24 minute read
On Set
Credit: Ramón Vasconcelos Associate member Maksym Putintsev discussing a shot with the director Joffre Silva on a dramatic short film titled Being Brave.
Marie-Julie Besse (1st AC), Jocelyn Spronken-Forget (best boy grip), Claudine Sauvé csc (DP), Nicolas Mignot (key grip) and Lina Roessler (director) on the set of Best Sellers (a feature film starring Michael Caine and Aubrey Plaza).
DP/operator Doug Koch csc with dolly grip Chelsea Barrie on the set of Deepa Mehta’s new film Funny Boy shooting in Sri Lanka.
(L to R) Director Don Shebib, gaffer Nikita Brusnitsyn and DP/operator Gregory Bennett (associate member) on the set of Nightalk.
Credit: Courtesy of Liam Higgins Cinematographer and associate member Liam Higgins on set with Toronto Raptor Serge Ibaka for the NBA Champions’ recent fashion campaign with Nobis Outerwear. (L to R) Sound recordist Alisa Erlikh, DP Morgana McKenzie (associate member) and director/producer Idalina Leandro on set in Canmore, Alberta, during production of the feature documentary An Open Conversation.
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Photo: Fredi Devas
MINI S4I T2.8 Primes
“I’ve used Cooke lenses before and always loved them. I filmed elephant seals fighting for the Antarctica episode. I wanted to try and make the sequences feel and look different to others I’d seen shot, but they are a challenge to film — huge behemoths up to 18ft long and 8000lbs. Thousands of them turn up in mating season and the males prepare to fight for their right to breed. The miniS4/i’s were great as the size and weight of them allowed me to use them hand-held on a M¯oVI Pro gimbal to get among them, capture the feel of the combat and creatively control the visual scene. But it’s no easy job moving around these monsters. I was frequently having to jump out of the way as one animal charged another, while others charge past you to escape. It’s one of the most amazing places I’ve ever been. Outside of the flora and fauna, it’s the huge amounts of time we have to invest and of course the extreme demands we place on the kit, due to the environments we subject them to. I am happy to say that the miniS4/i’s performed flawlessly in every situation.”
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Going to Bat for Anamorphic Robert McLachlan csc, asc
By Trevor Hogg, Special to Canadian Cinematographer
As the original show that began the Arrowverse comes to a conclusion, a new superhero has emerged from the imagination of executive producers Greg Berlanti (Arrow) and Caroline Dries (The Vampire Dairies). Ruby Rose portrays Kate Kane, who takes on the mantle of Batwoman in an effort to fill the void caused by the mysterious disappearance of her cousin Bruce Wayne and his Caped Crusader alter ego. Shooting the pilot episode was the responsibility of cinematographer Robert McLachlan CSC, ASC (Ray Donovan) and filmmaker Marcos Siega (Dexter). In November of 2018, co-executive producer Jae Marchant (The 100) called McLachlan about Batwoman with the prime directorial candidate being David Nutter, who had helmed the pilots for Arrow, The Flash and Supernatural. “I had worked with David on Millennium in the mid-1990s and did some iconic Game of Thrones episodes with him,” McLachlan says. “We were already talking about what it might look like. But early on in prep his wife was diagnosed with cancer and David had to withdraw from the project. I hadn’t worked with Marcos Siega before, and he inherited the crew that David and I had assembled. Marcos and I realized quickly that we were on the same page. Neither of us, with Caroline Dries’ blessing and encouragement, wanted Batwoman to look anything like the Arrowverse shows, which are highly saturated and feel very CW Network. That’s not a bad thing because it’s a nod to their comic book heritage. However, we wanted to go as dark as possible. One of the first things that Marcos said to me was, ‘I’m not going to be shooting a master on a 25 mm and trying to pick up a closeup on a 110 mm from across the room.’ That was absolute music to my ears.”
We looked at the comics “ for the tone, but you can’t slavishly follow that stuff. You have to roll with what every location gives you and mould it from there.”
Credit: Kimberley French/Warner Bros Entertainment Inc.
