Cinematography World July 2021 (CW004)

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THE ART AND CRAFT BEHIND THE CAMERA

ISSUE 004 JULY 2021

INSIDE THIS ISSUE STEPHEN F WINDON ACS ASC•BEN SMITHARD BSC•LINDA WASSBERG DFF•ED LACHMAN ASC•RUBEN WOODIN DESCHAMPS•ARI WEGNER ACS CAROLINE CHAMPETIER AFC•AUTUMN DURALD•BOBBY BUKOWSKI•KASPER TUXEN DFF•CRYSTEL FOURNIER AFC•JEANNE LAPOIRIE AFC

ISSUE 004•CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

Editor-in-Chief RON PRINCE ronny@cinematography.world Special Consultant ALAN LOWNE alan@cinematography.world Editorial Assistant KIRSTY HAZLEWOOD kirsty@cinematography.world Advertising Manager CLAIRE SAUNDERS claire@cinematography.world Subscriptions & Social Media CHLOÉ O’BRIEN chloe@cinematography.world Web Manager IAIN HAZLEWOOD iain@cinematography.world Art Direction & Creative Kinda Stuff JAM CREATIVE STUDIOS adam@jamcreativestudios.com tim@jamcreativestudios.com

CONTACT US News hello@cinematography.world Ad sales & Subscriptions +44 (0) 1428 746 377 Artwork artwork@cinematography.world +44 (0) 1428 746 375 www.cinematography.world

EDITORIAL TEAM Ron Prince has over three decades of experience in the film, TV, CGI and VFX industries, and has written about cinematography for 20 years. In 2014, he won the ARRI John Alcott Award from the BSC. He also runs the international content marketing and PR communications company Prince PR. “Count” Iain Blair is a British writer/musician who lives in LA and writes extensively about film/entertainment for outlets including LA Times, Variety and Reuters. He interviews movie stars, as well as Hollywood’s top filmmakers.

THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH

Gaffer Jeff Webster

Ron Prince photo by Joe Short www.joeshort.com

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Production is a team sport, so surround yourself with people who are talented, hardworking and constantly seeking improvement.

The other day I was watching a swan gliding swiftly over the water, yet acutely aware that its webbed feet were working like mad under the surface to provide forwards propulsion.

In the few short months since we started Cinematography World, we have been busy, hard at work, building a title that can be truly said to be global – in its outlook and its coverage. Every day we reach out to reinforce our already strong and wonderful bonds with the industry, as well as making new contacts and acquaintances – generally pedalling-away like that swan.

It is heartening to know, from the very many in-coming emails and messages, together with our increasing advertising support, that Cinematography World is welcomed and valued. And, it is an uplifting reward to know that our efforts have encouraged substantial numbers of website visitors from over 120 countries, whilst our print distribution has risen to more than 60 countries worldwide – with all figures rising steadily.

As always, there are plenty of excellent cinematography-focused articles in this edition, and online too. Thank you to everyone, for your interest, support and goodwill, in making Cinematography World extend so far and wide. There’s still more to do, but we’ve made a sensational start.

With production levels going through the roof in many parts of the world, red-carpet events in Cannes, plus CineGear Expo and Camerimage getting ready and set-to-go, things have the appearance of approaching normality across the film and TV production industry. Long may this continue. I am sure we will see you at an appropriate event somewhere around the planet really soon.

Until then, please take care, happy shooting and best wishes from all of us.

Darek Kuźma is a film and TV journalist, translator/interpreter, and a regular collaborator/programmer of the EnergaCamerimage Film Festival.

He is an ardent cinephile who has a lifelong romance with the visual language of cinema.

David Wood is a freelance journalist covering film/TV technology and production He was a former technology editor at Televisual, and is a regular contributor to Worldscreen, TVB Europe and Broadcast.

Kirsty Hazlewood has over two decades of editorial experience in print/ online publications, and is a regular contributor to folk/roots music website Spiral Earth.

Celebratingthe theFilms Films on on Film Film at at Cannes Celebrating Cannes 2021 2021..

Congratulations to the celebrated movies from the Official Selection, Semaine de la Critique Congratulations to the celebrated movies from the Official Selection, Semaine de la Critique and the Directors’ Fortnight who brought their stories to life with KODAK film. and the Directors’ Fortnight who brought their stories to life with KODAK film. #SHOOTFILM #SHOOTFILM Learn more at Kodak.com/go/motion Learn more at Kodak.com/go/motion © 2021 Kodak. Kodak and the Kodak logo are trademarks. © 2021 Kodak. Kodak and the Kodak logo are trademarks.

Ron Prince Editor in Chief ronny@cinematography.world

Michael Burns has covered film, broadcast, VFX, animation and interactive design, in print and online, for 20 years, for publications including IBC Daily, Digital Arts, TVB Europe and Broadcast Tech.

Michael Goldman is an LA-based award-winning, journalist/author, specialising in the art, technology and people involved in filmmaking and cinematography. His is a long-time contributor to American Cinematographer and CineMontage.

Natasha Block Hicks is an artist/designer/maker, who spent a decade as a freelance film and TV camera assistant, and indulges her love for cinema and cinematography through research and writing.

Oliver Webb is a film graduate/freelance journalist based in Barcelona, and is the founder/editor of CloselyObservedFrames. His interests include screenwriting, British New Wave cinema and the works of Ingmar Bergman.

Cover: F9: The Fast Saga. Image courtesy of Universal Pictures.

All rights reserved.

