary

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WHO’S SHOOTING WHO?

director/producer Irwin Winkler. Starring Samuel Jackson, Christina Ricci and Jessica Biel, this contemporary drama tells the story of a group of US Marines coming home after an injury on a tour of duty in Iraq and is shooting in Washington and Morocco. Jake Polonsky is lensing ITV/Impossible Picture’s new flagship show Primaeval. It’s a big-budget time-travel and dinosaur drama, from the team behind Walking with Dinosaurs. Chris Seager BSC has joined Paul Schrader on The Walker next month as he takes Lauren Bacall, Woody Harrelson and Kristen Scott Thomas through a high-society murder story, revolving around rich women who employ young men as escorts for functions and parties. David Tattersall BSC is working on Lee Tamahori’s new film Next. Starring Nicholas Cage and Julianne Moore, this is a modern-day thriller based on a short story by the ever-popular Philip K. Dick and is set in the seedy worlds of Los Angeles and Las Vegas. Clive Tickner BSC is awaiting the release of his feature Trust Me, which hopes to be out this summer. He has been shooting commercials recently with directors, Ben Gregor, Sarah O’Gorman, Harry Enfield, and went to Los Angeles to shoot a Kelloggs commercial with John Lloyd. Vision London’s DPs are shooting all over the world: August Jakobsson shot the new 118 118 campaign with Jim Hosking and Muller commercial with Johnny Maginn in South Africa. Mark Patten recently shot a beautiful spot for the North East Tourist Board with director Adrian Moat, which has been fantastically well received. Vision has just signed German DP Julian Hohndorf, who has campaigns for Visa, T-Mobile and VW Golf under his belt.

ISSUE 17 • BRITISH CINEMATOGRAPHER

ICM's Dan Landin Wizzo’s Peter Hannan BSC headed 2nd Unit on the huge budget film The Children of Men for Spanish director Alphonso Cuaron and main unit DP Emmanuel Lubetski, through Quietus Prods at Pinewood. Angus Hudson shot the feature Cashback last year and the short version was nominated for an Oscar, Gaumont being the international distributor of this film. Adrian Wild recently shot the latest Lloyds black horse ad for Rupert Sanders at MJZ. Two new signings to Wizzo drama are Kjell Lageroos from Finland who has won many European awards

for his cinematography in features; and last but by no means least is Ben Cole, a new name to watch out for as he specialises in High Def with his own kit. Ben has shot the amazing feature documentary One Giant Leap for directors Jamie Catto and Duncan Bridgeman through Palm Pictures; and is nearing completion on One Giant Leap Ii for Simon Fuller/ 19 Entertainment. They shot at 50 locations worldwide over 6 months including China, the Middle East, Africa and India.

UK UK

SHOOTING THE FUTURE SHOOTING THE FUTURE

Focusing on the Future of Post << Les Zellen, chairman at Cooke S4/i CXX 15-40mm T2 Whether you’re involved in post-production or acquisition, the collaboration between some of the world’s leading players in the motion picture industry should definitely spark your interest. With an announcement in January this year, The Pixel Farm and Cooke Optics Ltd shed light on the fact that together they would be teaming up on a project that would help save the motion picture industry a significant amount of time and money in post.

The Cooke /i system offers numerous advantages for cinematographers, most notably the ability to graphically display real-time lens data. Manufacturers, including Cinematography Electronics, ARRI, CMotion, Preston Cinema and Service Vision are developing data displays for the Cooke /i system which will provide a continuous remote readout of precise focus setting, T stop and DOF from electronics inside the lens.

A history of innovation

The /i system uses an electronic microprocessor and software embedded directly into the lens, giving it the ability to read the focus, zoom and iris settings and calculate important picture format data. The data and the current settings are then transferred via a serial link to a data display unit. Extremely useful while filming, cinematographers will be able to simultaneously shoot their subject and at the same time see whether or not the DOF will cover it, which in the long run, will save significant time by eliminating the guess work of whether or not an additional take is needed.

Based out of Leicester, Cooke has a history that dates back about 120 years and is known by cinematographers worldwide for its precision S4 lenses. But why would a lens manufacturer devote so much of its time and resources to helping develop a solution for post pros? The answer is simple according to Cooke’s chairman, Les Zellan. “Motion picture production is an elaborate, step-by-step process that is often overlooked for its complexity. With the introduction of our state-of-the-art /i technology, we’ve created a way to provide a continuous graphic read-out of important real-time lens data, which is vitally important for calibrating shots in post. Taking on this project is a natural progression for Cooke, and we felt it necessary to do to streamline and simplify the acquisition and post process as much as possible. Teaming up with The Pixel Farm allowed us to do exactly that and make the most out of /i and to fully achieve its potential.”

idataLink box-R

As advanced as post production has become, the process for getting lens parameters to operators and how they use and input the data is essentially archaic. As of now, post relies entirely on production teams to manually record the information and pass it along, leaving much room for human error and inaccuracy. The process also takes up valuable time, which in the post-production world inevitably equals money.

Cooke intelligence Cooke’s /i, which stands for “intelligence,” is a proprietary technology that is only available on Cooke’s S4 lenses. Though other lens manufactures have smart lenses of their own, such as Zeiss’ LDS, Cooke is the only manufacturer looking to do more with the data. And as of February of last year, all Cooke S4 lenses incorporate the /i system. Through the collaboration announced earlier in the year, The Pixel Farm set out to develop its PFTrack software to work specifically with Cooke’s S4/i lens communication protocols. One of the UK’s leading software manufacturers of systems commonly used in DI and VFX, The Pixel Farm focuses as significant amount on R&D to bring some of the most

P 10

advanced yet easy to use products to market. The Pixel Farm’s product director Michael Lancaster, says: “As a developer of products for the post production market we view it as our responsibility to try to alleviate the issues that teams face in the management of data within the entire production process. And Cooke has developed a product that can greatly help this process. Having accurate lens parameters for each frame of action makes some aspects of post production considerably easier and in essence, would give operators the ability to easily work on many, many more shots of far greater complexity without the guess work.” Nevertheless, while The Pixel Farm developed its software, Cooke needed to find a way to record camera and lens settings, including focal length, on a per-frame basis, all synced to time code. The data needed to be recorded in a form that was could interface with PFTrack - the result was /i dataLink. Cooke’s /i dataLink is a small box that can be effortlessly mounted to any camera set up. /i dataLink takes advantage of Secure Digital (SD) media to store recorded settings as metadata. The box features connections for inputs from the S4 lens as well as the camera, that allow both electronic platforms to communicate with the /i dataLink. The metadata is simply passed on to post production by means of the SD card, guaranteeing that the relevant lens parameters will be available and ensuring even more accuracy in post. The stored continued on page 12 >>

BRITISH CINEMATOGRAPHER • ISSUE 17

SHOOTING THE FUTURE

<< continued from page 10 data is uploaded to PFTrack and is immediately ready to use without any manual manipulation, which translates into a tremendous cost-savings in respect to time and guess work. “What we’ve been able to do with /i technology is a significant step forward in the motion picture industry,” notes Zellan. “Together with the software manufacturers, we’ve been able to offer a solution that will help bridge the communications gap between acquisition and post, helping each come together for the benefit of the final product. Cinematographers will benefit from the efficiency, speed and precision of specifying Cooke /i lenses and the /i dataLink as their equipment of choice, as they and their team will be able to concentrate on filming, rather than being preoccupied with the time consuming process of manually recording lens and camera data, which when dealing with zoom lenses, can be quite difficult. The ability to accurately transfer lens and camera data with ease, makes the /i dataLink system the ideal solution for any motion picture production and we’re confident that it will be well received by the industry.”

Opening up the future With a goal of increasing the availability of the /i dataLink system to as many users as possible, Cooke has made its S4/i lens communication protocols an “open standard,” available for download on its website. Additional software manufacturers involved with post will also have the ability to develop their own solutions for VFX to work in conjunction with Cooke’s S4/i technology, further enhancing the attractiveness of their products in the eyes of their customers. As of late, Avid Technology, Inc, has hopped on the /i train and will be working with Cooke to develop its own software products to interface with /i DataLink. Renowned throughout the world for its film, audio, and animation solutions, Avid’s products were used by professionals to produce every film nominated in the Best Picture, Directing, Film Editing, Sound Mixing, Visual Effects, and Animated Feature categories of the 78th Annual Academy Awards.

Cooke – A Cine Legend C o o ke O p t i c s , t h e co m p a n y we k n ow t o d a y , h a s b e e n a ro u n d s i n ce o n ly 1 9 9 8 , b u t t h e C o o ke le g a c y a c t u a l ly d a t e s b a c k 1 2 0 ye a rs . Ta y lo r , Ta y lo r & H o b s o n i n L e i ce st e r m a d e i t s f i rst C o o ke le n s i n 1 8 9 4 fo r p l a t e c a m e ra s , b a s i n g t h e i r d e s i g n o n t h e n ow fa m o u s C o o ke Tr i p le t p a t e n t . T h e exe m p l a r y p e r fo r m a n ce o f t h o s e le n s e s c re a t e d q u i t e a st i r i n t h e p h o t o g ra p h i c co m m u n i t y. T h a t w a s j u st t h e b e g i n n i n g . A n u m b e r o f C o o ke i n n ova t i o n s , a l l d eve lo p e d i n L e i ce st e r , h a ve h a d a s i g n i f i c a n t i m p a c t i n c i n e m a t o g ra p h y. H e re a re s o m e o f t h e m i le st o n e s … • The Cooke Speed Panchro, f/2 motion picture lens of 1921, facilitated the production of most of the early talkies. The bright and noisy arc lamps, used for making silent films, were no longer viable for sound production at the same time panchromatic film stock came into almost universal use. • The Cooke Speed Panchro was the first modern cine lens that solved both issues. The lens’ chromatic correction along with its impressive speed allowed it to work with restricted illumination. By 1938, George Eastman estimated that “90 percent of the 16mm film used in America passed behind lenses made in Leicester.” • Cooke’s inverted telephoto lens design of 1931 was the first wide-angle lens to accommodate a colour split image. The development of the Technicolor 3-strip colour process made it impossible to use the wideangle lenses generally available at that time due to the location of two prism blocks in the Technicolor camera. Cooke’s design not only solved the clearance issue, but also corrected for chromatic aberrations and contributed greatly to the success of the Technicolor

process. Cooke’s design was soon to become the standard for every wide-angle lens used in multipledetector HD and video lenses. • Also in 1931, in conjunction with Bell and Howell, Cooke published its principles of the Cooke Varo 40120mm Zoom in a technical article, which is regarded by experts as the first description of an optical zoom principle intended for cinematography. • In 1960 Rank Taylor Hobson, Cooke’s parent company, incorporated an aspheric optical surface in their Varotal III, 14-40 inch, f/4 zoom for television. This was the first example of the use of an aspheric surface in a commercial high performance lens. Today, all film and video zoom lenses use aspheric surfaces to achieve optimal performance and minimize the number of weighty and expensive glass elements. • 2006 Cooke teams up with The Pixel Farm to combine its proprietary /i technology with the latest PFTrack software to help to streamline and simplify the acquisition and post production processes.

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BRITISH CINEMATOGRAPHER • ISSUE 17

BSC SHOW REVIEW

BSC new equipment show report The annual BSC equipment show took p l a ce a t t h e G e o rg e L u c a s st a g e a t E l st re e S t u d i o s . Fo r t h e m a n y a t t e n d e e s t h e re w a s a w i d e va r i e t y o f n e w equipment to see and i t p rove d a g re a t w a y to network. Many of t h e b i g g e st n a m e s w i t h i n t h e re s p e c t i ve f i e l d s o f c a m e ra s , le n s e s , l i g h t i n g , g r i p s e q u i p m e n t a n d o t h e rs w e re e x h i b i t i n g , m a n y w i t h b ra n d n e w e xc i t i n g e q u i p m e n t reve a le d fo r t h e f i rst time. John Keedwell G B CT s a vo u rs t h e highlights.

ISSUE 17 • BRITISH CINEMATOGRAPHER

Cameras and Lenses Arri (www.arrimedia.com) Most manufacturers had a selection of new lenses, and Arri were proudly showing the new Arri / Zeiss 15.5mm-45mm T2.6 lightweight zoom, primarily designed for use on the Arri 235 and the Arricam Lite and due to its low weight below 2kg (4.4lbs) it is an ideal lens for Steadicam and also hand-held use. Also new, the Arri Zeiss Ultra Prime 8mm T2.8/8R is the widest rectilinear lens that covers the whole Super 35mm image area and shows a wide angle of view without the commonly associated distortions. The lens can be used to amplify the apparent speed of movement through its unique perspective. The ARRI Zeiss Master Zoom is a 16.5mm to 110mm T2.6. Key features include: full coverage of the ANSI Super 35 image area over the entire zoom range; reversible focus ring for easy switching between metre and feet scales; holds effective aperture while zooming so no ramping. They’re exclusively available to rent through ARRI Media. ARRI Media also had some new accessories for rent for the Arriflex D-20 Digital camera, in the form of the Sony SRW-1 portable recorder and 6” Astro HD LCD Waveform Monitor, which includes a composite input to allow full use of the D-20 menu system. Cooke Optics (www.cookeoptics.com) The nice people at Cooke Optics have certainly been busy too, unveiling their new S4/i 15-40mm T2 CXX Zoom, which has

the remarkable ability to focus as close as 6 3/4” (approx 17cm) from the front element of the lens, making some very interesting images possible. Also unveiled was the 12mm Cooke S4/i T2 Prime lens. All new Cooke lenses contain the Cooke S4/I Motion Picture Lens Intelligence System (patent pending) for continuous lens data information. The Cinematography Electronics /i Lens Display unit interfaces the Cooke S4/i and the CineTape Measure System and adds lens data previously not available, actual measured distance. The focus puller will now know where the subject falls within the depth-of-field for the particular lens being used. Panavision (www.panavision.co.uk) Panavision were highly visible at the show, not least because of the generous gesture by their Dublin branch of a free pint of Guinness to all on St Patrick’s Day. The company demonstrated their monster-sized 300-1 zoom lens on a Panavision HDCAM Cine Alta camera. The long zoom-out shots on the show reel were remarkable. The Panavision Universal Crash Housing is designed for dangerous location shots. If extreme pressure is placed on the housing it will deform to keep the camera safe inside. It has many standard grip requirements making it readily able to be attached to most rigs.