Gotham City has previously appeared in the Arrowverse, though none of the DC Universe television shows were set there. “They used Chicago for their exteriors and the rest of the shows are shot in Vancouver,” McLachlan states. “In the Elseworlds crossover episode [where all of the superheroes meet up], the Carbide & Carbon Building [an Art Deco structure] was used as Wayne Tower. It looks beautiful in the daytime, but at night it sucks light up and is not lit with any architectural lighting. Marcos and I pushed hard to get to use the Chicago Board of Trade, which is Wayne Tower in the Batman movies. It’s a lot more recognizable and impressive. Also, you can get great vistas of it down Michigan Avenue where we did a lot of that nice driving stuff with Batwoman on her motorcycle as she re-enters Gotham.” Cinematically, dealing with the darkness meant having it built into the production design and the imagery. “You can’t go into a supermarket and turn all of the lights off,” McLachlan notes. “Luckily, we had a terrific production designer named Lisa Soper [Awakening the Zodiac] and she is a big Batwoman fan. You cannot impose a look on something that isn’t inherently dark. Choosing your locations is critical.” Part of the mandate of not looking like other Arrowverse shows meant that the images were heavily desaturated. “It was fun for me because I hadn’t done anything like that for a long time,” McLachlan says. “One of the other things that Marcos and I did was to bring in two sets of Hawk V-Series lenses [25 mm, 30 mm, 35 mm, 40 mm, 50 mm, 60 mm, 75 mm, 100 mm to 135 mm, with most of the footage being shot in 35 mm to 60 mm range]. Shooting in anamorphic is hard. You have to
Marcos and I realized “ quickly that we were on the same page. Neither of us wanted Batwoman to look anything like the Arrowverse shows, which are highly saturated and feel very CW Network. That’s not a bad thing because it’s a nod to their comic book heritage. However, we wanted to go as dark as possible.”
frame so that the part that is sharp is centred in the shot or where you want the eye to go. The big victory was that we got the CW Network to sign off on presenting Batwoman in the 2:1 ratio [rather than 16:9] with a slight letterbox top and bottom. Subconsciously, a viewer watching something in 2:1 with the optical anomalies around the edges of the frame that you get with anamorphic tells them that they’re watching a big movie.” A month was spent in preproduction and two weeks were devoted to principal photography. “We looked at the comics for
Left: Robert McLachlan csc asc preparing a scene on set with (L-R) Ruby Rose, Camrus Johnson and director Marcos Siega. Right: Ruby Rose in action. Below: Rachel Skarsten as Alice.
Credit: Kimberley French
the tone, but you can’t slavishly follow that stuff,” McLachlan notes. “You have to roll with what every location gives you and mould it from there.” Like most pilots, a lot of it was captured on location. “If you try to work against the location photographically, you always fail. The only thing that we built was the former office of Bruce Wayne and a couple of other minor sets,” he says, adding that some of the scenes took place on logistically difficult rooftop settings. “We were in the old Vancouver Block situated in downtown Vancouver that other shows shoot on a fair bit. Then we went to Chicago for a day and a night to get all of our establishing shots. A Russian Arm followed Batwoman on a motorcycle
Credit: Robert Falconer
through the streets of Chicago. We also worked at City Hall and the Board of Trade building.” Weather was not a problem, he adds. “Vancouver in the spring is wet a lot, which looks great.” Storyboards were created for action sequences and shots requiring visual effects elements. “Most of the visual effects involved putting Gotham in the background of Vancouver locations,” McLachlan remarks. “The exteriors were carefully shot so as to minimize the visual effects as the budget was limited.” Opening the pilot is Kate Kane trapped under ice and trying to break her way through. “Anything in the water is tough. We built a huge tank in a horse barn on the outskirts of Vancouver. Braden Haggerty is one of the best underwater camera
Ruby Rose (left) and
Credit: Kimberley French
director Marcos Siega (right) on the operators I’ve ever worked with. It was the set of Batwoman. most storyboarded sequence.” The special effects team led by Wayne Szybunka (Flash
Gordon) controlled the level of murkiness. “When she breaks through onto the surface of the ice, we had to put the Arctic in the background; that was a greenscreen scene. Lighting it for day exterior, you try to make as big a sky that the budget will allow.”
Locations were scouted ahead of time to determine where the eyelines were going to go, which influenced the lighting setups.
“A good director like Marcos can roll with whatever you need to do photographically,” McLachlan says. The show allowed for a reunion with certain crew members after a decade’s absence from film and television productions in Vancouver. “My gaffer Richard Buckmaster I’ve known since we were in our 20s, and my key grip Ron MacLeay worked with me on the original
MacGyver in the late 1980s. Both of them brought their own crews. Robin A. Smith was the A camera/Steadicam operator.