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CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD JULY 2021 3

Beautiful look.

Full control.

ISSUE 004•CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

INSIDE ISSUE 004 JULY 2021

ZEISS Supreme Prime Radiance Lenses ZEISS Supreme Prime Radiance lenses enable cinematographers to create beautiful, consistent and controlled flares in the image while maintaining contrast and avoiding transmission loss. Yet, they offer all the attributes of a modern cinema lens: largeformat coverage, high speed of T1.5, robustness and smooth and reliable focus.

From the inventors of antireflective lens coatings. Made in Germany. zeiss.com/cine/radiance

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KIM SNYDER•VIEW FROM THE TOP

32 LAND

PRODUCTION NEWS INDUSTRY LENS•MBS GROUP WHO, WHAT, WHEN & WHERE STUDENT UNION•TISCH SCHOOL OF THE ARTS NYC CAROLINA COSTA AMC•ONE TO WATCH MACEO BISHOP ACO•SMOOTH OPERATORS BOBBY BUKOWSKI•LAND

34 THE FATHER

BEN SMITHARD BSC•THE FATHER LINDA WASSBERG DFF•TOVE CAROLINE CHAMPETIER AFC•ANNETTE INNOVATOR•ED LACHMAN ASC LETTER FROM AMERICA•RICHARD CRUDO ASC STEPHEN F WINDON ACS ASC•F9: THE FAST SAGA AUTUMN DURALD•LOKI

44 F9: THE FAST SAGA

ARI WEGNER ACS•ZOLA RUBEN WOODIN DESCHAMPS•THE REASON I JUMP HIGHLIGHT•PANALUX SONARA 4:4 ON TOUR•RED’S NEW LONDON SHOWROOM KASPER TUXEN DFF•RIDERS OF JUSTICE CRYSTEL FOURNIER AFC•WILDFIRE

52 LOKI

JEANNE LAPOIRIE AFC•BENEDETTA JEFF WEBSTER•GAFFER’S CAFE COLOUR & POST SHOOTING GALLERY•RICHARD BLANSHARD

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VIEW FROM THE TOP•KIM SNYDER

EYES WIDE OPEN

With equitable access to equipment, services, support and other vital resources, a new generation of filmmakers will create powerful stories that resonate with audiences around the world.

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’ve been incredibly fortunate to work in the motion-picture industry for over 20 years.

In that time, there have been seismic shifts in the way moving images are created and shared with audiences. What’s remained consistent is the passion and creativity required to bring those images to life on screen, as well as the tremendous impact this industry has all around the world. The stories told through features, series, documentaries, commercials, music videos and shorts, speak to and resonate with audiences across cinema screens, television sets, tablets, phones and more.

Filmmakers – everyone who directly works on these projects from production through to post – are the source of that passion and creativity. And they inspire all of us across the Panavision Group as we partner with them to provide the equipment, service, support and technical innovations to meet their creative visions throughout their projects’ journeys from set-to-screen.

Each company within the Panavision family is proud to support filmmakers’ end-to-end needs with technical solutions. This includes cameras and optics as well as grip and remote systems from Panavision, lighting services from Panalux, post-production creative services from Light Iron, stage facilities from Island Studios, and lighting gels and lens filtration from LEE Filters. We also believe that “end-to-end” encompasses more than any one project’s journey from prep through post.

The Panavision Group is committed to supporting filmmakers as a resource and an ally throughout their entire careers and even before they’ve necessarily taken their first steps into professional production.

As members of the global motion-picture industry, we believe we have a vital responsibility to positively impact a diverse cross section of aspiring filmmakers, including women, BIPOC, LGBTQIA and people with disabilities. It is our goal to empower and elevate individuals from these diverse communities so that they will have the tools they need to succeed in creating and sharing the stories that need to be told.

In working toward realising this vision, we believe in the importance of supporting and partnering with organisations and key initiatives around the world that cultivate opportunities for creatives from underrepresented and underserved communities. Our on-going commitment in this

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mentorship programme that guides mentees through modern motion-picture workflows, emphasises the creative application of tools and technology, and offers a platform for discussing the practical realities of navigating the industry.

By providing education, public outreach, and access to our equipment and services, we are striving to create an industry worthy of, and welcoming to, filmmakers from all backgrounds.

Through our wide-ranging partnerships with organisations such as Made In Her Image that amplify the voices of underrepresented communities, we seek to listen, to learn, and to work together to make a true and lasting difference.

SOFT LIGHT. PRECISE WHITE.

Those of us who work in this industry have the ability and the responsibility to extend that opportunity to others. As we seek out the next generation of talent, it’s imperative that we open our industry’s collective lens as wide as possible, actively fostering an inclusive space where filmmakers from under-served communities and under-represented backgrounds have equitable access to the equipment, services and support necessary to tell their stories.

We are striving to create an industry worthy of, and welcoming to, filmmakers from all backgrounds.

By working together, we can ensure our industry’s next seismic shift results in a landscape welcoming of filmmakers from all communities and backgrounds. A truly inclusive industry, one that comprises a diverse chorus of voices working behind-the-scenes at all stages of production and post, will only amplify the passion and creativity that are brought to the screen, making for an even greater impact on audiences around the world.

area serves to provide a variety of resources to champion and foster content creation, education, employability, professional development, and beyond.

The Panavision Group is honoured to support filmmakers in their creative endeavours from the start of the imaging chain to the end and along every step of their career paths. Wherever a filmmaker comes from, they’ll find a home, an ally, and a creative partner with us.