P 13

BSC SHOW REVIEW

rugby, golf, tennis and horse racing. The ARRI Tornado has been used extensively on major sporting events and is a collaboration between ARRI, NAC cameras and Quantel. Green Door Films (www.greendoorfilms.co.uk) Green Door Films is a high speed camera crewing company that use Photo-Sonics digital high speed cameras for commercial and broadcast use. The Green Door Phantom cameras are able to accept matte box and lenses, and can now be used like a normal camera with an LCD screen as a viewfinder. Digital cameras are now extensively used in commercials, promos, natural history, factual documentaries and other specialist uses.

High Speed Shooting Many TV viewers will have seen some magnificent highspeed images during sporting events such as the cricket,

Photo-Sonics (http://photosonicsinternational.co.uk) Digital High Speed cameras have dramatically improved from their origins as low resolution scientific analysis tools. Photo-Sonics leads many of the competitors in the resolution of their cameras, the V9 Phantom having a 1600 x 1200 resolution. The cameras are now capable of shooting at full resolution at up to a monumental 1,000 frames per second.

Lighting Cirro-Lite (www.cirrolite.com) Cirro-Lite holds the unofficial award for the largest and the smallest light fixtures at the show. The lamp seen in the corner of the room is ideal for high speed cinematography or extended lightning effects. It is totally flicker-free at absolutely any camera speed (even 20,000fps) and shutter angle. Available in 99K and 299K versions. Kino-Flo (www.kinoflo.com) The Kino-Flo Parabeam 400 provides more light than a 3k soft light on less than 2amps! And with Kino Flo’s True Match bulbs it is also the first fixture of its kind to provide a truly colour correct source. Available through Cirro-Lite. Matthews (www.msegrip.com) Like its larger counterpart the MAX, the Matthews MINI MAX lighting support can “fly” the lamp right in to where it is required where other supports may not go. It will operate on an 105” maximum arc from 14ft. high to below the horizontal. Available through Cirro-Lite.

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OMD Technology (www.omdtechnology.com.au) For those of you that may film underwater, or may require a true waterproof lighting system, then OMD technology may have the answer. This Australian based company produces a variety of high power lighting that can be used submerged up to 100m. All lights are marine durable with stainless steel and titanium fittings with shockproof lenses. New lamps vary from the Monsoon 650W, 1000W and 2000W and the highest powered lamp in the range is a 10,000W tungsten lamp fixture. HMI, fluorescent and battery powered DC lamps are also available. Distributed by Panavision Lighting and Lee Lighting in the UK. ARRI Lighting (www.arri.com) The ARRIMAX 18/12 uses a unique reflector concept for beam control and provides continuous focus from 15° – 50°. Because the ARRIMAX does not require a set of spread lenses, the shadow quality is sharper and easily cut. The ARRI MaxMover is an automated stirrup that offers remote pan, tilt and focus for a wide range of lighting fixtures. The MaxMover accommodates a 80kg (176lbs) weight load. Operation is simple with an easy to use analogue or optional DMX (wired or wireless) control.

Gekko Technology (www.gekkotechnology.com) The Gekko Technology ringlight was another first at the 2006 BSC show, and this was surely the smallest new light unit at the show with 3 LED lamp sources drawing only 11 watts at full power, and is a daylight balanced unit able to be dimmed down to 5% output with no change in colour temperature. It is extremely small yet packs a mighty punch, so can be used in very tight corners The Gekko Kisslite ringlight now has wireless remote dimming as an option. Ideal for use on a camera crane, Steadicam or where access is limited, the unit has 10 unique addresses, 5 for Europe and 5 for the USA. Each individual quadrant can now be switched remotely, giving total control and creativity to a DP. Available through Cirro-Lite. Dedo (www.dedolight.com) The Dedo DLH400S dedicated daylight softlight used in conjunction with a 5ft Dedoflex Octodome is only 16” (40.5cm) deep and gives a beautiful soft light. The DLH1000SPLUS is a 1000W unit with a larger yoke, which allows the use of larger soft boxes. Available through Cirro-Lite.

BRITISH CINEMATOGRAPHER • ISSUE 17

BSC SHOW REVIEW

DeSisti (www.desisti.it) Making it’s UK debut was DeSisti with Tintoretto – a colour mixing fluorescent fixture designed for back lighting cyclorama horizons. Fitted with tungsten or daylight balanced tubes, Tintoretto provides precise transition from one colour to another and is exceptional for its chromakeying ability. The CST25F is a 250W ‘Cold discharge’ spotlight and is for direct mains supply drawing 2.6A, but provides the equivalent output of a 1kW source. The lamp is able to use either 3200oK or 6000oK lamps, and also incorporates a DMX controlled iris.

Grips and motion control Mark Roberts Motion Control (www.mrmoco.com)

JDC (www.joedunton.com and www.unitedimagesystems.com) JDC has collaborated with United Image Systems for the On Set PreViz system. This was interesting to those who need to see CG characters and environments through the camera on the set whilst shooting. The system follows the camera moves in real time and a laptop computer generates the 3D image, which is seen by the operator through the viewfinder and also on a video monitor. The result is the actors can be seen within the virtual set. The system works with encoded grip equipment such as a dolly with track, fluid and geared head on tripod, or a Technochrane. Other grip equipment can be encoded as required.

One-8-Six (www.one8six.com) One-8-Six had a MOCO rig that can be controlled by pan bars as well as wheels. For operators who cannot use traditional handles, or can be used when a more flowing move is required which might be difficult to operate with wheels.

Mark Roberts Motion Control showed its new Ulti-Head with Track Grips and motion control rig. There are 9 inputs possible, via 3 wheels or other methods such as focus and zoom controls. The base is a unit that accepts a tripod, and is then moved on rails with a rack system. The unit can be battery powered for location work, and be used without a computer as software is built into the unit. The unit was shown with 360º Pan, Tilt and Roll and there is an optional Dutch head that can roll a total of 90º end-to-end.

ISSUE 17 • BRITISH CINEMATOGRAPHER

Ronford Baker (www.ronfordbaker.co.uk) The Ronford Atlas has a patented counterbalancing system, which lets the operator put the camera where they want without resistance. This head is capable of taking cameras up to 50 Kgs (110lbs ). It incorporates the well-proven Ronford-Baker fluid system, with 15 stages of fluid control on pan & tilt.

Star of the show T h e re w e re a g re a t m a n y n e w a n d e xc i t i n g t o o l s a t t h e 2 0 0 6 B S C s h o w , a n d m a n y w e re b a s e d o n n o r m a l t ra d i t i o n a l f i l m i n g m e t h o d s , b u t h a d a n e w t e c h n o lo g i c a l w a y o f p ro d u c i n g t h e e f fe c t . E x a m p le s s u c h a s m o t i o n co n t ro l d ev i ce s , g y ro st a b i l i s e d c a m e ra m o u n t s , le n s e s a n d L E D l i g h t i n g a re s u c h e x a m p le s . I f I w e re t o p i c k t h e st a r o f t h e B S C s h o w , h o w eve r I w o u l d p e rs o n a l ly s a y t h e i m m e n s e t e c h n o lo g i c a l a d va n ce s i n s e n s o r d e s i g n h a s n o w s h o w n t h a t u l t ra high-speed and high-quality images a re n o w a t r u e p o s s i b i l i t y , a n d t h e a w a rd m u st g o t o t h e P h o t o - S o n i c s V 9 c a m e ra .

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INTERNATIONAL FEATURE – TITANIC

12,460 feet beneath the sea – without even getting wet!

The iconic bow of Titanic, Titanic, 12,460 feet below the surface of the North A tlantic, © Lone Lone Wolf Wolf Documentary Group

Simon Mills takes us two-and-a-half miles down to the bottom of the ocean to explore a new debris field for the History Channel which could possibly write a new chapter in the dynamics of Titanic’s sinking. Here he explains how they got the images. Experience teaches us that camera units and boats rarely go well together. No matter how big the boat, there’s never quite enough room, never a lens comfortably wide enough so that the camera doesn’t end up wedged into the tightest of corners for that all-important wide angle master shot and, no matter how many times I see it, the rocking motion of the gimbal just never looks right.

Then again, up until recently my involvement with boats usually had more to do with the feature film side of production, so when I was asked to work on a Titanic documentary project, aside from an initial thought of, ‘Oh not again,” the past difficulties of working topside suddenly seemed nothing compared to the practicalities of working two-and-a-half miles down at the bottom of the ocean.

Two of the underwater HMIs mounted on the Mir submersible. © Simon Mills

Since the discovery of the wreck in 1985, Titanic has been no stranger to documentary units. I long ago lost count of how many explorations have been carried out to date, and every year proposals for other expeditions to the wreck in order to film another supposedly crucial piece of evidence seem to pile up on the desk of countless documentary commissioning editors. 2005 was to be no exception – in fact, it was more active than most. With James Cameron’s extensive exploration of the interior of the intact bow section leading the way in July, it was always going to be a hard act to follow, yet two more media projects followed quickly in his wake. I was on the History Channel expedition, which also just happened to be the last in the 2005 season, much to the relief of the crew of the research vessel Keldysh, who after two months on site must have been heartily sick of Titanic.

But that was not my problem. I was there on behalf of the History Channel, and in our short one-week charter we planned to explore a new debris field, which could possibly write a new chapter in the dynamics of Titanic’s sinking. Exciting stuff, maybe, but all of that is for another article and a different magazine. This one is all about how we got the images.

Going down Topside the cameras were controlled by Sean Glen, an American documentary cameraman with a host of productions under his belt, but Sean’s specific brief ended as soon as the cameras touched the water. Titanic lies 12,460 feet down at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, so in terms of underwater imaging the environment is probably as close to

Titanic lies 12,460 feet down at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, so in terms of underwater imaging the environment is probably as close to extreme as it can get.

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www.alphagrip.co.uk BRITISH CINEMATOGRAPHER • ISSUE 17

INTERNATIONAL FEATURE – TITANIC

Far left: Mir 2 being launched on the final day. © Simon Mills Left: Mir 1 checks out one of the hull sections located on the expedition. © Lone Wolf Documentary Group

L i g h t i n g t h e T i t a n i c c a n b e a m a j o r t a s k i n i t s o w n r i g h t . T h e l a rg e st b a n k o f l i g h t s u s e d t o d a t e w a s c re a t e d fo r J a m e s C a m e ro n … d e s i g n e d t o w o r k a t d e p t h s o f u p t o 6 , 0 0 0 m , p ro d u c i n g a t o t a l o f 1 2 , 0 0 0 w a t t s o f i l l u m i n a t i o n . extreme as it can get. It therefore requires both a stable platform and submersibles capable of withstanding the water pressure of some 5,500psi The research vessel Akademik Mstislav Keldysh, operated by the P.P. Shirshov Institute of Oceanology (Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow), is without a doubt the most suitable platform for deep ocean photography as you can get, and the fact that it operates two Mir submersibles, each capable of diving to 6,000 metres (19,680 feet), it provides any filmmaker with far more scope than a single submarine – and a mere snip at $35,000 per Mir, per dive! There really isn’t time to make things up as you go along, so for the six hours of bottom time per dive that you usually get, you need to know exactly where you are going and what you’ll be filming. Luckily the knowing where you are bit is relatively straightforward. Four transponders, each acting as an independent wireless communications device linked to a satellite, receive and transmit radio signals at a prescribed frequency range, are positioned on the seabed and the result is that the exact location of each Mir is always known. So long as the submersible doesn’t stray too close to any one of the transponders then it is possible to maintain a reasonably precise fix on your position at all times. In theory it is therefore a relatively straightforward matter to locate a specific target.

Shine a light! Even then, it’s only now that the camera department can really start to go to work. Lighting the Titanic can be a major task in its own right. The largest bank of lights used to date was created courtesy of Phoenix International, Inc. of Virginia, which built a unique underwater lighting platform for James Cameron, whereby a remotely operated vehicle (ROV), called Medusa, was designed to work at depths of up to 6,000 metres while carrying ten independently controlled and moveable HMI lights, producing a total of 12,000 watts of illumination. Unfortunately lighting platforms of this calibre are not generally available to smaller documentary companies, which have neither the logistical support nor budgets required to operate such an array. They therefore have to make do with the Mirs’ usual combination of

ISSUE 17 • BRITISH CINEMATOGRAPHER

1,200 watt Deep Sea Power & Light HMI lights. The pressure housing of these lights is constructed of titanium, which allows them to operate at depths of up to 6,000 meters, while the discharge lamp produces more than 100,000 lumens of radiant light output. To cope with the water pressure the lamp is encased in a quartz glass envelope with an end-cap assembly incorporating two pressure relief valves for nitrogen purging. The submersibles can be equipped with anything up to eight of these lights, although the subsequent drain on the Mir’s on board batteries usually restricts the standard lighting package to a combination of the 1,200 watt Sea Arc and at least one 400 watt HMI per submersible. For most external imaging this is actually quite adequate.

built pressure housings. These housings, incorporating a half-inch reinforced titanium wall with a front made from hardened and tempered optical glass, are the only way that the cameras can operate and survive at such depths. With only just three days of diving to produce the goods any technical failure could have been disastrous, but the equipment performed flawlessly and in all we clocked up a combined bottom time of over thirty-five hours, with an equal amount of tape to be logged. More importantly, the resulting visual information provided images from parts of the wreck and debris field that that are hardly ever visited, and for the first time in nineteen years the specialists at WHOI were even in a

position to add considerable data to the original 1985 and 86 surveys of the wreck site. But did we solve the mystery of Titanic’s Final Moments, as the programme’s title would seem to suggest? Well, you’ll just have to tune in to History Channel to find out, but the fact remains that because of the funding from a media company, once again important data has been retrieved from the Titanic wreck site that would otherwise remain unknown. For most of the thirty-six hour voyage back to Canada the same thought kept cropping up in the back of my mind: “Where would these scientists be without us?”