First AC Dáire Mac An TSaoir was a focus puller I had worked with on Game of Thrones in Ireland and he moved to Vancouver.”
Dean Friss was the B camera operator, first AC for B camera was
Adrien Cote and Chris Bolton at served as the DIT.
Footage was captured by ARRI ALEXA Mini cameras on SxS
Pro+ memory cards in 2K. “There’s a big sequence in the square that involved a lot of extras, and I had a third camera for that, but most of the time it was two cameras because of greenscreen,”
McLachlan states. A useful device was a three-axis electronic stabilized gimbal called the ARRI Maxima. “I used the Maxima on a Black Arm, which is a movement dampener,” he says.
“The Maxima is a lightweight remote head that one person can carry and another person can operate remotely. You can put a
Black Arm mount on a dolly, mount the Maxima to that, and roll the dolly anywhere over rough ground and still get a perfectly smooth shot. It’s a fantastic tool.” A classical approach was adopted for the camera style. “Marcos and I didn’t want to draw attention to the fact that there was a cameraman in the room.
Handheld was kept for action and fight sequences.
“The stuff on the rooftop was greenscreen because we’re
dangling people off of the roof,” the DP notes. “That was in a former garbage warehouse in South Vancouver called the Transfer Station, which is also where the Batcave is located.” The shot that everyone wanted to see was the introduction of the Batcave. “I lit it like we did our subterranean locations in Game of Thrones with a giant soft box overhead that has a light grid in it. The soft box was positioned as close to the ceiling as possible, and with SkyPanels you could vary the colour temperature and brightness remotely. It would give you this ‘no light’ light feeling. The producers were not happy about how much it cost to do that with the amount of rigging involved, but when you do that it means that you’re basically lit. You can shoot 360 degrees because it’s all overhead. The first day that Caroline Dries walked into the Batcave and saw what it looked like on the monitor when we applied the LUT, she was absolutely giddy. “I used a ton of Astera tubes, which are incredibly handy,” he continues. “You can clip them up anywhere and they are a remote-controllable LED. If a director decides to have an actor walk over to a dark corner in a room you can tuck one behind a door or Velcro it to a wall. They also make little spotlights that are self-contained. I was introduced to them by the gaffer in Chicago named Terry Dee. We were out on the streets in Chicago, it started to get dark, and had this big vista down Michigan Avenue. I asked Terry, ‘Where are the architectural lights?’ He just plunked them on the sidewalk and there was no cabling, which was fantastic. In the Wayne Towers scenes, I still hung some big 10Ks because nothing looks as good. But for architectural lighting in the background this stuff is okay. My all-time favourite light to light closeups is the Dedolight PanAura Octodome. There are five and seven-foot versions. It’s like a big umbrella light but has a shallow footprint. You can tuck one in a corner and get a big soft light out of it. Because it’s burning a tungsten bulb, which has a complete spectrum within it, actors always look way better with that.” McLachlan explains that he treats the DIT station as his darkroom. “I don’t put one LUT on the whole scene. I do it shot by shot,” he says. “What that means is if I can’t be in the final colour timing, which I rarely can because I’m usually onto something else, all they have to do is match what we did on set and take off the rough edges where they bump up against each other. There will be a 100 LUTs in a day depending on how many setups we do. My final colourist was Philip Azenzer [at Encore Hollywood], who I have worked with since Millennium. I knew that I was in good hands with him and that Marcos would be involved with the final grading as well.” McLachlan has seen some of the subsequent episodes. “I thought they were handsome. What really surprised me was that CW was so happy with how the pilot looked that they agreed to shoot the series with anamorphic lenses and broadcast it in 2:1,” he says. “Initially, we had wanted to go 2.39:1, which is a classic anamorphic format. The network agreed instead to 2:1 because of well-spread information from Netflix in terms of their standards. Research has told them that 40 per cent of their customers watch the show on iPhones and 2.39:1 is too small while 2:1 looks good.”