For example, over the past year we developed a partnership with Made In Her Image, an award-winning non-profit organisation dedicated to the advancement of young women, girls, and non-binary youth of colour in film and media.

Through this partnership, we’re providing access to camera gear, post-production services, custombuilt educational curricula, technology experts, and field mentors whose professional experience reflects the participants’ desired career paths.

One of the key components of the collaboration is the Catalyst Cohort, a free educational and

Kim Snyder President and CEO Panavision

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Jost Vacano on the set of “Das Boot”, Jost Vacano’s private archives

PRODUCTION & POST NEWS

JOST VACANO BVK ASC TO RECEIVE CAMERIMAGE LIFETIME AWARD

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espected German cinematographer Jost Vacano BVK ASC, now retired, will be honoured with the prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award at this year’s EnergaCamerimage Cinematography Festival, running from 13 to 20 November, in Toruń, Poland.

The 87-year-old DP is best known for his work on the critically-acclaimed 1981 movie Das Boot, set inside a submarine during WW2, which earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Cinematography.

Vacano developed a gyro-stabilised camera system for that production to capture the claustrophobic setting desired by director Wolfgang Petersen. The director/DP re-teamed for

The NeverEnding Story, released in 1984.

Vacano’s Camerimage award also recognises the legal status that he has achieved for cinematographers as co-creators of cinematographic works. Vacano successfully won a court action against the producers of Das Boot to pay additional compensation as a part of his share of the film’s revenue, which in turn has established a stage for the similar recognition of DPs’ talents across the industry today.

Vacano also collaborated with Dutch director/ screenwriter Paul Verhoeven for the best part of two decades, on movies with fantastically rich elements, including Detroit in a dystopian setting for the movie RoboCop (1987), a colony of the

future on Mars in Total Recall (1990), as well as the erotic drama Showgirls (1995).

In further news EnergaCamerimage is on the verge of starting an exciting chapter in Toruń with a new film/cultural centre expected to be ready at the end of 2025.

In 2019, Poland’s Ministry Of Culture, National Heritage and Sport, together with the City Of Toruń and the Tumult Foundation, EnergaCamerimage’s organiser, laid the legal foundations for a £120million film centre that will serve the festival for decades to come.

“I’m overjoyed. This new centre will be a uniquely-designed, multi-functional facility, the first of its kind in Poland,” said Marek Żydowicz, the festival’s director. “This couldn’t happen without the unwavering support of numerous people and institutions, and I’m very grateful to everyone involved.”

One of those is Kazik Suwała, the festival’s long-standing programming director and Żydowicz’s trusted collaborator, who is now also leading the European Film Centre Camerimage (ECFC), the state-run institution founded to supervise the construction process and activity programme of the new cultural complex.

“A massive number of 102 architectural studios, representing 20 countries, applied for the competition to develop the building’s architectural concept, out of which, due to legal restrictions, we’ve admitted 67 from 14 countries,” said Suwała. “42 of them, representing 13 countries, met the deadline of June 7th 2021 to send proposals, and now the competition’s jury is tasked with choosing five projects most fitting for the new centre.”

The winner will be announced by the end of August and construction should commence in 2022, with the building expected to be ready for the 33rd edition of EnergaCamerimage in November 2025.

ASC RE-ELECTS STEPHEN EURO LIGHTHILL ASC AS PRESIDENT CINE EXPO

CONFIRMS DATES FOR 2022

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The dates for Euro Cine Expo have been rescheduled. The event – which will unite filmmaking technology manufactures and cinematography professionals from around the world – will now take place in the Zenith Cultural Hall, Munich, on 1st and 2nd July 2022, coinciding with the Munich Film Festival. For further details visit www.eurocineexpo.com.

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Blackmagic RAW makes cinema quality 12-bit, 80 megapixel images at up to 60 frames a reality! Constant quality encoding options adapt compression to match the detail of the scene. Constant bitrate gives you the best possible images at a consistent file size. You can record to two cards simultaneously so you can shoot high frame rate 12K or 8K on CFast or UHS-II cards.

Cinematic 12K Super 35 Sensor Stephen Lighthill by Michael Pessah

he board of governors of the American Society Of Cinematographers (ASC) recently re-elected Stephen Lighthill ASC as president.

Lighthill will serve his next one-year term alongside vice presidents Amy Vincent ASC, Steven Fierberg ASC and John Simmons ASC, treasurer Steven Poster ASC, secretary Gregg Heschong ASC, and sergeantat-Arms Jim Denault ASC. Lighthill was elevated to president last year and previously served in the role from 2012-2013. He and the board have been guiding the society through the challenging transitions necessitated by the global pandemic, focussing on helping members to learn safe practices onset and sharing those findings with the industry-at-large. The ASC also streamed its annual Outstanding Achievement Awards online for the first time, watched by over 4,500 people worldwide.

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PRODUCTION & POST NEWS

RICHARD BLANSHARD TO SHOOT/ DIRECT CANNES UNCUT

CANNES 2021 LINE-UP FEATURES 19 NEW FILMS SHOT ON KODAK

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inematographer and stills photographer, Richard Blanshard, who is well-known amongst the British and international cinematography community, is the DP and director of Cannes Uncut, a feature documentary that will delve behindthe-scenes of the glamorous Cannes Film Festival. The film, the first major documentary covering the history of the festival, was shot at Cannes this year and will be ready for 75th diamond anniversary in 2022.