Underwater HD The camera technology has to be equally advanced. The Mirs are equipped with their own digital and one standard camera, both of them in housings, but although they can produce good quality images, as of last summer they were not up to the normal HD standard. Stepping up to the plate on this occasion was William Lange, who himself was no stranger to the Titanic, having been on watch aboard the research vessel Knorr in September 1985, when the Titanic was discovered. Twenty years on, Bill is now the technical specialist who heads the Advanced Imaging and Visualization Laboratory of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI), Massachusetts. His task was not made any easier by the fact that the Russians could – and occasionally did – suddenly switch submarines at the last minute. Nor is deepocean filming particularly comfortable, and with three people crammed inside the Mir’s seven-foot personnel sphere, some of them not necessarily completely familiar with his imaging equipment, on occasion there was an element of chance as to how usable some of the resulting images would be. Bill’s cameras in their basic form are not unusual. They are in fact 3-chip Sony HDC950s, 1920 x 1080 lines and set at 30 fps, with modified Fujinon HDTV lenses. The difference in this case, however, is that they have to be stripped down, modified and then re-laid so as to fit inside the WHOI custom-

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BEHIND THE SCENES: HARRY POTTER

Hermione (Emma Watson) tries to encourage Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) before his first task of the TriWizard Tournament

We ’ re p r i v i le g e d t o publish a unique co l le c t i o n o f i n t e r v i e w s w i t h k ey c re a t i ve s i n p ro d u c t i o n d e s i g n , c i n e m a t o g ra p h y , S F X and digital VFX, working at heart of H a r r y Po t t e r a n d t h e G o b le t o f F i re ( H P 4 ) . T h e s e reve a l t h e i r depth of c ra f t s m a n s h i p , co l l a b o ra t i o n a n d dedication to duty to b r i n g a b ox o f f i ce s e n s a t i o n t o l i fe . P 18

The world of

Harry Potter by Madelyn Most

Creating the World – Stuart Craig BSC Bringing J.K. Rowling’s first book, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone to the screen meant three-time Academy Award winning production designer Stuart Craig creating an entire world for Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. “But there was neither the time nor the budget to design and build it all, so things had to be found on location,” explains Craig. “That’s when I locked into the great antiquity of this world, and that became the aesthetic of the whole thing.” Craig combined sections of European cathedrals and used the size, richness and complexity of Durham Cathedral, Gloucester Cathedral, Lacock Abbey and Christ Church College at Oxford University to make Hogwarts Castle. “We exaggerated the Medieval and Gothic architecture to make it

more expressionistic because I believe the fantasy and magic is more powerful when it grows out of something real and credible. Although Hogwarts is impossibly big, with enormously tall turrets and numerous spires, there is an architectural reality and a solidity about it,” he says. Pinned to the wall in Craig’s office is a little blue piece of paper on which J.K. Rowling herself drew the Castle, the lake, the Quidditch pitch, Hagrid’s Hut, the station, the perimeter road right round the boundary through Hogsmead village - the map of the world. “That became our bible,” he says. “Really, we promised to remain faithful to the spirit of the stories, but J.K. is very much in control of the rule book and when we had questions, we’d call her.” BRITISH CINEMATOGRAPHER • ISSUE 17

BEHIND THE SCENES: HARRY POTTER

Above: the 'real' fire-breathing dragon created by John Richardson, SFX and Nick Dudman, Animatronics Right: Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint) and Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) at campsite as Death Eaters arrive

21st century and the digital age very fast, but I fear there is a real danger that many of these skills will disappear. The day when we don’t build sets anymore, and where everything is computer generated, is rushing towards us, but we must not get overwhelmed. We must not let the technology swamp us.”

“Refining subtleties, colouring and shading a creature’s feathers or scales, or altering the texture of the hair can take weeks,” says Craig. “Sometimes a creature was designed and physically built, was scanned, and later, for certain scenes, was computer generated”.

“In England, a very high level of skills and craftsmanship has been kept alive and developing because big movies of this kind continue to come here, and that provides a continuity of work. It exists in a smaller way in Prague, but has completely disappeared in Italy and America. Some of the finest craftsmen in the world worked at Cinecitta, but with a nonstop diet of TV game show production, those skills are now gone. The traditional skills once possessed by artists and craftspeople in the 1940s and 50s at the Hollywood studios have been lost because most of Hollywood’s product is contemporary stuff on the streets of LA or NY”

Craig says on these films, they are lucky to have a six to nine month period of prep, during which the different heads of department can come and talk with him about the colour, lighting and mood of a scene, or suggest ways of doing other magical things. “On these films, there is a constant interweaving of the different disciplines and we talk things through amongst ourselves. If you don’t, nothing works,” he says emphatically. In the beginning, Craig says they attempted doing things with animatronics or special effects, but as audience’s expectations have gotten so high these days, they’ve had to enhance it with visual effects. “Designers and art directors have always been involved with special effects, matte shots, and set extensions; what’s new, is how sophisticated digital VFX technology has become and the extent to which it is used on each film. But the criteria for controlling them, is still the same, the tools of the trade are more numerous and complex, but everything still boils down to delivering a narrative that is clear, gutsy and dramatic.”

“I feel it is important to pass on the classical training, that was passed down to me, to future generations, so that they understand classical proportion, detail, ornament, and perspective, and so they can build beautiful concepts”.

“As in the books, the children have grown into interesting characters. The kids I remember giggling between takes, have developed into actors delivering real performances,” says Pratt. In September 2005, Pratt and Newell are checking the final print and signing off on elements arriving from different visual effects facilities in preparation for a November 6th 2005 World Premiere at London’s Leicester Square Odeon. “It’s interesting… because I’ve not seen a lot of it until now, It looks really amazing,” murmurs Pratt. Mike Newell described The Goblet of Fire as a detective thriller and during an early read through outlined the plot in great detail for everyone. Pratt was then able to plan the

“On this next film, The Order of the Phoenix, we are teaching our artists, film draughtsmen and women who are trained in art and design and architecture, to draw on the computer, so that the drawings created in the art department will get passed on to the digital effects houses for building and rendering. In that way, the integrity of the original design and the control of all visual aspects of the movie will remain within this department.” Norman Stuart Craig received the Order of the British Empire in 2002. He has been nominated eight times for the Academy Awards for Best Art Direction – Set Decoration, winning three Oscars for Ghandi (1982), Dangerous Liasons (1988) and The English Patient (1996). He has been nominated 9 times for the British Academy Awards, and received two BAFTA awards for The Elephant Man (1980), and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2006).

Traditionally, the designer finishes on the day of principle photography, but on Goblet of Fire, Craig was invited to look at the visual effects shots at various stages of completion to ensure the original design was carried through.

Filming the World – Roger Pratt BSC

“Because of the Harry Potter films, I’ve had to catch up to the

Director of photography, Roger Pratt BSC, returned to Leavesden Studios in 2004 to film the fourth instalment of the

ISSUE 17 • BRITISH CINEMATOGRAPHER

Harry Potter franchise with Mike Newell, after lensing the second episode, Chamber of Secrets in 2002 with director Chris Columbus.

Control of all the film’s visual aspects rests with the designer, and by the second film, Chamber of Secrets, with sets ready to use again, Craig’s team of art director and draughtsmen, had more time to prepare new drawings and models of the sets, while concept artists designed illustrations of creatures and magical characters. Dozens of designs are made before one gets selected and approved, so there are literally thousands of beautifully rendered drawings accumulated in the art department’s top floor (imagine Dobby, Voldemort, the Dementors, Death Eaters, a Hippogriff, the Mermaid, Dragons, Grindylows, Merpeople, Flying coach, Galleon, etc.).

Award-winning DP Roger Pratt (left) consulting with multiple award-winning production designer Stuart Craig in the Grand Hall at Hogwarts

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BEHIND THE SCENES: HARRY POTTER

A 60 x 60 x 20 underwater tank was built on Leavesden's D stage, where three cameras filmed Harry (Daniel Radcliff) and his stunt doubles with safety divers standing by

overall look of the photography and how he would build up on that look in terms of the narrative and the film’s final conclusion. “Our brief was to make a dark tale but with classic photography. I wasn’t going for anything strange, just standard development and standard printing with some tweaks,” he says.

where Dumbledore oversees the event. The action was photographed in front of an enormous green screen, and the scene appears in the movie within three massive four-level towers rising out of the loch with Hogwarts Castle nestled in the lower right corner, all against a magnificent panorama of the Scottish Highlands.

The logistics of filming with child actors is a long, slow, and complicated process because the law requires them to attend school four hours a day (at the studio), and allows them to work three hours a day with a 15 minute break every hour. The idea was that the main unit would stay at Leavesden Studios, (with a few days on location in Oxford, Ashridge Forest, and Virginia Water), while the large second unit, that traditionally shoots most of the action sequences, filmed on adjacent stages, and would film in Scotland.

“My idea for this scene” explains Pratt, “was to create a threatening mood with overall cloud and a weak sun. Chuck Finch, my gaffer, suggested Cirro Lite’s Soft Sun, a large reflecting HMI lamp, (i.e. daylight in colour), which is over two metres long and burns horizontally from a 200 KW genny. We hung a huge softener about ten feet away and used filters to warm it up. We photographed it on Kodak 200T because of the greenscreen and this worked really well.”

The sequence involving Harry fighting a ferocious Hungarian Horntail was photographed by the second unit outside in the dragon arena on Leavesden’s backlot, later enhanced by visual effects. Then the exteriors for Harry’s second task, at the Black Lake, were interiors filmed by the main unit in the flight shed on the backlot. A 40fsq/ft steel structure was built to serve as the lower part of the central tower where the children dive into the water, and then as the top section,

The third task in the maze was a combination of what the SFX team created and what the VFX team added on later. Pratt photographed the sequence within sections of thick, evergreen hedges built by Richardson (which Pratt says were impenetrable to light), that would bend and close in around the characters, and tree roots that crawled out of the ground to pull them under. For the wide shots in the film, VFX created a vast area of tall, twisting and turning hedges that appears to go on into infinity.

Draco Malfoy (Tom Felton) teasing the 'real' hypogriff created by SFX John Richardson and Animatronics Nick Dudman for HP3 Prisoner of Azkaban

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“After figuring out what kind of light would be appropriate and where it could come from,” Pratt continues, “I decided on a late afternoon, early evening atmosphere. I introduced some warm crosslight for the characters entering the maze with the Cirro Lite’s Soft Sun, back with full correction 85 and an extra 85 for warmth, shooting on Kodak Vision 2, 500T 5218. Inside the maze I used light from the top, knowing the faces would look skull-like, and then added some fill light from hanging china balls. Trailer leads were used to punch some fill light into the eyes. To create an atmosphere within the maze, we covered the top of the hedges with smoke so whatever lamps I used, incandescent or fresnel, the light would spread out to give a soft diffuse look down at the bottom of the maze. This proved to be a very time consuming procedure waiting for the smoke to diffuse and settle at the bottom, but in the end it gave me the grey, pre- sunset type of light I was after.”

“When the film is cut and all t h e v i s u a l e le m e n t s a re i n p l a ce , t h e c i n e m a t o g ra p h e r h a s t o b e re s p o n s i b le fo r t h e co n t i n u i t y o f t h e lo o k . O n ly w i t h a f i rst c l a s s t e a m i s t h i s a c h i eva b le o n s u c h a co m p le x f i l m . ” R o g e r P ra t t B S C , c i n e m a t o g ra p h e r The culminating scene of the film in the graveyard was challenging for both Pratt and Stuart Craig, who struggled to give the set (a hilly hollow surrounded by gravestones and mausoleums) a sense of depth, while fighting very low ceilings. They surrounded the entire set (360 degrees) with a painted cyclorama that was lit from behind, ‘practical’ trees were planted on stage and lit from the side, and trees, and a distant manor house and cottage were painted in perspective. Pratt wanted to build up to a dense atmosphere of thick smoke at the end of the scene, but Leavesden is not a properly sealed studio and the air currents were difficult to control, so the entire cyclorama was surrounded with black curtain stretched right up to the ceiling and over the cyc to trap the smoke within the hollow. BRITISH CINEMATOGRAPHER • ISSUE 17

BEHIND THE SCENES: HARRY POTTER

“ I t ’s i m p o r t a n t t o p a s s o n c l a s s i c a l t ra i n i n g t o f u t u re g e n e ra t i o n s , s o t h a t t h ey u n d e rst a n d c l a s s i c a l p ro p o r t i o n , detail, ornament and p e rs p e c t i ve … s o t h ey can build beautiful co n ce p t s . ” S t u a r t C ra i g , p ro d u c t i o n d e s i g n e r Harry confronts Voldemort on the graveyard set “For a dusk effect, I needed to create a soft overall light. We suspended about 300 space lights, skirted and traced underneath, above the set from the roof, and hung a white sheet underneath these lights, to make one source. This joined up with the black cloth at the edges to keep the smoke in. We could quickly switch the numbered spacelights On or Off, Half or Full, depending on where the action was taking place on the set.” “An interesting scene was the campsite: Peter Macdonald filmed the day scene with the Weasleys, the jugglers, and everyone arriving for the World Cup Quidditch Match and we

To sum up his overall experience on this 18-month project, Roger added this personal closing statement… “Real or not…who is in charge? The future is bright, the future is dismal. We are in the middle of a huge technical upheaval now. New deal for the DP. New deal for everybody. Is this good or bad? It’s inevitable. Mike (Newell) identified the film as a kind of detective film, a ‘Whodunnit?’. It had to be dark but the story had to be told and understood. The style was to let the corners fade off into black. Hogwarts is a place that does not have electric light. Uncertain flickering torches, corridors you would never enter, but they do. Halls that are so huge the daylight struggles to get through. Classrooms with few lanterns. Rain. Snow. Mist. Cold. Big. With such a big operation as HP4, I needed and got, great allies to get that look. Jimmy Mitchell’s care and concern during the shoot, making sure his work dovetailed with mine, was scrupulous. His team would show me printed film clips on a viewer, from the chosen takes for every set up. The look of a scene, the look of a sequence of scenes started there. Peter Macdonald, second unit director and Mike

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filmed the night scene when the camp is under siege by Voldemorts’s Death Eaters. On the backlot, SFX built an enormous set and then torched everything – all the canvas tents, guide ropes, and tent poles were burned to the ground. We surrounded the area with six or seven or Wendylights, put in huge amounts of smoke, and by using a couple of Wendylights at a time, we created sharp black silhouettes against the lit smoke. There was quite a bit of wind those winter nights, which made the static black silhouettes on the lit smoke against this frantic, frenetic background look quite chilling”.