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Breaking the Rules
Chris M. Oben Talks
Crimson Point By Fanen Chiahemen
Credit: Craig Minielly / CraigMinielly.com
After serving 20 years in prison for the murder of his daughter, Frank Thorne returns to his remote hometown where old wounds and rumours resurface and haunt him as he tries to find her true killer. Such is the premise of Crimson Point, the latest feature from writer-director Raul Sanchez Inglis (Transparency, The Falling) and producers Matt Kelly and Rob Weston, who secured C. Thomas Howell (The Outsiders, The Amazing Spider- Man) to play the role of Frank. The film was shot in the Greater Vancouver Area over 15 days of principal shooting. Before going to camera, Inglis and cinematographer Chris M. Oben looked at images from several films that the director felt closely conveyed the dark journeys he saw the characters of Crimson Point travelling. The Snowtown Murders, Irreversible, Jacob’s Ladder and Blue Velvet were all inspirations for the visual tone. “So when we talked about Snowtown, that was a really austere sense of place. With Jacob’s Ladder that was a vibrancy, kinetic energy and intensity that we referenced through our handheld work. We used these looks to develop a very visceral, palpable, colour palette combining deep reds, blues and greens that we hoped would convey aspects of our characters,” Oben explains. Preproduction on the independent feature came down to scouting the locations. “The locations informed so much of what became the film,” Oben offers. “One particular set I really liked that worked out well was the trailer that Frank and his daughter live in. As we were setting up a wide interior shot, I realized that the whole trailer was literally on unlevel ground. If you level your camera so the slider stays balanced, the trailer and all the verticals in the set are off kilter, and that normally would be an issue you’d fix and maybe level the trailer out. But we decided we loved that effect; it gave Frank’s space this offkilter feel. Something’s just not right in that set, and that’s how it is with each of these characters – something’s just not right, and it really helped sell the tone for the characters. “Sara’s country house is another location that I really liked that worked really well,” Oben continues. “My favourite parts are when we have C. Thomas Howell approaching the patio of the house, and we are able to see deep into the distance so it doesn’t feel contained like a small movie might; we got a sense of scale in that aspect that I really liked.” The cinematographer and the director decided early on to challenge traditional filmmaking rules. “The first rule we broke was the idea of typical coverage,” Oben says. “Though we didn’t identify it at the time, we later recognized that we took a very Cassavetian approach – set up a scenario where the actors stick to scripted dialogue but are free to improvise performance. This style allowed us incredible spontaneity and realism that is often lost after multiple takes of traditional coverage.” To achieve their vision, Oben wanted fast but inexpensive lenses. “I think the Sigma Cine Primes really find a nice balance of speed, clean character and reasonable cost. Lorne Lapham Sales & Rentals offered us a great deal, and we were able to get the Sigmas, which I’d used previously and was really happy with, for the run of the show. By using inexpensive glass, I was able to al
Credit: Craig Minielly / CraigMinielly.com
Director Raul Sanchez Inglis (white hat) looks on as Chris Oben operates a handheld shot of the burial of Frank, lit only with flashlights and atmosphere. Clockwise from left: Bryan Demore, Inglis, Joshua Hinkson, Oben, Darcy Laurie and C. Thomas Howell.
locate more money towards grip and lighting,” he explains. The RED Epic-W HELIUM (shot at 8K, 7K and 6K) was his main camera, while the RED DRAGON (6K) served as a B camera, both of which he supplied himself. For lighting, the main workhorses were Arri SkyPanel S60s, two 1.2KW HMIs, a pair of Source Four Lekos and a number of battery-powered 2 by 1 foot bi-colour LEDs. “Those LEDs became the most practical tool we employed where you could, with batteries, quickly rig and set lights in all kinds of shots,” Oben says. “You’d think a 2 by 1 would not throw that much light, but they’re an incredible tool, especially paired with a directional crate. “One of my favourite scenes was shot with just one of the 2 x 1 LEDs as a bit of side fill and car headlights. We tried to use practically motivated lighting whenever possible. In fact, there’s a burial scene that is just flashlights and smoke. So we basically gave the actors flashlights and let them light themselves. That gave us a real sense of intensity that would have been hard to do another way and allowed us to move quickly. I think we shot eight pages that day. It was reassuring to know that we were able to go to 1280 ISO with no noise issues and just light with flashlights and atmosphere.” Building on their no-rules approach, they would often use the emotional tone of a scene to motivate a change in lighting or colour palette, Oben says, describing one scene in which two characters are lying in bed. “The scene starts in warm tones, lit as if a bedside table lamp were the only source. The actual working fixtures were a tungsten bulbed, 9” KinoFlo car kit with half CTO, as well as a 750W Leko bounced off a card for fill,” the
The emotional intensity of a bedroom scene is amplified by a corresponding shift of colour and light quality achieved with dimmers on set. Emy Aneke as Sam Bradley and Natasha Wilson as Sarah Bradley.