The creative and production team behind Cannes Uncut also includes Colin Burrows, Mark

Adams and Chris Pickard, who teamed-up to shoot interviews at the festival, which will sit alongside archive material in the final film.

The Cannes Film Festival is famous as an event brimming with stories and characters as outlandish and dramatic as the films that have premiered there.

Cannes Uncut will celebrate the great films as well as the wild parties, deals, spectacular promotional stunts and iconic talents. It will offer a highadrenaline, roller-coaster experience of events that have played-out over the decades since it began in 1946 as a modest French event.

odak Motion Picture and Entertainment is celebrating 19 films shot-on-film at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival, including eight titles competing for the Palme d’Or. Directors Wes Anderson, Sean Penn, Mia Hansen-Love, Juho Kuosmanen, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Ildikó Enyedi, Joachim Trier and Sean Baker all shot on Kodak film stock and compete for the Palme d’Or at 74th edition of the festival. Shot-on-film titles also feature in the Official Selection – Un Certain Regard, Semaine De La Critique and Directors’ Fortnight.

Super16mm is enjoying particular resurgence with ten titles choosing its distinct look as their preferred capture medium, including the partnerships of director Sean Penn and cinematographer Daniel Moder on Flag Day, and director Sean Baker and cinematographer Drew Daniels on Red Rocket – both in the main competition.

Recent years have seen a steady rise in nominations and recognition for productions shoton-film at the festival, moving from nine films in 2016 and ten films in 2017, to 13 in 2018 and the highest previous total of 17 in 2019.

“It’s no coincidence that films shot-on-film get a disproportionate amount of recognition,” said Steve Bellamy, president of Kodak Motion Picture and Entertainment. “Film has an aesthetic and unparalleled quality and the significant number of productions shot-on-film at Cannes is an indication of the continued momentum for the medium. We thank the artists recognised at Cannes this year for understanding the unique value of real film. Create with film and stand out from the rest!”

Kodak-originated films In-Competition are: The Story Of My Wife – dir. Ildikó Enyedi, DP Marcell Rév HSC – 35mm

Bergman Island – dir. Mia Hansen-Løve, DP Denis Lenoir AFC ASC – 35mm Flag Day – dir. Sean Penn, DP Daniel Moder – 16mm

SIR ROGER DEAKINS CBE BSC ASC TO PUBLISH BOOK OF STILL PHOTOS

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The Worst Person In The World, Bergman Island and The French Dispatch

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evered cinematographer Sir Roger Deakins CBE BSC ASC has announced, via Instagram, that he will release Byways, his first book of personal photographs, available in the UK and United States later this year.

“It’s something he’s always wanted to do,” said the Team Deakins social media account, “and we finally got around to setting it up!”

The book will feature images that Deakins has rarely shared with others, spanning 50 years. They include early stills from his time documenting rural life in North Devon, England.

Others are from trips taken with his wife, former script supervisor and current collaborator James Deakins, to New Zealand and Australia, plus images from filming locations such as Berlin, Budapest and New Mexico.

The double-Oscar winning DP (Blade Runner 2049 and 1917), now 72, is working with director Sam Mendes, on Empire Of Light, set in a British coastal town in the 1980s starring Olivia Coleman.

PRODUCTION & POST NEWS

PRODUCTION & POST NEWS

MOVIETECH ADDS SCORPIO 17’ CRANE TO ITS GRIP INVENTORY

NANLUX RELEASES POWERFUL LOW-ENERGY EVOKE SPOTLIGHT

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Movietech-Scorpio-17

ndependent camera, lens and grip specialist Movietech, has taken delivery of the new ServiceVision Scorpio 17’ telescopic crane system into the grip inventory at its Pinewood Studios base.

The 17’ model features the same smoothness and high-precision performance of the Scorpio crane family, in both low and high-speed movements. The lightweight, modular design allows the crane to be quickly adjusted, without the need for any specialist tools. It can take payloads of 60Kg in underslung and 40Kg in overslung modes, and can be used for shooting car chases or large-scale interior sets. Movietech Grip recently also added a Multi Jib from Grip Factory Munich.

Movietech’s John Buckley said, “We’ve been steadily investing over the past year to extend our grip department and offer one of the industry’s most expansive product ranges. The Scorpio 17’ is a great fit with our existing crane selection and an ideal companion to our range of grip and camera accessories.”

CVP APPOINTS NEW BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT MANAGER

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VP has appointed Camille Brayer to the newly-created role of business development manager, in response to increased demand for the company’s personalised services and support.

Based out of CVP’s Newman House Showroom in Fitzrovia, Brayer is part of the team responsible for customer-facing experiences, which includes a concierge service, tailormade kit tours and bespoke technology demonstrations.

Brayer joins CVP from Panavision off-shoot Direct Digital, where she held a wide-ranging brief that encompassed managing studio shoots, advising on the best choice of equipment for budgets and supporting demonstration. She balances this experience with an education

steeped in film – a BA in art and film from UEA in Norwich, and an MA in cinematography gained in NYC and LA. She has also been one of the CVP team tasked with spearheading routes back to production in the postlockdown period.

Following its recent refurbishment, CVP’s London townhouse showroom, Newman House, is open for business by appointment, and regularly runs workshops and demonstrations. It has a refreshed look and newlyintroduced zones allowing visitors to explore their specific interests, allowing visitors to get hands-on with the latest technology solutions from

leading manufacturers such as ARRI, Red, Sony, Canon, Zeiss, Panasonic and Blackmagic Design.