Brewster, his DP, would always consult if they were doing pickups and especially when they were made responsible for entire sections of the film like the Underwater task. John Richardson SFX would call me over to his workshop to talk about the ‘maze hedge’ or the ‘Pensive’ or any other of his brilliant creations. Stuart Craig and I would talk over new sets, weeks before construction and weeks before shooting. On HP4, many months after the end of shooting, I was confronted by an edited film which had about 1,200 digital additions and manipulations. The team left consisted of: director Mike Newell, editor, Mick Audesley and his team, Maxine Gervais, the colourist, Jimmy Mitchell VFX, John Ensby at Technicolor, and Peter Doyle overall digi-neg supremo and myself. Our job – ‘to make’ the physical film. The tools – a very sophisticated computer programme. Maxine had been working on the picture for three months already. It took us about another good month. The production of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire was huge. Hundreds of people worked on it. When the film is cut and all the visual elements are in place, the cinematographer has to be responsible for the continuity of the look. Only with a first class team is this achievable on such a complex film.

Looking Real – John Richardson Harry Potter’s skilful Quidditch flying is down to veteran special effects supervisor, John Richardson’s computer controlled hydraulic broomstick which the actors and stunt doubles sit on safely and comfortably while they shoot bluescreen. “The flying on Superman I taught us a lot of the interactive things you need to get the body movement looking right. Because they put all their natural movement into the turns, dips, and dives, it looks as though the person is flying the broom rather than the other way around,” Richardson says. Richardson says everything they do on these movies is an integrated joint effort between all the departments. They try to do as much as they can physically because it’s a lot cheaper to do it ‘in-camera’, but also, it helps to maintain the reality of the scene. “A lot of the magical things have to be done as visual effect because it’s the only way to achieve them without it looking cheesy,” he says. On Prisoner of Azkeban the triple-decker bus that roared around London and the frozen lake on a stage at Shepperton were some of the more challenging constructions that Richardson’s SFX department created, and both were further enhanced by VFX in the final film. Nick Dudman’s huge mechanical Hippogriff was combined with a CGI version. On Goblet of Fire, SFX created the Black Lake underwater environment and the Maze. The caged dragons filmed in the forest were huge fire-breathing creatures that took months for Nick Dudman and Richardson to build. For the underwater sequence, SFX built a 60x60x20m tank on D stage because it was important to photograph the actors swimming underwater to get everything looking right – the movement of their bodies, hair, attitude and costumes. For the Maze, SFX constructed (12 metre long and 8 metre high) sections of trees that moved in and out, swayed back and forth and were pre-programmed through a computer. Having shot as much as they could ‘in-camera’, the material was given to VFX to enhance. “We talked long and hard with Roger Pratt and Mike Newell about the atmospherics and the mists that would form inside the maze and how we’d create that. Sometimes VFX works on top of our work or takes our work and recreates it in the computer,” he adds. BRITISH CINEMATOGRAPHER • ISSUE 17

BEHIND THE SCENES: HARRY POTTER

“A lo t o f t h e m a g i c a l t h i n g s h a ve t o b e d o n e a s v i s u a l e f fe c t b e c a u s e i t ’s t h e o n ly w a y t o a c h i eve t h e m w i t h o u t i t lo o k i n g c h e e s y ” J o h n R i c h a rd s o n , S F X s u p e r v i s o r

“On each film we are doing things that have never been done before, so there is a huge leap of faith in the people you’ve chosen, that they can deliver what you’ve asked them,” says Burke.

Foreground – Severus Snape (Alan Rickman) safeguarding Hermione, Ron, and Harry filmed in studio, with digitally enhanced plates of Scottish Highlands as background The campsite scene, with wizards zapping tents, setting them on fire and blowing them up, became a practical effect, an ‘in-camera’ shot which was filmed on the backlot and later enhanced by VFX for the wide shots. “Most of the sequence was shot with all the actors and stunt doubles, and even though some people refer to this way of doing it as ‘the old fashioned way’, I prefer it, as shooting effects ‘in-camera’ gives a reality to the final product.” Another sad reality is, that in a few years time, there won’t be people around who know how to do these things for real anymore. “The Potter movies do have a more seamless approach to blending live action with CGI and I am proud to be part of that process, especially when effects sequences of many films today look more like animated cartoons than something real.”

Enhancing the World – Jim Mitchell & Tim Burke On each of the Harry Potter films, the role of the visual effects department has expanded with the scale, complexity and sheer number of effects shots. On the 2hr 35 Goblet of Fire, VFX was responsible for 1,200 of the 3,000 shots in the movie which incorporated models, miniatures, CGI, and motion control. This represents the work of over 900 people at nine different facilities in four countries – Rising Sun Pictures and Animal Logic in Australia, The Orphanage and ILM in the US, BUF in France, and Cinesite, Double Negative, Framestore-CFC and The Moving Picture Company in the UK. VFX collaborates with the art, camera, costume, animatronics, and special effects departments on most shots, but many are created entirely in the computer – they are all 1s and 0s that have never seen one piece of film until they are filmed out. As overall visual effects supervisor, Jim Mitchell was involved in pre-production, production filming, and postproduction on Goblet Of Fire, but on a film this big, Tim Burke, (VFX on HP3, 4 and 5) helped him cover all the needs of the visual effects team shooting across two units. When, in pre-production, the script is broken down and the effects are discussed to determine how they will be achieved technically, a budget is established. The supervisors then meet with the specific vendors or facilities, because there are only certain facilities in the world that have the resources and technical expertise to accomplish these tasks. ISSUE 17 • BRITISH CINEMATOGRAPHER

After Stuart Craig’s conceptual artists make drawings and designs for different creatures, the scenes are storyboarded, and VFX makes a pre-visualisation and this acts as a blueprint to give a sense of how a sequence will flow. Right from the start, VFX works very closely with the DP on both technical and creative aspects of the film. They work closely with the director and the second unit director shooting on the floor to ensure all the VFX elements are shot correctly so they can be used later on. “The choice of filmstock is important,” explains Burke, “because once you have filmed out your digital shots and they have been cut back into the movie, an interpositive is made, then negatives, then release prints, and after it has gone down several generations, only then, will you notice a loss of resolution, noise, or a grainy image.” Creative issues involve understanding how all the elements will go together and knowing they will match photographically. “With all the bluescreen/greenscreen work”, says Jim Mitchell, “it’s important to understand the action of the sequence and the composition – where the characters are in frame, and which direction they are flying. It’s especially important to understand the cinematographer’s lighting. While the camera crew is shooting, we log all the technical data about how it was photographed so we can replicate the shot in the computer and build up on it. Sometimes with Mike Brewster, (second unit DP), all we had was a single character out there in front of a bluescreen for a scene that would eventually be a hazy day up in Scotland with the sun appearing behind snow covered mountains.” Burke continues, “As these VFX plates (that we’ve already shot in Scotland) serve as the background, we have to make sure the lighting on the set matches what we photographed in Scotland. We know what we can do in terms of digitally grading and manipulating the image, but you can’t take the keylight away and make it look like it was flat lit, or the other way around with any believability. We discuss this with the DP and work closely together on it. It’s no good if a shot looks fantastic on its own, but won’t fit in with the other two or three elements it needs to be combined with,” he adds.

and put in the sky where the bluescreen was. Everyone agrees the toughest thing for all departments was the second task where Harry swims in the Black Lake. Mitchell continues, “SFX built the underwater tank, the creature department created the victim dummies, and Peter Macdonald’s second unit photographed Dan Radcliff (who had to undergo months of underwater training) and the stunt doubles over a six-week period with two underwater cameras (an underwater crane and underwater cameraman) with about eight safety divers in order to film underwater bluescreen. Our job was to create the entire underwater environment in the computer – all the fish, rocks, plants, algae, ruins, the mermaid and grindylows. This involved hundreds of artists working on the different elements – modelling the mermaid, figuring out how the hair should move, painting the mermaid and sculpting it in the computer while more artists planted the kelp on the digital rocks and others created the bubbles. If we build a CGI character, we’d have to make the lighting match in terms of keylight, fill light or backlight. This was a very time consuming process: producing three seconds of film could take a couple of months,” Mitchell adds. Burke continues, “Tests were done with the DP to get exposures for the different lighting environments and water densities as Harry swims from the clear, shallow surface of the water to its murkier depths. That allowed the people generating the backgrounds on the computer to create a world that was ultimately believable. If we got it right, you’ll think Jacques Cousteau was down there filming Harry, and it won’t look like a CG sequence cut into a live action film. It should be as believable as possible so that you are engaged in the film, the effects should never take you out of the movie…it’s important to just let the director tell the story.”

“ O n e a c h f i l m w e a re d o i n g t h i n g s t h a t h a ve n eve r b e e n d o n e b e fo re , s o t h e re i s a h u g e le a p o f fa i t h i n t h e p e o p le yo u ’ ve c h o s e n , t h a t t h ey c a n d e l i ve r w h a t yo u ’ ve asked them” Tim Burke, VFX supervisor

Mitchell continues…”The second unit shot the sequence of Harry fighting the dragon in the arena on Leavesden’s back lot, and filmed the part of the flying chase through the Scottish highlands where Harry ends up on Hogwarts’ rooftops at Shepperton Studios. The art department built a full scale section of roof on the stage where Daniel Radcliff and stunt doubles did their falls in front of a bluescreen backing. SFX added all the wind effects, and VFX shot tons of model elements of the rest of Hogwarts Castle from different angles to put in as the background. We then added fog passes, smoke and fire effects which all were scanned into the computer and sent to the facility,” he adds.

“In post-production,” Mitchell continues, “we work with editorial and sound departments and start piecing together the 1.6 million feet of film, taking imagery the D.P. has photographed and putting many elements on top of that. We are building on the look the cinematographer has created with the lighting and camerawork, but we can only start work on the film after he has graded the film because we have to work to the mood and the look he has set up. My job is to interface with all the vendors to make sure their sections match and fit into the different sequences. At the end, Roger would look through what we had done to make sure it all worked together as he imagined. Then he might decide to make it warmer or cooler, brighter or darker”.

A dragon that could fly had to be built in the computer; by using the pre-viz, the facility took the various elements and animated a simple version of the dragon which was then textured and rendered. After that, they would extend the roof

“I believe if it can be made better in the computer, you should do it in the computer, and while every movie is trying to top the last one with its visual effects, you just hope that the visual effects will support the story,” Mitchell concludes.

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USA

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS

“ W i t h a d i g i t a l c a m e ra , t h e re i s n o n e e d fo r l i g h t s . T h e o p e ra t o r m e re ly n e e d s t o experiment with the Gain button …” Richard P. Crudo ASC, President of the ASC

I n t h e f i rst o f a re g u l a r n e w co l u m n , R i c h a rd P. C r u d o A S C , p re s i d e n t o f t h e A S C , t a l k s a b o u t t h e r i s e o f d i g i t s i n t h e f i l m m a k i n g p ro ce s s a n d h o w m i s u n d e rst a n d i n g s a re n o w co m m o n p l a ce .

A defining moment Biased, uninformed, irresponsible and just plain stupid journalism — we’re bombarded with it all the time through every incarnation of what passes for our great nation’s mainstream media. As far as our little corner of wheat is concerned, will reporters ever wise up about their characterizations of the relationship between film and digital technology? I hate to start the New Year by lobbing a grenade, but in this case the target deserves every bit of what’s coming, and then some. To wit: an article in the October 15, 2005, issue of Financial Times, which till now I’ve considered a respectable publication. Written by Nicola Christie, the piece is titled “A Defining Moment.” I can say with all certitude it is the most ridiculous load of nonsense I have ever read in my life — about any subject. And that’s quite a statement to make at this juncture.

A s t e c h n o lo g y h a s evo lve d , t h e re q u i re m e n t s o f t h e c i n e m a t o g ra p h e r ’s j o b h a ve g ro w n e x p o n e n t i a l ly d u r i n g p re p , p r i n c i p a l p h o t o g ra p h y , a n d i n p o st “Film stock has been replaced by a series of figures that are punched into a camera.” I know what you might be thinking: “Come on, this is trivial. I mean, who cares? We’re at war with Islamo-fascist terrorists all over the world, and you get annoyed over something so silly?” These are all valid and sensible reactions, but they fail to acknowledge the significant underpinnings of any dismay. Yes, there are greater issues at hand, and yes, we do our best to maintain perspective. But while living in a world that is not of our making, we approach what we do with honesty and dignity. When a person-without-résumé steps to the pulpit

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and transmits noxious lies to a wide audience, whatever the context, the repercussions are negative and far-reaching. Damage is done and people are hurt. In our case, it’s not just the perception of our art form that’s dragged down, it’s the art form itself. As technology has evolved, the requirements of the cinematographer’s job have grown exponentially during prep, principal photography, and in post. So have the ranks of people in the industry who don’t really understand our role and intrinsic value to a production. Some of these people are in supervisory positions, and the decisions they make directly affect our work. “Shooting on high-definition meant Lucas [George] was freed from … the pressure to get the shot right.”

she likes, we are also free to respond. To refrain from doing so in this case would merely encourage more of the same behavior. At the same time, we take heart in the fact that our passion and vigilance supersede anything the forces of ignorance can throw at us. In fact, those attributes are our best and only defense. Richard P. Crudo ASC, president of the ASC Article by kind permission of American Cinematographer Magazine, first published January 2006.