cinematographer explains. “Slowly, as the intensity of the scene evolves, we dimmed out the lights motivated by the table lamp and simultaneously dimmed up another 9” KinoFlo gelled with full red. The red gradually pervades the scene as the intensity of the scene increases. It’s like a kettle boiling. You never notice the change until it boils over. “Raul wanted to make some really bold choices,” the cinematographer continues. “There’s another scene where Tommy [C. Thomas Howell] is talking to a policemen in a car, and everything is super aqua blue. Those shots were achieved with a combination of bi-colour LEDS set to 6300K and an Arri SkyPanel set to full blue saturation in RGB mode. Again, the mood of the scene dictated our choice of monotone blue.” Oben handheld the camera for much of the shoot, but he found the 3-foot slider on the PeeWee dolly particularly useful. “The Super PeeWee 3 is the best tool for these kind of independents,” he says. “It’s the most versatile; it can be super small and yet has quite a high reach. It’s a little bit more stable than the smaller Fisher 11 dolly. So the most critical tool was the slider for sure because you could do those little push-ins, you can correct the overs and you don’t have to always put down dolly track to achieve a subtle move.” The Ronin 2 was another useful tool, he says. “The Ronin just has the flexibility. So there’s a scene where Tommy’s coming back to confront his daughter’s friend who is sort of a bad guy, and we do that classic Werner Herzog shot where we enter a space clean and the actor sort of pivots and rolls into frame on a wide shot, and suddenly
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Credit all photos on left: Courtesy of Matt Kelly Films
Clockwise: Frank (C. Thomas Howell) confronts Sarah (Natasha Wilson). Frank seeks revenge. Frank and Gail (Anna Galvin) at odds in the diner. Frank looks back at his younger self as flames rise.
they become the important part of the shot, so it’s kind of like stepping into your own POV. Well, the Ronin gives you that stability. I think it’s one of the best tools, the Ronin with the Ready Rig.” Although the budget could only allow for a small crew, they were a solid team, Oben says. “I was really blessed to have Agatha Lee and Dustin Chouinard as focus pullers,” Oben says. Other crew members included gaffer John Heinekey, key grips Graham Harrington and Carson Foster, dolly grip Michael Heaton, second ACs Coenraad Been, Jen Caron and Katie Gobert, and lamp op Akira Sato. “The crew was really tight, so I was really happy with that. It’s always hard when you throw in different things very quickly, so their enthusiasm and energy was amazing.” He also highlights “the amazing skills of the key makeup artist Nicole Dreyer. A large percentage of the story takes place with C. Thomas Howell in a post-mortem state of bloodiness. Nicole’s work was truly realistic. She brought an artistry to her work that helped take the character of Frank to another level.” Oben cites his relationship with Inglis as being instrumental in making the small-scale production work. “Raul and I studied film together at Simon Fraser University in 1990,” the cinematographer says. “We had followed each other’s careers since then but hadn’t worked together professionally. When we finally began shooting Crimson Point, a trust developed quickly. So Raul would come in and say, ‘The next thing I’d like to do is…’ and before he’d finished the sentence, he’d realize we’d already made the adjustment or gone to that concept. Raul basically has a confidence that allows those around him, myself included, to feel engaged and free to take chances and not be criticized. And his energy and enthusiasm are infectious; at the end of every take he’d almost be shouting, ‘You guys! That was amazing!’ And he was sincere, and we all felt like there was something special happening as a result.”
MASTERCLASS
THE ART OF CINEMATOGRAPHY
GUESTS:
Maxime Alexandre, aic John Bartley csc,
asc Catherine Lutes csc
Saturday, December 7, 2019
Credit: Kurt A. Long (Standing, L-R): Executive Director of Marketing, Keslow Vancouver Lecily Corbett,
Maxime Alexandre aic, Catherine Lutes csc, moderator Andrew Fish and John Bartley csc, asc.(Kneeling) Court Weeks, GM of Keslow Vancouver. Left side: Lecily Corbett, producer Keli Moore, John Bartley csc, asc, Andrew Fish, Mitchell Baxter and Matt Bendo. Right side: Court Weeks, Catherine Lutes csc, Tony Mirza, Maxime Alexandre aic.
Sponsored by Keslow Camera, Vancouver Film Studios, ICG 669, Canadian Society of Cinematographers