“Camille is an experienced and empathic account manager who has shown great awareness in prioritising client needs, and we are sure she will be an invaluable addition to the clientfacing ethos at CVP and the Newman House set-up,” said comments CVP MD Jon Fry.

PIXIPIXEL LURES GAFFER HOWARD DAVIDSON & ADDS NEW GENERATORS

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ondon-based camera/lighting rental house, Pixipixel, has added gaffer Howard Davidson to its account handling team. Davidson has worked in the industry for over 30 years, starting in New York in the 1980s, before moving to London in 2006, where his most recent lighting credits include The Colour Room, The Score, Dreaming Whilst Black and The F1rst Team, plus the Pixipixel-serviced productions After Love, Sky comedy The Reluctant Landlord and BBC’s series Famalam.

Pixipixel has also added two new 200kW generator carriers, fuelled with HVO renewable diesel fuel, which are part of the company’s efforts to support production crews in reducing carbon emissions. The new 18-tonne vehicles have both single and threephase output combinations to support TV and film productions.

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ED lighting specialist Nanlux has launched the Evoke 1200 LED spotlight, a powerful, low-energy alternative to traditional sources, with an output comparable to that of a 1.8kW Par or 2.5kW HMI Fresnel. The IP54-rated Evoke 1200 has been designed specifically to meet the exacting requirements of cinematographers, live events, stills and broadcast professionals.

At the heart of the system is a powerful COB delivering high levels of controllable, flicker-free light. Available as both 5600K and Tungsten 3200K models, the Evoke 1200 features an interchangeable optic system allowing it to be easily configured. The large aperture and sturdy fixings of the mounting system, allow users to quickly switch between optics, and to sculpt, shape and modify the output without compromising in beam quality, colour or intensity.

The Evoke 1200 is fully-dimmable from 0-100% in ultra-precise intervals of 0.1%, and features a selection of on-board, creative effects including INT loop, flash, pulse, storm, TV,

paparazzi, candle/fire, bad bulb, firework, explosion and welding.

User-settings and custom looks can be locked or stored for later use. The user interface has a 2.8-inch display to help provide precision control over all aspects of output. The Evoke supports both wired and wireless operation via Nanlink APP, DMX/RDM, Bluetooth and Lumenradio TimoTwo. Dual power and battery options further extend the flexibility of the system.

Nanlux MD, Nancy Zheng, said, “The Evoke 1200 is an exciting development in the application of LED technology. Its incredible output and creative abilities make it a highlyeffective, truly versatile alternative to traditional sources.”

Robert Kulesh, executive VP of Nanlux Americas added, “We are delighted to expand the range of Nanlux professional LED products with the addition of the Evoke 1200.

The team has done a fantastic job in creating a luminaire which is able to not only compete, but to properly shine, in the marketplace.”

DYNAMIC RENTALS OPENS CHAPMAN/ EUROPEAN LOCATION IN LEIPZIG LEONARD INTRODUCES V SERIES DOLLIES

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ynamic Rentals has announced a new European location in Leipzig, Germany, adding to the company’s presence in Burbank, Atlanta, New York, Seattle, Chicago, Copenhagen, Ashford (UK), and Auckland. Like all other Dynamic locations, the new offices in Germany will stock ARRI, Sony, Codex, Fujinon, Chrosziel, Cooke, Zeiss, Leitz, Red, Canon and Angénieux, among other brands for sub-rental and leasing.

Dynamic’s Leipzig premises offer technical, logistical and professional workspaces in an open and collaborative layout. Christian Pedersen, Dynamic’s director of sales for Europe, will take on more operational leadership responsibility within the German market and beyond.

“With this new office the company has further committed to focus on the client experience in sub-rental,” said chief executive officer, Austin Rios. “What started as a search for a Brexit solution has blossomed into a fully-fledged office.”

“Our recent growth gives us representation in five different countries, and with our Ashford office continuing to serve clients in the UK and beyond, this new path will allow us to become even faster and better at what we already do for Europe,” explained chief sales officer, Tom Jay Smith. “We explored many options, but ultimately decided the only way to ensure we continue to deliver well-serviced kit is to control the process entirely ourselves.”

Brandon Zachary, Dynamic founder and COO, added, “Germany was always the frontrunner as our ideal location. Dynamic ships equipment all over the world every day and a huge portion of these shipments are transatlantic.

Leipzig is the main DHL hub in Europe and we anticipate saving 24 hours on shipments allowing us to serve our clients more efficiently.”

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hapman/Leonard Studio Equipment has launched the new V Series Super PeeWee, Hustler and Hybrid dollies, offering updated designs and features based on customer feedback.

The latest designs enhance production with a long-lasting battery system that gives up to eight hours of continuous use on a single charge. Other features include a USB outlet for charging mobile devices, such as cell phones and monitors mounted on the dolly. The V series dollies also have a stronger payload capacity, allowing more options for grips when it comes to mounting smaller crane arms.

Several customers have benefited from using the V Series dollies on their productions. Joe Cassano, dolly grip on Walking Dead Monuments, commented, “The lithium battery is great, and I love to not be dependent on electricians for dolly bumps.

Definitely a great feature!”

Dolly grip, Eric Zucker, commented, “The Hybrid V is the best dolly I have ever pushed. It makes me look good with operators and DPs, even directors and producers. It is so versatile with independent wheels that can move around for getting in tight spots with stability. Its battery saves my butt on long takes and gives me unlimited monitor power. The heavy-duty arm is a game changer.”

CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD JULY 2021 13

PRODUCTION & POST NEWS

DEDOLIGHTS ILLUMINATE ACADEMY AWARDS CEREMONY AT BFI SOUTHBANK

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or the first time ever, the 2021 Oscars were held at different locations around the world. The main ceremony took place in Los Angeles on 25th April, with hubs in Paris, Sydney and the BFI Southbank in London accommodating international nominees. Feeds from each venue were included in the main broadcast from LA. Tasked with bringing a unique look for the London setting, Light Electric, a UK-based specialist in creative visual events, set about something different using several crates of Dedolights and enough Dedolight Lightstream and Eflect reflectors to fill the entire ceiling in the main room of the venue.

PRODUCTION & POST NEWS

‘DO DIRECTORS DREAM OF VIRTUAL SHEEP?’ ASKS DP JAMES MEDCRAFT

The result was a combination of laser beams focussed into reflectors in the main room of the event, with dozens of reflectors suspended from the ceiling. The main walk-through corridor was also lit with Dedolights, making use of parallel beam intensifiers and Dedolight Lightstream and Eflect reflectors.

Jason Clare, gaffer at Reflectric, a Londonbased company specialising in working with reflected light, said, “It was quite a surprise, I was only called a couple of days before the event, and was kind of expected to design the lighting. It was quite chaotic because along with the main forum itself, there was a corridor to light, which had a lot of glass daylight, and we couldn’t really see what we were doing until about nine o’clock on the evening before the event. Although we didn’t have that much time to finish rigging, the event went well and the look we produced certainly created an impression at such a grand event.”

At the 2021 BSC Awards, Dedolight founder and inventor, Dedo Weigert was honoured with the Bert Easey Technical Award for innovative concepts in furthering the art of cinematography.

V

irtual production stages are abounding worldwide, including the new V Stage at Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden and ARRI’s mixed reality stage outside London.

Cinematographer James Medcraft has been heavily involved with many virtual production projects over the last year, and has written an extensive article from the DP’s perspective (available exclusively at www.cinematography. world) about how this new technology might influence the industry over the coming years.

“Over the last year there’s been much hype over virtual production, a process of using LED screens as digital backdrops to shoot on location scenes in-studio. Yet with all of the excitement of

WARNER BROS. STUDIOS LEAVESDEN EXPANDS WITH NEW STAGES

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arner Bros. Studios Leavesden (WBSL) has launched three new sound stages, providing 83,000sq/ft of additional production space including the debut of V Stage, a cuttingedge virtual production stage.

House Of The Dragon, HBO’s much-anticipated prequel to its acclaimed Game Of Thrones series, is confirmed as the first production to use the new facilities. In addition to the extensive exterior backlot at WBSL, V Stage will enable the series to creatively expand upon its existing variety of international landscapes.

V Stage is one of Europe’s largest virtual production stages. Offering 24,000sq/ft of total space, the inside features a 7,100sq/ft wraparound virtual production environment, using a matrix of

DP MIKE STANIFORTH ON MOMENT OF GRACE

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inematographer Mike Staniforth wrote in with details about his work on the film Moment Of Grace, directed by Keith Farrell “Moment Of Grace, is about a young woman who makes an unlikely ally in a damaged stranger, who convinces her to escape her life of vice and find the child she gave away. After shooting on ARRI for the majority of my career, I was given the opportunity to test the Sony Venice when prepping for Moment Of Grace. The quality of the image impressed me most. The codec and colour science has been welldocumented, so I knew already what Sony Venice camera was capable of, but what really helped was the dual-native ISO.

14 JULY 2021 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

more than 2,600 LED panels integrated with a powerful processing system. Bespoke to this design is a dynamic ceiling offering an additional 5,544sq/ ft of LED panels with eight sections that work independently of one another, lifting/tilting to provide new creative scope.

“The launch of V Stage brings a completely new dimension to filmmaking at WBSL, providing an exciting environment in which to deliver a new level of creativity,” said Emily Stillman, SVP of studio operations at WBSL. “With the show’s incredible imaginary worlds and the exceptional quality HBO always delivers, House Of The Dragon is the perfect production to maximise the unparalleled opportunities this space offers.”

Janet Graham Borba, EVP of west coast production at HBO, added,

Once we had finished our tests, I created a custom-LUT with Affinity photo on the iPad based on images of the paint shade, wardrobe and light we were using. Budget limitations meant I didn’t get the lighting package I’d wished for, so any help with fast lenses and low-light camera performance were very welcome.

We teamed up with London based Reflectric who have invested in The Light Bridge CRLS system.

This meant we were going to get a lot more light for our budget and the ability to reflect light into places that wouldn’t have been possible with a small crew working quickly.

Setting the base EI to 2500 for interiors made it feel like I was getting away with murder or even cheating. A lot of the night interior scenes were lit with two or three Astera Titans and practicals. Even then I was dimming down because the camera was seeing so much.

We used the P+S Technik Evolution 2x Anamorphic lenses. They worked so well with the Sony Venice and gave me the gritty look we were

“A production with the ambition and scale of House Of The Dragon really requires a studio that can provide cutting-edge facilities. The new V Stage adds to the highly-supportive home hub for the show at Leavesden and lets us take full advantage of the latest developments in technology.”

after. The size and weight helped, as I knew there were going to be some long, handheld days, and we had the RAW recorder, which added some size to the camera. Ivan Hinchley came on-board for some Steadicam work and, beside using the Easyrig, the Sk8plate dolly was used most often for when we needed camera movement.