Ironically, Christie made the smart move by playing dumb. The article fails to come up with a single new way of misstating and misrepresenting the situation. It’s just the same old tripe, this time larded out around the hoariest and most destructive of clichés: whatever is new is better. Beneath its veneer of wide-eyed wonder lies a mocking, provocative and vindictive tone. It’s truly a difficult read. The article could not have been any more simple-minded than if the Financial Times had recruited a 9-year-old for the job. Where were the Financial Times’ editors when all this went down? They are as much at fault as Christie. If they could be so startlingly negligent of their duties, you have to wonder about the veracity of everything they publish. “…The Coen brothers would rather soak their film negative of O Brother, Where Art Thou? in chemicals to alter the color and create an old-fashioned look than simulate it digitally.” (Uh, just for the record, Nicola, the Coens and Roger Deakins, ASC, BSC used the digital-intermediate process to create the movie’s look.) If my indignance seems strong, understand that I’m handed things like this every day. I’ve also witnessed countless examples of lousy journalism hamstringing the advancement of our craft. Sometimes the correct response is to let the offence pass, but sometimes the gloves have to come off. The ASC’s position on new technologies has been well stated many times. And while everyone is free to write what he or

BRITISH CINEMATOGRAPHER • ISSUE 17

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F-STOP

F-STOP HOLLYWOOD

>> This year’s Awards season in Hollywood concluded with Crash’s surprise win for the Academy Award for Best Picture, and a shower of accolades for director of photography Dion Beebe, ASC, ACS, whose rendering of Memoirs of a Geisha earned him an Academy Award, BAFTA Award, and Outstanding Achievement Award in the feature film competition at the Annual American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) Outstanding Achievement Awards, which in its 20th year, was attended by an estimated 1,600, writes Carolyn Giardina.

ASC Awards In the feature film competition, Beebe’s Geisha topped a field of ASC nominees that included Robert Elswit, ASC for Good Night, and Good Luck; Andrew Lesnie, ASC, ACS for King Kong; Wally Pfister, ASC for Batman Begins; and Rodrigo Prieto, ASC, AMC for Brokeback Mountain. The award was presented by actor Bill Paxton who observed, “All of the nominees have artfully rendered images that create a sense of time and place… They guided the audience under the surface, where they discovered the souls of the characters and the spirits of the stories.” Another highlight of the evening was the presentation of the ASC International Achievement Award to Gilbert Taylor, BSC. Taylor—who received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the BSC in 2002—has earned nearly 70 cinematography credits, including such classics as Dr. Strangelove, A Hard Day’s Night, The Omen and Star Wars. Taylor’s ASC presentation began with a montage of his body of work, including clips from the aforementioned titled. Then director Curtis Hanson, who collaborated with Taylor on two films, Losin’ It and The Bedroom Window, came on stage to share some personal thoughts about Taylor and accept the award on his behalf, as Taylor was unable to attend the

Dion Beebe, ASC, ACS, whose rendering of Memoirs of a Geisha earned him an Academy Award, BAFTA Award, and Outstanding Achievement Award

ISSUE 17 • BRITISH CINEMATOGRAPHER

“ I ’ ve h a d a w o n d e r f u l l i fe i n c i n e m a a n d h a ve w o r k e d w i t h s o m e g re a t A m e r i c a n d i re c t o rs … I t ’s g re a t a t m y a g e , 9 1 ye a rs , t o b e re m e m b e re d ” m e s s a g e f ro m G i l b e r t Ta y lo r B S C a t t h e A S C a w a rd s 2 0 0 6 , re a d b y d i re c t o r C u r t i s H a n s o n

ceremony. The presentation also include a videotaped message from Taylor, who said, “I’ve had a wonderful life in cinema and have worked with some great American directors…It’s great at my age, 91 years, to be remembered.”

Winners in the feature competition were Hughes Winborne for Crash (who also won the Academy Award), and Michael McCusker for Walk the Line.

Taylor joins a distinguished group of recipients of the ASC International Achievement Award, including Freddie Young, BSC, Jack Cardiff, BSC, Gabriel Figueroa, AMC, Henri Alekan, Raoul Coutard, Freddie Francis, BSC, Giuseppe Rotunno, ASC, AIC, Oswald Morris, BSC, Billy Williams, BSC, Douglas Slocombe, BSC, Witold Sobocinski, PSC, Miroslav Ondricek, ASC, ACK, and Tonino Delli Colli, AIC.

That same weekend, pioneering motion picture technologist Gary Demos received the Gordon E. Sawyer Award by the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Demos has been pursuing the investigation of scientific issues in the motion picture industry for more than 30 years. In ’84, Demos received his first Scientific and Engineering Award (with John Whitney, Jr.) for the practical simulation of motion picture photography by means of CG images. A decade later, Demos was awarded his second Scientific and Engineering Award (with Dan Cameron, David DiFrancesco, Gary Starkweather and Scott Squires) for his work in the field of film input scanning. In ’95, the Academy honored him with a Technical Achievement Award (with David Ruhoff, Dan Cameron and Michelle Feraud) for his efforts in the creation of the Digital Productions Digital Film Compositing System.Demos is currently working on the development of new wavelet-based and optimal-filter-based moving image compression technology for high bit-depth and high dynamic range.

Richard Kline, ASC—who earned Oscar nominations for Camelot (1968) and King Kong (1977)—received the ASC Lifetime Achievement Award, which was presented by William Fraker, BSC, ASC. As well, Sydney Pollack was bestowed the Board of Governors Award; Woody Omens, ASC, the Presidents Award; and documentary filmmaker Fredrick Wiseman, the Award of Distinction.

ACE Awards Meanwhile, the American Cinema Editors (ACE) held its Annual Eddie Awards, during which it bestowed career achievement awards on Terry Rawlings, A.C.E. and Ed Abroms, A.C.E. (Blue Thunder), as well of filmmaker of the year honors for director Ron Howard. A reel of Rawling’s career highlights included clips from BAFTA nominees Blade Runner, Chariots of Fire (which also received an Academy Award nomination), Alien, Isadora and Women in Love, as well as more recent work on GoldenEye and The Phantom of the Opera. Director Jon Amiel presented the award to Rawlings, thanking him for his “wit and wisdom.” Backstage, Rawlings said he was “thrilled to be here… it is wonderful to be recognized.”

Crash: Academy Award winner for Best Picture

AMPAS SciTech Awards

Also that evening, Don Hall, a longtime sound editor who has worked on more than 90 features, was presented the John A. Bonner Medal of Commendation by the AMPAS Board of Governors. This year, SciTech Awards were bestowed on honorees from the U.S., UK, Germany and Ukraine. Specifically, Scientific and Engineering Awards (Academy plagues) were presented to David Grober for the concept and mechanical design and Scott Lewallen for the design of the Perfect Horizon camera stabilization head; to Anatoliy Kokush, Yuriy Popovsky and Oleksiy Zolotarov for the concept and development of the

Continued on page 26 >>

Rodrigo Prieto, ASC, AMC for Brokeback Mountain

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F-STOP HOLLYWOOD

“ To b e re co g n i z e d b y yo u r p e e rs m a k e s i t s o m e t h i n g ve r y s p e c i a l . T h i s i n d u st r y i s a t o u g h i n d u st r y t o i m p re s s . ” Fra n k F le t c h e r w h o , a lo n g w i t h D a ve S h e r w i n , w o n a Te c h n i c a l A c h i eve m e n t A w a rd fo r Po w e r Po d m o d u l a r c a m e ra h e a d s y st e m .

of subdivision surfaces as a modeling technique; and to Udo Schauss and Hildegard Ebbesmeier for the optical design and Nicole Wemken and Michael Anderer for the mechanical design of the Cinelux Premiere Cinema Projection lenses.

Digital Printer Lights As Awards season came to a close, a new development was beginning to generate a high level of interest from ASC president Richard Crudo and other leading cinematographers who have longed for an equivalent of printer lights in the electronic realm. Technicolor Content Services (TCS) is beginning to introduce for select projects Digital Printer Lights, which offers the ability to emulate in the digital realm exactly what a release print would look like at given printer lights settings in a film lab. In its basic form, the system operates within a subset of Technicolor’s DI workflow, emulating the release print look on an HD monitor. Yet its possibilities for applications extend well beyond the dailies process. The architect of the digital printer lights system is Technicolor Digital Intermediates (TDI) VP of Imaging Joshua Pines, who worked with TDI’s director of imaging production Chris Kutcka to refine the system and develop practical applications for filmmakers. The next issue of British Cinematographer will include more on this development, as well as discussion with some of the first directors of photography to use the process.

Russian Arm gyro-stabilized camera crane and the Flight Head, to Anatoliy Kokush for the concept and development of the Cascade series of motion picture cranes; to Laurie Frost, Peter Hannan and Richard Loncraine for the development of the remote camera head known as the Hot-Head; to David Baraff, Michael Kass and Andrew Witkin for their pioneering work in physically-based CG techniques used to simulate realistic cloth; and to Garrett Brown for the original concept of the Skycam flying camera system. Garrett Brown’s presentation followed the award for the aforementioned cloth simulation. Brown, upon accepting, drew laugher from the audience when he joked, “that was so impressive that I’m wearing digital cloth.” Technical Achievement Awards (Academy Certificates) were presented to Frank Fletcher and Dave Sherwin for the introduction and continuing development of the Power Pod modular camera head system. Fletcher thanked the members of the Academy, several companies, individuals, and “the many cinematographers who put their faith in the system.” Sherwin added thanks to the staff in the UK, who helped get the equipment “to the standards this industry expects.” “To be recognized by your peers makes it something very

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special,” he said of the award. “This industry is a tough industry to impress.” He pledged continued support for the technology. Technical Achievement Awards were also presented to Harold Rattray, Terry Claborn, Steve Garlick, Bill Hogue and Tim Reynolds for the design, engineering and implementation of the Technicolor Real Time Answer Print System; Gary Thieltges for the design and development of the Sparrow Head; to Alvah Miller, Michael Sorensen and J. Walt Adamczyk for the design and development of the Aerohead motion control camera head and the J-Viz Pre-Visualization system; Scott Leva for the design and development of the Precision Stunt Airbag; to Lev Yevstratov, George Peters and Vasiliy Orlov for the development of the Ultimate Arm Camera Crane System; to James Rodnunsky, Alex MacDonald and Mark Chapman for the development of the Cablecam 3-D volumetric suspended cable camera technologies; to Tim Drnec, Ben Britten Smith and Matt Davis for the development of the Spydercam 3-D volumetric suspended cable camera technologies; and to John Platt and Demetri Terzopoulos for their pioneering work in physically-based CG techniques used to simulate realistic cloth. Rounding out the Technical Achievement Award recipients were Ed Catmull, for the original concept, and Tony DeRose and Jos Stam for their scientific and practical implementation

Wally Pfister, ASC for Batman Begins

BRITISH CINEMATOGRAPHER • ISSUE 17

USA

The Shaggy Dog, a Walt Disney picture production

The Sentinel, a 20th Century Fox, New Regency film

CAMERA CREATIVE

Gabriel Beristain BSC on…

The “Hollywood” Picture The Sentinel, a 20th Century Fox, New Regency film

Gabriel Beristain has travelled a long road from Mexico and his studies at The Centro de Capacitacion Cinematografica to the National Film and Television School at the Beaconsfield Studios in England and finally to the United States. To him, Caravaggio was the best film he has shot in the United Kingdom, and in his whole career. He is also particularly proud of Venus Peter, shot in the Orkney Islands in Scotland and K2, which was a British production. He became a member of the BSC in 1991. Roger Paul met up with him in LA.

Behind the “Hollywood” picture “It’s the best and the worst of the industry,” Beristain says. “On the one hand there is the craftsmanship, the resources, the ability to reach wider audiences, the wonderful and magical process of filmmaking at its best. On the other hand, the fear, the politics, the egos, the art by decree. Did I mention fear? And, everything that makes the art of filmmaking a very simple market commodity.”

“ E x h a u st e d p e o p le w i t h o u t fa m i l i e s a re a d a n g e r t o t h e m s e lve s a n d t h e p ro d u c t i o n . Fo r m e , a n e x t ra w e e k o n a f i l m w o u l d s o lve a m i l l i o n p ro b le m s – a n d k e e p st u d i o s f ro m t h e i n ev i t a b le d i s a st e r t h a t a cco m p a n i e s p u s h i n g p e o p le b eyo n d t h e i r limits.” ISSUE 17 • BRITISH CINEMATOGRAPHER

Beristain should know. At the moment he has two “hot” Hollywood-backed projects opening to wide audiences. There is a Disney film – the re-make of a classic comedy called The Shaggy Dog, “which relies on the magical nature of fantasy and welcoming touches of social commentary,” he explains. “Actor’s performance and a commitment from director Brian Robbins to push our resources and allow me to deal with the non-naturalistic material in a creative way made it a very interesting project for me – enhanced by the fact that my daughter, Victoria, was born during principle photography and I was in town for the event!” Then there is The Sentinel, “although fairly conventional on first look, it allowed me to continue my relationship with director Clark Johnson (S.W.A.T.) and work with a star/producer of Michael Douglas’ calibre, who were both very committed to make the film as less conventional as possible.”

At first blush, the two pictures appear to be completely different. After all, one is a “comedy” and the other a “thriller.” One was shot in Los Angeles and one in Toronto. “The advantages of shooting in Los Angeles and being close to family are getting fewer by the minute,” he frankly admits. “We have exhausted most locations. Permits and community tolerances are becoming a serious issue. “Crewing was also a plus in Los Angeles,” he continues. “The experience of the American crews is invaluable (although I very much miss the craftsmanship and ingenuity of my British crews). Being able to work with the same people all the time not only builds friendships but a shorthand language and common working practices. That translates into efficiency as well as speed and effortlessness. “Canadian and foreign crews began their relationships with American filmmakers on a bit of a rocky road,” he admits. “Yes, countries were offering taxes and benefits to bring work in. There was no need to build long lasting relationships. Soon, however, they began to realise the film work is really small. That many people did more than one film. And, that the better and larger projects relied heavily on recommendations. Foreign crews changed. The result – adapting to the style of the visiting filmmaker. In Canada, Mexico, South Africa and Australia, the local crews are pretty much determined to make us forget our home crews. “Would I want it to be like the old days - travelling with my crew from home everywhere I go, maintaining a cohesive and fluid working practice and visual style? Of course I would. Yet, the reality is different and what I have been forced to do, I have embraced and made the best out of it. I learned a saying in Ireland; ‘horses for courses.’ You go with what works for the picture.” That means in crew – and in technology.

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CAMERA CREATIVE

Horses for courses To shoot The Shaggy Dog, for example, Beristain chose the newly arrived ArriCams and Cooke lenses – his all time favorites. Although Beristain shot and tested Fuji stocks in Europe and still likes Fuji’s presence in the market, he has shot most of his films in America with Eastman and follows very closely their evolution. “On Shaggy, I tried the new 5217 200 EI since I needed a lot of details in the highlights to fit Los Angeles’ light. Also, the speed was important to deal with the unpredictability of our main star Cole, (the dog). For The Sentinel, I was happier with 5212, one of the greatest stocks available in the market and perfect for the hazy summer light in Toronto and DC. I supplemented it with the newest 5205 daylight for the mixing lighting situations and naturally in both films I dealt with most night interiors and exteriors 5218, the cinematographer’s best friend. Although I was very keen on repeating my experience with the ArriCams, I shot The Sentinel with Panavision XLs. “At first glance you’d say the pictures were completely different, after all, one is a comedy and the other a thriller. But, when you get right down to it, Shaggy is a thriller, too. You are shooting chases, deceit and deception. Whether it’s a man who turns into a dog at the most inopportune times, trying to save his job and his family, or a dismissed Secret Service Agent trying to save his life and the life of his President – at the end of the day, laughing or guessing, the camera guides the audience’s emotions.” What it changes, though, is the essential understanding of the genre. Each one has a very specific language, failing to understand it makes the camera and the lighting a strong antagonist of the narrative. “Surprisingly enough perhaps the most precise, specific and difficult film language where one needs to ride a delicate balance in lighting and framing is the one for comedy,” Beristain says. “It really surprises me that comedies don’t get greater recognition by our guilds,” he says frankly. “In Shaggy, Tim Allen and Robert Downey Jr. gave a lot of physicality to their acting, yet the facial expressions were fundamentally important, after all they were two fighting dogs. It was a lot of slapstick that always closes with a facial expression. My camera will always do, so I started open, giving lots of freedom for the actors to move, and at the right

time charged to a closer angle for the finish. Wide angles as oppose to medium telephotos. The point is to get a good laugh and the camera should help it at all times. Sadly some comedies have been given a flatter, broader look to avoid missing those magic moments. To me that’s the wrong solution. Most of the best comedies in the history of cinema have been beautifully shot.

“ I t i s t h e b e st a n d w o rst o f t h e i n d u st r y. O n t h e o n e h a n d t h e re i s t h e c ra f t s m a n s h i p , t h e re s o u rce s , t h e a b i l i t y t o re a c h w i d e r a u d i e n ce s , the wonderful and m a g i c a l p ro ce s s o f f i l m m a k i n g a t i t s b e st . On the other hand, the fe a r , t h e p o l i t i c s , t h e e g o s , t h e a r t b y d e c re e . ”

Added effort counts Whether it was a chase sequence between a dog and a dog/human or a chase between an agent and those out to get the President, Gabriel Beristain worked hard to make every shot count – and get every ounce of creativity out of the tools and technology he had available to him. “But I always kept in mind that I could make things even better, because we were doing a DI (Digital Intermediate),” he adds, strongly. “It is another tool that can make a picture better, if kept in the right hands. The cinematographer’s hands. Not the producers’. We need to fight for that control. “The DI has given us the possibility to create a distinctive look. It is not a tool to help us light less or ‘fix it in post.’ It is a tool to carry through a look that we’ve created on the set, to enhance it and manipulate it, to make it as distinctive as possible. “And, yes, it is also a tool to ‘fix’ something that we couldn’t control on the set. And I mean couldn’t control – not were too lazy to control. In Shaggy, for example, it was the eyes that I talked about earlier. The breed of dog we used had deep set eyes. So deep, that it was difficult to get light in there.

“In Shaggy, the precision of each shot was critical,” he continues. “We see action as the two dogs race across a location. Then we land and charge into the face for the finish. The eyes were fundamental. They play the comedy. They are the cues. We have to see them alive.

So, because I knew we had a DI, I was able to follow the dog with a strong light that would bring the eyes up. The only way to do this was to expose the shot a full stop over, then, in the DI, bring the rest of the shot down to where it should have been on the set – leaving the eyes brighter – and the ‘key’ to the shot.”

“Now, in The Sentinel, if the characters went into big shadows we didn’t care. The audience will know that the character is on the run. The audience will see a little desperation. If they can’t see Michael Douglas’ face, they still feel the emotions. You can be looser and more relaxed in a thriller. That’s one of the reasons that comedy is harder.

Yes, the time he spends in the DI process is over and above Gabriel Beristain’s “contract” but something he gladly gives, because he is passionate about following through with what he’s started. “I don’t begrudge the hours I spend,” he says candidly. “It is my choice. My signature on the picture.

“The simplest way to break it down is that, in comedy, it is the punctuation. In a thriller it’s the geography and choreography and the composition to match the character’s emotions. “In The Sentinel, the signature is the composition,” he continues. “With the wide screen, we would find interesting ways of using things in the foreground or the background to tell the story. Throughout this adventure, Michael’s character has to decide who to trust and who not to trust. Although the camera was spying on everyone and checking on everyone like an ominous observer, it still picked out places where there was focus (trust) or blur (not trusting).”

“What does bother me, however, is the hours that many of my crew members have to spend, due to situations that are out of our control from indulgencies, insecurities and bad management. I think many producers, not just in the States, have a wrong conception that paying over time is going to keep people happy working long hours. “I think that is a colossal mistake. Exhausted people without families are a danger to themselves and the production. For me, an extra week on a film would solve a million problems – and keep studios from the inevitable disaster that accompanies pushing people beyond their limits.”

Gabriel Beristain BSC, Filmography The Shaggy Dog, a Walt Disney picture production

The Invisible The Sentinel The Shaggy Dog The Ring II Blade: Trinity S.W.A.T. Blade II The Legacy Molly Tale of the Mummy The Spanish Prisoner Trial and Error Dolores Claiborne Greedy Fatal Instinct

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(2006) (2006) (2006) (2005) (2004) (2003) (2002) (2002) (1999) (1998) (1997) (1997) (1995) (1994) (1993)

Bound by Honor (1993) The Distinguished Gentleman (1992) K2 (1992) Waiting for the Light (1990) Joyriders (1989) Killing Dad or How to Love Your Mother (1989) Venus Peter (1989) Troubles (TV) (1988) The Courier (1988) Aria (1987) Caravaggio (1986) The Good Father (1985) Christmas Present (1985) Carne de tu carne (1983)

BRITISH CINEMATOGRAPHER • ISSUE 17

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IMAGO NEWS

The IMAGO General Assembly in Copenhagen To n y C o st a fo u n d e d t h e Po r t u g u e s e S o c i e t y o f C i n e m a t o g ra p h e rs , A I P , i n 1 9 9 8 a n d b e c a m e v i ce p re s i d e n t o f I M AG O i n 2 0 0 3 . A c i n e m a t o g ra p h e r a n d a p ro fe s s o r a t t h e L u s o fo n a U n i ve rs i t y i n L i s b o n , h e h a s re ce n t ly e d i t e d a b o o k fo r c a m e ra a s s i st a n t s , a n d i s n o w w r i t i n g a b o u t t h e h i st o r y o f Po r t u g u e s e C i n e m a t o g ra p h y. H e i s e d i t o r o f t h e I M AG O w e b s i t e w w w. i m a g o . o rg , a lo n g w i t h t h e i s s u e o f Wo r k i n g C o n d i t i o n s . The last general assembly of IMAGO was considered by many of the attending delegates to be one of the most productive and constructive since its foundation, writes Tony Costa. The extensive programme debated authorship rights, working conditions, digital cinema, the responsibilities of the cinematographer, the model contract for cinematographers, as well as many other topics concerning the inner life of the federation. The gathering took place in Copenhagen, Denmark, in February. The meeting was hosted by the DFF (Association Danish of Cinematographers), and the weekend reunion took place at the wonderful facilities of the National Film School of Denmark. The meeting had the support of The Danish Film Institute; Fuji Motion Picture Film – Amsterdam; Nordisk Film Fonden, Nordisk Film/Cinevator; Mutual Fond FAF/DFF; FilmKopi – the producers’ association; and FAF / The Danish Film Workers’ Union.

The attendees of the Imago General Assembly held at the Danish Film School, Copenhagen.

have not cooled amongst European Cinematographers. In the case of IMAGO there are some improvements to be reported. The book “Autores de la Imagen” has just been published following the first International Congress of Cinematographers that took place in Huelva Spain last year. In this book you can find all the minutes of the presentations and debates that took place concerning authorship rights. It is written both in English and in Spanish. Contact the Spanish Association - AEC / aec@aecdirfot.org to receive copy of the publication. Recently the BSC has become more involved than ever in the issue of authour’s rights. The BSC has a feeling that this situation is quite different in England in comparison to the practices in other European countries. This is a healthy symptom that in Europe cinematographers are coming together more, and getting a bigger picture and better scale on the issue. In fact following Camerimage 2005 where the subject was discussed at length, there’s a greater consciousness amongst cinematographers worldwide about this issue than ever before. Haskell Wexler recently premiered his documentary Who Needs Sleep? at the Sundance Film Festival. The centre

narrative of this documentary is about the deprived working conditions that film workers are subjected to. IMAGO was present in at the Camerimage festival 2005 in Lodz during the Conference of Cinematographers, where a declaration condemning current working practices was agreed. This is another issue that has spread internationally. A model contract has been discussed by IMAGO members. The objective with such a document is to produce a level of harmonization for European Cinematographers. In certain countries the contract is not in practice. In those countries where it is established it needs to be improved in order to protect authorship rights and working conditions. This model contract needs to be accompanied with a definition for the cinematographer’s duties and responsibilities. The AFCFrance has already proposed a guideline in their Image Charter. Generally speaking, there is still much work to be done in order to improve the professional and social status of the cinematographer in Europe. The establishment of a new standard for the future digital cinema is a concern for IMAGO., and it reassuring to know that so many cinematographers are actively discussing and taking part in issues that affect their profession.

The involvement of these institutions underlines how important this meeting was to the 33 delegates. The fact that private and public organizations got together to support the DFF and IMAGO, along with the producers’ association and the film workers’ union reflects the excellent social relationship that exits in the film business in Denmark. Authorship rights are always at the centre of IMAGO meetings. Unfortunately, there are very few improvements to report concerning moral rights legislation around Europe in favour of cinematographers. But the work and the motivation ISSUE 17 • BRITISH CINEMATOGRAPHER

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IMAGO NEWS

Whose property is it anyway? The subject of the intellectual property rights of the DP has become a hotly disputed issue. Dr. Cristina Bush provides an overview of a complex situation. The conditio sine qua non of the (co-)authorship of the DP regarding the film they help to create, is the character of “original” work of the film itself. There are differences in the interpretation of what “original” means, across the courts of the 25 countries of the EEC, with references to an ‘objective’ or ‘subjective’ interpretation, which means the work has to be either novel or an expression of the personality of the author. However, there is a broad consensus that cinematographic films, television films, publicity films and even documentary and cultural films will fall under the category of “original” work. Once having verified the character of the film as “work” we have to evaluate the creative contribution of the DP as a coauthor. Co-authorship can be denied if the contribution of the co-author is considered to be only a skill, a technical contribution, subordinated completely to the instructions of the director. The role of DP in the filmmaking team is a very important one especially regarding the visual and lighting design. The lighting design particularly is an elemental part of the film because it gives every individual image its special atmosphere, and provides a personality to the film. The fact that the DP has to co-ordinate his or her work with the director, and that currently it is the director or the producer who has the “last word” cannot be interpreted as a “lack” of personal creativity. The DP is the most important partner of the director. The DP’s work makes visible what has been only insinuated by the other media, such as the script or the spoken explanations of the director. To quote Vacano: “Technique by itself cannot create anything.”