We shot in a caravan for a day, so using the Venice’s Rialto capability, and the Sk8plate, allowed us to incorporate some movement in a tight area during long scenes. The film is currently in post-production and is due a cinema release in spring 2022.”

a technology that poses profound changes to our industry, it’s received surprisingly little industrial debate.

As cinematographers we have one of the most important and challenging roles in the evolution and development of this technology,” says Medcraft.

“Since The Mandalorian came out more than two years ago there’s been intense publicity over the possibility of the technology. With seemingly endless uses from a location simulator to an immersive keynote studio, the technology holds new possibilities for directors and storytellers.

“Whilst this all sounds too good to be true, I feel in order for film to get the most out of this technology some radical changes in production workflow will need to happen. And with these new tools comes increasing responsibility for the cinematographer to

craft the image in-camera.

“If you’re interested to read more I have a more extensive article on the Cinematography World website, where I discuss the workflow in more detail and some of the projects I’ve been involved in.”

ACROSS THE LIGHTING LANDSCAPE ARRI LIGHTING Ivo Ivanovski, general manager of ARRI’s Lighting Business Unit, reports that the company’s lighting division is solidly rebounding out of the Covid-19 shutdown “as the last months have shown us that our organisation is robust, and able to cope with the situation.”

He adds that ARRI learned to innovative new ways to support, educate and service clients during the pandemic using digital remote collaboration tools, but still hopes for a healthy return to “traditional” interactions with customers in coming months.

“Everything became more digital in the last year, and the pandemic simply accelerated the inevitable,” Ivanovski says. “There is no going back, although personal relationships will always remain key for success. And I have to admit that we have really missed personal exchanges. We’re looking forward to having some events, roadshows, and open houses again soon to share ideas with our partners, customers, and friends.”

Meanwhile, Ivanovski adds that ARRI and the rest of the industry are now trending toward intelligent lighting fixtures, such as the company’s Orbiter LED system, which debuted in 2020 but is now rapidly gaining traction as productions and the industry generally open-up.

“We believe lighting fixtures have to become intelligent fixtures with upgrade possibilities,” he explains.

“Manufacturers need to develop and offer systems that will be able to follow market trends, user needs and technological developments. The Orbiter was designed around this idea. It’s a versatile product platform that will keep developing to include more options, including firmware updates, in order to improve workflow efficiency for our customers.”

CINEO LIGHTING Officials at Cineo Lighting tell Cinematography World that the company is investing a great deal of time and resources into improving and expanding the quality of its suite of LED lighting tools. According to Rich Pierceall, VP of LED operations for Cineo, the industry has discovered that “the application of more advanced materials has made a big difference in allowing LED to exceed the light quality of traditional sources.”

“A camera can only capture light that bounces off the subject being photographed, so it’s the spectral shape that determines the overall usability of an LED source,” he explains. “At Cineo, we are formulating spectra that are more artistically pleasing, using materials like Red Nitride phosphors and multiple blue pumps to create a faithful rendition of skin tones.”

Along those lines, in recent months, Cineo has broadened its product line with its ReFlex series, which Pierceall describes as “large, powerful, digital hard lights. Several technologies converge to make this happen—the density of LED dyes can be dramatically increased using flip chip technology, along with eutectic bonding to phononic substrates.

Cineo has patented several of these technologies, along with immersion cooling to manage the intense heat created in a smaller physical area. With our ReFlex products, we are developing small, extremely bright LED light engines that will find themselves in LED hard lights ranging from 5K to 20K equivalents.”

He adds that in the fall of this year, Cineo will also be launching its next-generation 4x4 soft light fixture, called Quantum II – a tool the company says will be offered as an affordable alternative for smaller production budgets.

By Michael Goldman

MOLE-RICHARDSON Venerable lighting provider Mole-Richardson’s big recent news is the company’s move of its headquarters after six years in Pacoima, in the San Fernando Valley.

Nancy Murray, the company’s sales manager, reports that Mole recently completed its move into a new headquarters on Bledsoe Street in Sylmar, the northernmost part of the city of Los Angeles.

Meanwhile, Mole-Richardson spent much of the pandemic year making engineering upgrades to its 20K equivalent LED Fresnel, which is now available under the name Vari-Big Eye LED – the largest fixture in the company’s line of LED Fresnels with a 24-inch lens and variable-colour temperature ranging from 2700K to 6500K. “They include LumenRadio wireless connectivity, plus/minus screen correction, improved RDM, and fourchannel DMX,” says Murray. “Alternatively, they can also be controlled by Bluetooth through the Mole-Richardson app, which is available on the IOS platform, and they are also firmware upgradeable.

So, we are very excited about that development.”

Murray adds that Mole-Richardson’s line of variable Spacelites is now also “new and improved” after additional engineering work over the last year.

“We’ve had variable LED Spacelites for a while, but with our older LED chip technology,” she explains.

“Now, the newest version is on the same platform as our variable Fresnels so that all our newest LED’s now utilise the same chip technology. The new Vari-Spacelites are available in three sizes—200W, 400W, and 900W.” CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD JULY 2021 15

THANK YOU to the filmmakers WHO DECIDED THAT GOOD...

WASN’T GOOD ENOUGH.