Copyright regimes As every DP knows, the notion of authorship of cinematographic or audiovisual works has been harmonised only partially by Directive 92/100/EEC on rental and lending rights, and on certain rights related to copyright in the field of intellectual property: The principal director is universally recognised as the co-author. But in European film law there is a continuing and intractable conflict between the world’s two major copyright regimes - the “droit d’auteur” the tradition of mainly civil law countries, and the “copyright” system of common law jurisdictions. The former regime emanates from the notion of a film’s creator (for example in France, Italy, Austria, Germany, Spain, Greece, Belgian, and even Russia), whereas the latter (UK, Ireland, Luxembourg, etc.) basically sees a cinematographic work as having only a single author, its producer (Obergfell). The legal systems surrounding the droit d’auteur approach show great differences. We can distinguish three different groups here. The first group details precisely the individual film authors in an exhaustive list, excluding the DP (for example in Spain, Italy, Greece,). The second group does not provide exhaustive lists, having presumptions as to typical film authors (for example in France, Belgian, Poland, Romania). The third group neither specifically identifies the authors, nor offers a presumption regarding the authorship of certain individuals (for example in Germany, Austria, Netherlands, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Belgium). In these countries, the authorship is vested in the physical personas whose creativity contributed to the intellectual creation of the film. Germany

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and Austria, for example, assign authorship rights to the DP. In order to reconcile these differences in the copyright regimes of the European member states concerning the assignment of authorship, it is desirable to harmonise the notion of film authorship, although the Commission in the year 2002 declared in the mentioned report that no harmonisation is required. (See: Report from the Commission to the Council, The European Parliament and the economic and social committee on the question of authorship of cinematographic or audiovisual works, 6 December, COM (2002) 691 final)

D Ps h a ve t o u n i t e i n t h e i r f i g h t fo r re co g n i t i o n o f co - a u t h o rs h i p a n d fo r harmonising film co p y r i g h t l a w s But the Commission nevertheless left a backdoor open by announcing that national contract law concerning film copyright will be subject to future examination. Experts had made clear the non-accuracy of the Commission’s appraisal (Obergefell). The upshot is that DPs in the EEC (as well as those worldwide) have to unite in their fight for recognition of co-authorship and for harmonising film copyright laws. An argument which, according to our information, has not yet been used by DPs goes as follows. Even when legislation excludes DPs from co-authorship (as in Spain for example), jurisdiction cannot deny the authorship of the DP to individual photographic works they creating during shooting. As mentioned above, the lighting and visual design of the film is the responsibility of the DP. So during the process of filming they will decide the focus or framing of the image, the lighting, the camera movements, etc., to create, using their own personal style, an individual photographic work, which achieves the level of originality required by the law. It is commonly accepted in European Copyright laws that a part of an original work can be protected as individual original work. Opponents could argue that the DP is creating a variety of identical photographic works, and that is why the consideration as “individual works” does not fit in with the legal system. Of course, the DP will make a variety of identical photographic works during shooting, or similar photographic works, if the focus is the same but, compared with fine arts and painting, this argument cannot be convincing: every copy of a sculpture, every lithographic series and every individual but similar work of painting of a series all enjoy individual legal protection (Schulze). In short, the DP can be considered the author of individual photographic works which form part of the film itself. If we

consider the DP, besides his status as co-author of the film, and the author of individual photographic works which are part of the film but separately exploitable, the DP has the full exclusive ownership of economic and moral rights, included remuneration rights.

Know your rights Regarding economic rights (exploitation rights), the author has the exclusive right to exploit his work by reproduction, distribution, public communication and even transformation. Regarding moral rights, the DP has the right to demand recognition of his authorship of the work, and the right to demand respect for the integrity of the work. According to their position as a “normal” author or co-author, the DP could ban, for example, the colouring of a black-and white film, etc. (Schulze). At the same time, they could, on the condition that they are accepted as member of a Collecting Rights Society, claim the revenue from video rentals, cable and satellite broadcasting and the blank type levy as well. The opposing argument (Löwenheim) against the participation in these revenues, that the individual photographic works are not transmitted or reproduced, but only the whole film itself, is not convincing at all. Indeed, the whole film is transmitted, but the whole film is built by a “series of associated images”, which are exploited by the transmission or the reproduction (Hertin, Schulze). As the creator of individual photographs, the DP has another (subsidiary) protection. When DPs advocate that the time has come for them to be acknowledged as a co-author of a “film” and as an artist, they should use in their argument that they always are protected by the intellectual property right law because of their status as the author of individual photographic works. In Germany, for example, legislators made express reference to this matter, introducing a presumption of assignment to the film producer of the rights “regarding the simple photographs and individual photographic works which are created during the process of film production”. This means the official recognition of the authorship of DP of the photographic works. Opponents could argue, there is no advantage being recognised as the author of photographic works, when the rights are transferred to the producer. But this is not true: firstly, the transfer can never refer to the moral rights of the DP, because of their non-renounceable rights. Secondly, the assignment to the film producer by statute (cessio legis) or by contractual arrangements based on presumptions has the objective to make the rights acquisition for the film producer easier. The creative and artistic stakeholders can only receive full compensation if the film production as a whole is a success and therefore the film producer needs unrestricted exploitation (Brehm, Obergefell). Thirdly, the assignment of rights to the film producer does not signify the “gratis” acquisition. All the last European Directives expressly guarantee to the authors their right for remuneration regarding the exploitation of his creative work. The DP is one of those authors, with a double status as co-author of the film and as author of individual photographic works. Dr. Cristina Busch, professor at Unviersity Abat Oliba CEU in Barcelona, is a solicitor and an expert intellectual property rights, media and architectural law. BRITISH CINEMATOGRAPHER • ISSUE 17

EUROPE

IMAGO NEWS

Oldest film studio in the world Pictured here, Marek Jisha ACK from the Czech Republic and Joe Dunton BSC from the UK, playing with an old camera from 1910’s at the oldest existing film studio in the world in Denmark. IMAGO delegates were be invited by FAF, the film workers’ union, to visit Studio 2 at Nordisk Film whish was opened in 1909 when film production in Denmark was at a peak.

ISSUE 17 • BRITISH CINEMATOGRAPHER

Two new members The general assembly of IMAGO in Denmark welcomed two new, recently-formed societies from Greece and Estonia – GSC (Greek Society of Cinematographers), and ESC (Estonian Society of Cinematographers) – with a unanimous vote. From left to right: Alekos Yiannaros from Greece and Arko Okk from Estonia, representing IMAGO’s latest members

IMAGO, the European Federation of Cinematographers now has 25 European society members, and includes five associate members from other continents.

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EUROPE

ON THE JOB

At the 2005 Camerimage Film Festival, the Bronze Frog went to Louis-Philippe Capelle SBC for Black Night (Nuit Noire) cited for his courage in using unique techniques of lighting in this surrealistic movie, shot on HD. Here, from his personal notes, Louis-Philippe provides a fantastic insight into the making of the much-praised production.

‘Twas a dark night… The script Nuit Noire is a tale about the union of the black and the white, the snow and the night, the blood and the milk, Old fashioned Europe and the Africa as she made it, about the underground life of beetles and the airy one of butterflies. Trapped between the desire and the repulsion inspired by the lost paradise of his childish romances, Oscar gradually gives up his fate to frightening ghosts. As a mentor and a victim of his imaginary world, Oscar favours the birth of a seductive and threatening shadow. He brings his desire to become a deathly reality.

The sets Studio Polygone: Oscar’office, puppet theater, Oscar’s apartment (sleeping-room, livingroom, workshop-lab), Leon’s cave. Museum of Natural Science: gangways. Musée of Africa in Tervueren (interiors): entrance, different exhibition halls Night exteriors: Evere (park), Etterbeek (streets), a taxidermist’s workshop.

Director Olivier Smolders and the mood of the film At the beginning the film was to be produced as a regular movie. Filmed in 35mm and post produced the classical way. Financing the project was not an easy task as the script was difficult, obscure and not all-audience oriented. An opportunity came from the Walloon Fund for new technologies, Promimage, so Olivier reworks on the script and the aesthetics for an HD filming process. In this movie there are three different kinds of scenes… dreams; realistic, the supposed real life of Oscar, and entomological (hyper-macro photography of insects) In fact nothing is real. The movie is a fairytale. An artificial world, issued from Oscar’s imagination. And this must be absolutely obvious from the first seconds of the story. The question about shooting black and white or in colour was

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asked at the very beginning of pre-production, and that is mainly because Oliver is accustomed to shooting B/W ever since his first short films. Anyway, filming will be in colours, but this discussion would occur later in the post production process.

There are many sequences in the film needing hyper-macro photography of butterflies, insects and ants. After comparative tests, I decide to use a Micro Nikkor Photograohic 105mm Lens (very cheap in comparison) and send back the two zooms.

The style should be expressionist: building the space by using lightning and contrast; very dark areas with bright highlights. My references, Eraserhead (Lynch), L’heure du loup (Bergman), Le procès (Welles), Kafka (Soderbergh), Europa (Lars Von Trier).

The camera

What an enormous challenge, it was to produce a film to compare with these masters.

Preparing the filming It’s a relatively small budget movie. It will be difficult to complete shooting, post and end with a 35mm release print. Of course that means many talks in preparation to find the best, but cheaper, equipment. Tests are made with an HDCam Cinealta 900 with regular zoom lenses. No fantastic results, mainly due to the poor quality of the lenses. Olivier looks disappointed with the reactions of the video system to contrast, grey areas… he is so accustomed to 35mm B/W. If 35mm is too expensive, why not consider Super16mm? My main concerns are more about the monitoring on the set and the quality of the lenses. We discover that rental of a 24” Sony monitor is awfully expensive: 12,000 Euros. So we are going to use old Barco 20” monitors from the production company. They are all different, so we switch of the chroma (the film was intended to be in BW) and we try to have a good set up. But they are old and not really stable. The new Zeiss DigiPrimes are just out, but not available yet for commercial use. They were used for demos in the US and Europe. We had a good contact with Fuji Europe via France (thank you Michel Chaumiez) and Germany, and finally we were granted a brand new serieS of Cine Style Fujinon Prime Lenses and two zooms.

The next step is making the choice for the camera and the frame size. At Thomson’s Breda plant, engineers are finalizing the development of the new Viper camera. This is brand-new and a very hot topic, but also an unknown world in terms of going back from video to film. The way of recording the pictures is also not yet clear. This revolutionary camera, existing only as a prototype, has not been on a real scale movie set yet. There are no adapted accessories, not even a bridge plate nor a viewfinder extender. The camera is noisy after a while too, the CCDs run very hot. This is one of our main discussions, because an automatic fan switches on with the heat and sound recording becomes difficult, if not impossible. Luckily, our film will be mainly without direct sound. You can record pictures from the Viper as digitaluncompressed-raw style 4: 4: 4, called “film-stream” mode. Unfortunately, although the technology is working, it’s not practical for a long feature film (the hard disks are fast enough and reliable, but are either not available or too expensive). So we decide to go for the best format of HD recording: Panasonic HD-D5.

Some figures and technicalities D5-HD records 1920 x 1080 pixels at 235megabits/sec in 4: 2: 2 . HD Cam: records 1440 x 1080 pixels at 140 megabits/sec in 3: 1: 1 . It has been said that the “missing pixels” in HD cam are not mandatory because they consist of video background noise, altering the quality of the picture more that raising the definition. The main advantage of HD-D5 is of course less compression, which means better quality in terms of luminance and chrominance. That is the reason why it has been chosen as a mastering format closer to 2K. BRITISH CINEMATOGRAPHER • ISSUE 17

EUROPE

ON THE JOB

In Nuit Noire we want the advantage of HD-D5 for shooting blue screen scenes. These are easier to process in post because of the lesser compression. The drawback is the poor portability of the system. It is bulky, needs a specialised operator and a 240V supply. Connecting the camera to the tape recorder is easy via a single BNC cable (HD SDI output) whose length (we tried it) could go up to 100 meters. A first look at the camera menus brings you very few options. Maybe it’s not too bad. First choice is interlaced or progressive. To keep the maximum definition and the film look, we decided to go for 25P. Every picture is scanned in one step. We set up marking lines in the viewfinder corresponding to 1036 lines, that means a ratio of 1: 1,85. The mechanical shutter is fixed on 312°; we opt for a 1/50-shutter speed. Detail is reduced to a minimum and two black gammas are set up: one for interiors and night shots (10 to 15%) and another higher (20%) for daylight sequences. Black level is set at 21mv, that means not too low, but keeping some contrast and detail in the black areas. The sensitivity of the camera stands around 320-400ASA, but one could say that subjectively we have much more in the dark zones and low level details, close to 1000ASA The highlights are compressed with a soft curve of the knee: 94IRE at 600%.

Keeping focus My assistant’s work is very tough, especially maintaining the perfect control of the back focus of the lenses. We do not have any “sharpmax” type aid so it is very critical to perform these adjustments accurately whenever you change the lens. Better do it with an oscilloscope. When the traces are slim and focussed, then your lens is properly set. You have to be very careful with the wide-angle lenses because the camera mount is not that stable with the temperature variations. On the Cinestyle lenses, graduations are from the film plane (engraved on the camera body). Focusing in the viewfinder is still very difficult, despite the focus aid, and you really need a Siemens chart on the actors’ eye-level to control. Now I am sure that with the Accuscene viewfinder life is easier for focus pullers! For all the lenses I decide to stay at an average aperture of T2.8, to keep the depth-of-field narrow. We don’t manage to run many tests before the real shooting begins. We decide to have the camera as a one-light set up; which keeps all the information of the pictures in the dark areas as well as in the highlights. It is a little bit like shooting reversal film: better to be a slightly underexposed and soft, than contrasty and highlighted. Anything that is not in the dynamics on the shoot, can never be retrieved in post.

Shooting We start in the studio. We are in Oscar’s office. Through the windows we discover the bluescreen. A night view of the city will be added in post. It’s quite difficult because I have chosen to keep the glasses in the window frames and play with the reflections. Practical lamp fixtures in the frame, on graduators. We look at

the control monitor in BW. The only coloured pictures we see are the ones coming from my digital camera, and they look terrific. After this first week we are shooting some dream sequences, mainly bluescreen. The filming is smooth, serious, concentrated, but with no stress due to the video system. Sometimes we look back at some takes to see if they are right. Olivier seems happy. He is behaving like he would if using 35mm: few takes, precise. The only sad man on the set is the sound engineer and his boom man: the fan of the camera makes an obtrusive noise, and Olivier and myself are talking together and giving indications to the actors. As we don’t have any aerial view in the viewfinder, it makes the work of the boom operator rather difficult as he is always intending to be as close to the borderline as possible. The light level is very low, set colours are very dark and I must say the quality of the picture in the viewfinder is not fantastic. So it is not a piece of cake staying safe from the frame for the boom! At the end of the day, in a reduced team, we shoot the macro photography of the insects, which have been specially raised by Olivier’s brother who’s an entomologist. For these beauty shots I am trespassing the dogma of staying at T2.8, because I need depth-of-field. At T11, my Nikkor lens gives astonishing results and quality. We feel very impatient to see these shots on a 15m screen. Unfortunately, the light level and heat don’t make it a comfortable situation for the insects or the crew. In the film there are several flashback sequences. These are shot in Super 8mm B/W, transferred to Beta Digital. Sometimes they are full screen, sometimes they appear on the set on an Apple 23” Cine Display. After the first ten days of studio shooting we decide to make a film test: a few scenes are selected and edited on hard disk. One shot with bluescreen is also finalised. We are going to the theatre. The copy is good, definition and contrast-wise, except for a bluish cast in the black and white (because of the colour positive) and some aliasing problems, mainly in Oscar’s office window. Then the crew go out for some street night sequences, including some “on the shoulder shots”, tracking the actor walking in the park. We are using the well-known blue handles from RBI. The camera is very light, but with too much weight on the front because of the lens. Power supply comes from a battery belt and the recorder remains in the truck, 100m from the set. As a conclusion the camera –recorder combo was extremely reliable, except for a small software problem with the HD-D5, which lost us two hours from the schedule. But this was not really a drawback for an eight-week shoot. Oliver feels the main inconvenience with a video shoot, and especially with a separate recording system, is the time lapse

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between the moment he says, “camera” and the 15 seconds later when he is able to say “action”. This gap can create a loss of concentration amongst the crew and the actors.

Post Production HD D5 dailies are transferred to Digital Beta and DVCam for off-line editing. Olivier does a major part of the editing at home on his Apple G4, Final Cut-based system. Very soon, after the editing starts, it appears that the film has a great look in terms of colours, even if desaturated and with an increased contrast. Grading of the film is made on a Pogle Platinium console in SD (the edited online on Betacam digital). When it is completed you are able to apply the same timing set up on the HD data. A lot of work has been done on each picture, mainly vignetting and playing with masks. Creativity is only limited by time and the finances of the film. Peter Bernaers is responsible for the grading, and does a great job at ACE facilities in Brussels. The dreams sequences have a cool, blue cast, with skin tones on the light magenta side. Then the tonalities of the film become warmer, even goldish, with saturated tones. The Super 8mm archives, blown up to 35mm look like an old family movie in BW. Set, style, costumes, lightning even if they were designed for a B/W release are coherent and there is not a single problem of inter-cutting and mixing the scenes. My main problem in timing is achieving a burned sky on one of the rare daylight exterior scenes. There is no other solution than bringing a matte for the sky in post. Blue screen scenes are treated separately, first timing the backgrounds and the main scenes separately and then being composited together in Flame 2K. On line conform is made directly from D5 to Flame as data files, and recorded on La Cie hard disks (5 x 250Gb for the whole movie). We have a final look at the D5, grade copy on a Sony 24” monitor and we are ready to go for film transfer. In the meantime we edit a selection of representative shots to be transferred and screened to see and decide the final look. I ask for Vision Premier Positive that will bring velvet blacks and contrast, while maintaining saturated colours. Transfer will be on a Celco machine and not ARRI Laser, which is more expensive. The quality is said to be the same, but it takes longer. The definitive format of the frame is decided and each frame will be electronically cropped at 1036 lines, that means a 1 :1,85 ratio. The making of a film is not limited to the shooting nor the editing – everyone involved knows that you have to be patient. But with Nuit Noire this could not have been truer. It has taken almost three years from the filming to the release print; this is due to a limited budget compensated by everyone’s goodwill. Louis-Philippe Capelle SBC May 2005.

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POST AND TECHNO NEWS

Dragon Digital launches

Oscar-winning cinematographer Jack Cardiff recently launched the Dragon DI, a new company in South Wales, positioning itself as first and only post production facility in the world aimed solely at Digital Intermediate for film. Dragon DI has invested more than £2million in the project, and also hopes to expand soon into the proposed Dragon International Studios complex at Llanilid.

MotionFX supplies Vipers for Highlander Digital film production and post-production house MotionFX helped complete principle photography on Highlander: The Source. The company supplied four Viper FilmStream cameras and S.two digital film recorders to capture 80TB of image data during the eight week shoot in Lithuania. To put this in a filmic context, 80TB is over 10m frames, equivalent to 625,000 feet of 35mm, and a shooting ratio of roughly 70:1. MotionFX says this would have cost roughly £200,000 in stock, plus a further £200,000 for processing and telecine dailies.

Cinec 2006 Cinec 2006, the sixth international trade fair for motion picture technology, post production and events will take place from 16 – 18 September in Munich. Exhibiting companies will include: ARRI, Backstage Equipment, Cinematography Electronics, De Sisti Lighting, Dedo, Kodak, Chrosziel, J.L. Fisher, Lee Filters, Mole Richardson, Movie Tech, P+S Technik, Panther, Rosco, Sachtler, Schneider Optics and Technocrane. Highlights of the show include the cinecForum on The Future Of Cinematography, dealing with the changing technical requirements of filmmaking.

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Formatt Filters launches New HD Filter Range British filter manufacturer Formatt Filters has launched the world’s first range of glass lens filters designed specifically for High Definition picture acquisition. The result of extensive R&D over the last three years, the range was developed to meet industry demand for improved image quality during HD acquisition, and gives cinematographers new creative options as they shoot with HD cameras. The new HD filters include Soft, Neutral Density, Clear UV, Soft Gold and Supersoft Gold, plus HD linear and circular polarisers. Formatt has also tested its standard filter range to designate filters which, whilst not designed specifically for HD, meet all of the performance criteria for High Definition. This has resulted in a complete range of filters, which may be used with all types of HD cameras.

“We recognised several years ago the need for HD filters, and have worked closely with DPs in testing the new range,” said Paul Stephens, Formatt Filters’ commercial and operations director. “Our new filters, a world first, continue to deliver the highest levels of optical quality, and will provide cinematographers with the ability to control many light issues which are affecting HD production.” Formatt Filters’ new HD Soft Filter softens the harsh outlines that can result in HD work with minimal loss of detail and contrast. It also eliminates Moiré fringing in when shooting in challenging conditions such as sun lit water surfaces, and can be reversed giving a different range of focal points. The new Soft Gold and Supersoft Gold Enhancers have been designed to soften outlines and enhance flesh tones, removing blueness and facial blemishes without distortion.

LEM delivers mobile HD rushes for Bond Along with providing the digital editing and infrastructure technologies for Casino Royale, the next feature in the James Bond 007 series, hire company London Editing Machines (LEM) has also developed a new mobile HD dailies viewing theatre. During pre-production in 2005 LEM worked closely with the film’s editorial team, led by editor Stuart Baird, and London reseller Root6, to design a workflow that would assist the film’s international production schedule, taking place in Czech Republic, Italy, the Bahamas and the UK, with post production moving between Prague, the Bahamas, Pinewood Studios and Soho. The initial provision of equipment required the shipment of more than 60 cases of editing equipment.

Along with the film’s producers and Bell Theatre Services, LEM has also established an HD rushes theatre for the film. Using Rushplay software, the disc-based system eliminates the need for expensive HD tape decks and can be quickly set up at any location. On Casino Royale it is providing high-quality viewing facilities for the crew, including director Martin Campbell and cinematographer Phil Méheux BSC. “With HD dailies the hot topic right now, such portability and convenience is likely to be highly attractive to filmmakers, and we see this type of service expanding rapidly,” said LEM’s managing director Peter Watson. Casino Royale is scheduled for release in November 2006.

Framestore launches CG studio Founded with the aim of becoming London’s premiere permanent feature animation studio, Framestore Feature Animation has - in partnership with Universal Studios - commenced work on its first project, The Tale of Despereaux. The development of the new outfit will involve a large scale recruitment drive, with up to 200 new staff expected to join as the production gears up through 2007

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POST AND TECHNO NEWS

Cinesite explodes London for Vendetta The team behind many of the effects in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory also created the convincing and controversial visual effects sequence in V For Vendetta, where famous London landmarks including The Houses of Parliament and the Old Bailey are blown to pieces. The work, completed by Cinesite’s model unit, involved weeks of architectural research and extensive tests using different strengths of explosives, prior to construction and detonation of the 30ft high, 10th scale models at Shepperton Studios. Cinesite supplied all of the visual effects for the film, directed by James McTeigue. Cinesite has also completed visual effects for X-Men: The Last Stand, Omen 666 and Stormbreaker.

New Panther Foxy advanced compact crane Panther has just launched its new Foxy Advanced compact crane. It will reach, with its maximum remote versions No. 7 and 8, an overall length of over 13m / 43ft (central pivot section to remote mount), as the cameraman glides along in over 7m / 24ft height on the max platform version No. 4. The Foxy Advanced is based on the well-known Foxy Crane system but, compared with the standard Foxy the payload of the Advanced has been raised considerably. Existing Foxy cranes can be upgraded into Foxy Advanced cranes.

DI at the movies Quantel says that over 650 movies have been treated by its iQ and Pablo DI technologies. The news follows the 78th Academy Awards, which proved that that DI is here to stay. Wallace and Gromit: the Curse of the Were-Rabbit, which won the Best Animated Feature Film Oscar, featured extensive DI work on iQ by The Moving Picture Company’s Max Horton. Other films in the list include Walk The Line (Modern Video Film), Hustle & Flow (Fotokem), Kung Fu Hustle (Centro Digital Pictures), Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (ILM), The New World (Sunset Post), Cashback (Lipsync Post), as well as Pride and Prejudice (MPC). Autodesk’s Discreet Lustre system was used to digitally colour grade Oscar-winning films in the Visual Effects, Documentary Feature and Foreign Film categories, including King Kong (Weta Digital), and the Oscar-winning documentary feature March of the Penguins (Éclair Laboratoires)

Axis at the BSC Show

At the recent BSC Show at Elstree Studios, hire company Axis Films showcased a range of HD equipment, including the Panasonic AJHDC27 VariCam HD Cinema camera, fitted with a Pro-35 adaptor and macro lens, used to record live bees and underwater in the BBC television series Planet Earth. The company also showed the Viper FilmStream camera with a Sony SRW1 HD 4:4:4 HD RGB field recorder, and a full range of Zeiss DigiPrime HD lenses.

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Litepanels introduces new kit

Litepanels has expanded its range of production lighting with the new Mini 32. The new product employs Litepanels’ LED technology to offer 3200ºK of warm, projected soft, output, for use in illuminating interiors. The company has also launched a1x1 LED lighting system, available in 5600ºK flood or spot, and 3200ºK flood models.

BRITISH CINEMATOGRAPHER • ISSUE 17

THE BACK PAGE

The strength of this book is the wealth of different genres of film that are examined.

by Jennifer Van Sijll Focal Press / Michael WieseProductions

There are many ways to tell a story and to convey an idea in a movie. Dialogue is but one, and there are literally hundreds of others. This book has assembled 100 non-dialogue techniques used, and created an encyclopaedia of cinematic storytelling techniques. The book contains examples of some of the most memorable moments in film history. For the first few decades of film history the camera was used simply as a method of recording the scene that unfolded in front of the lens. As synchronised sound was not yet invented for film use, by necessity the stories were told in purely visual ways. Camera placement, lenses, lighting, composition, movement and editing were all used in conjunction to create a scene and tell a story to the viewer. These had to be relied on as the primary storytellers, and the camera, became an integral part of the storytelling process, and were responsible for unfolding the plot and characters. It is from these early days of cinema that film “language” was born. When sound arrived in films in 1926 dialogue and voice narration were able to be used as an additional method of storytelling, the sounds being used over the top of images at the same time. Sound obviously opened the way for additional storytelling options, and cinema was born. Cinematic tools favour certain genres such as action, horror, film noir, suspense and psychological drama, and films with great visual styles like Citizen Kane, Psycho and many others paved the way to push the boundaries of the visual medium and establish the language of film making. This book conveys in visual images the most essential, most effective visual techniques that directors and cinematographers use to convey an idea to an audience. The main way the author explores the films is by looking closely at many key scenes from such diverse movies as Citizen Kane, Apocalypse Now, Strangers on a Train, Amelie, Psycho, ET, The Conversation, Kill Bill, Blue Velvet, American Beauty, Metropolis and many more. By examining the various camera shots and editing techniques, the many structures of film making can be defined and examined as to why they work to tell the story in such a powerful way. The use of camera lenses, camera position, camera motion, lighting and colour are all examined in some detail, and by illustrating the past use of the camera crane, Steadicam, and also handholding the camera, the reader can examine why the sequences actually work and are visually strong. Even when we know subconsciously that the sequence works to move the story on, sometimes we don’t know why this is the case. The first ten minutes of E.T. is used as a great example. Not a word of dialogue is said in that time, but “any eight year old can tell you who the bad guys are and why”. Such is the strength of every single camera shot, edit and sound effect used together to great effect. ISSUE 17 • BRITISH CINEMATOGRAPHER

“Cinematic Storytelling” Sub-categories of lighting includes candlelight, motivated light and the use of unmotivated light, which an example is quoted as Luc Besson’s The Professional. Besson uses unmotivated light techniques to recalibrate expectations about his protagonist, Leon, a professional assassin. By fully understanding such a de-construction of the many classic film scenes, the camera operator and DP can learn a great deal about what elevates a camera shot from merely telling the story to elevating the message to the audience.

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Ultimately a possible additional camera shot can be suggested that will tell the story in a much more comprehensive and cohesive way. Any factor that can help to elevate the film from merely covering a story up to a work of cinematic art is surely the required effect from any professional camera crew. The strength of this book is the wealth of different genres of film that are examined. By giving a short explanation of the film and the context of the scene, and then by strictly keeping just one page to explain one scene or sequence, the reader is able to digest the information readily and understand the many concepts very easily. The reader would not need to know the film in question in any detail; the storyboard does that for them. The reader does need a certain previous knowledge of film making, although the language in the book is readily understandable, and anyone with film knowledge will be able to readily grasp the concepts explained. This book is highly recommended to anyone who currently works in the camera department, editors, scriptwriters, sound designers, directors and many more. Review by John Keedwell GBCT

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