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INDUSTRY LENS•MBS GROUP

MBS GROUP•INDUSTRY LENS

MBS GROUP A UNIQUE PRODUCTION PARTNER This page: (below) –MBS Media Campus stage; (top) – Culver Studios stage exterior, Opposite: (top) – Silvercup Studios (New York); (below) – Television City (Los Angeles).

By Michael Goldman

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xecutives at the MBS Group concede a great irony about the company, now one of the world’s largest and most sophisticated media production, development, vendor and service organisations. As big as the MBS universe has grown – with several sibling companies servicing 365 stages globally, owning 71 stages, partnering with 40 studios, typically servicing around 400 shows a year, being one of the largest lighting and rental companies around, and employing over 800 people across the world – it is actually still “a tight-knit group, a family, just like when the company started,” according to Michael Newport, MBS chief marketing officer.

Newport is referring to the fact that MBS, though acquired by Hackman Capital Partners in 2019, is still operated by Richard Nelson, the company’s CEO and founder when it was Manhattan Beach Studios.

“With all the growth in the industry right now and people moving from company to company, many of the same people that started the business are still part of it today,” Newport adds. “I think this gives clients comfort to know they can always come back and deal with the same people and get the same service they have been used to. It is special and different from a lot of other companies out there.”

This is unusual considering the fact that the MBS Group empire has rapidly grown exponentially.

It currently includes: the Burbank-based MBS Equipment Company, specialising in lighting and related production equipment rentals and sales with large rental operations in major production markets throughout North America; MBS Equipment Europe; PMBS (Pinewood MBS Lighting), based on the Pinewood Studios lot; MBS-3, the company’s studio services and facility management division; MBSi (MBS Innovations), the MBS technology and product development division; and ownership of major stages across the world. These encompass the MBS Media Campus in Manhattan Beach, the company’s independent production facility; Raleigh Studios (Hollywood), The Culver Studios (Culver City), Television City (Los Angeles), Eastbrook Studios (London), Silvercup Studios (New York), Second Line Stages (New Orleans), and many more.

Indeed, the company’s footprint as a lighting and equipment rental giant includes a major presence all across the US from Hawaii to California, New

18 JULY 2021 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

Mexico, Louisiana, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Virginia, and Orlando; across large swathes of Canada, and throughout the UK and the rest of Europe.

Jeremy Hariton, chief operating officer for the company, emphasises that MBS’s physical expansion has been paired with a philosophical expansion regarding the company’s role in the production industry since it was acquired by Hackman in 2019.

“Hackman has sort of a thesis about investing in real estate, not just to be landlords, but to be production partners with our tenants,” Hariton relates.

“That gave us the ability to grow our business in new ways. Hackman allowed MBS to grow from a footprint and capital standpoint, but also in terms of our ability to buy new equipment and service clients better. If you think of our company in terms of the fact that we both own and operate sound stages and provide equipment globally to people both on and off the stages, and we operate studios, that has allowed us to be a production partner with the many tenants in the studios that we have.”

On the issue of partnering with and supporting tenants, he points to the longterm relationship the company has with James Cameron’s Lightstorm Entertainment, the longest-tenured client on the MBS Media Campus, where the Avatar sequels are being made, and several stages the company rents to Lucas Films. Those include the volume stage at the Media Campus where the groundbreaking virtual production work for the Emmy-winning Disney+

series, The Mandalorian, was done. And those are just a couple of examples.

Hariton points out that the bread-and-butter of the MBS domain remains traditional film lighting and equipment along with stage ownership, management and consulting work – activities that have been resolutely marching forward in recent months after weathering, along with the rest of the industry, the impact of the 2020 pandemic.

Indeed, Jeff Soderberg, the company’s EVP for innovation and production, notes that, at press time, MBS units were already involved in working on somewhere between 130 and 150 different shows across the world, significantly more than shortly before the pandemic-forced global shutdown.

“Obviously, there was a lot of uncertainty when the pandemic hit, but the messaging at MBS was to figure out how to make the best use of that time and come out as a better company, and now, I think that is really starting to show,” says Soderberg.

“We are now in a period where there is actually a lot of work out there. It’s hard to keep up with the demand for stages and facilities, staffing and equipment, in fact. And we have lots of new initiatives around new technology and new ways we can help filmmakers get the job done in the most efficient way they can.”

Hariton adds that MBS took the opportunity during the pandemic to start up new remote training programmes and doing outreach to clients along the way.

“We created an entire training program through Zoom and Kahoot! [social media platform],” he says.

“We had people engaged in systems working on things like inventory and training. And we were able to engage with our community in terms of getting filmmakers together in different regions, speaking directly with the people in our warehouses.

“We focussed real hard on those kinds of things during that period, along with figuring out how to get everyone back to work safely, including coming up with our own protocols for providing equipment rentals in a safe way. So that was another way to engage with the community during that time, and I think that type of on-going engagement really helped us be ready for when people came back to work. A lot of credit goes to the Hackman team – they came out of Covid and furiously started to invest.”

One new and important MBS initiative is the aforementioned MBS Innovations, or MBSi, which the company calls “a consortium think tank” regarding new trends and technologies in the world of lighting. Soderberg says this includes the wider realm of data, communications, on-set interactivity between different types of equipment, pixel mapping, console programming, new virtual production methodologies, and much more.

Grown out of a UK-based initiative by MBS Group European managing director Darren Smith and the company’s technical guru, Steve Howard, Soderberg says the idea behind MBSi was initially “to work with directors of photography, gaffers, and others, in a highly-technical way to develop new products and services. We saw its success in UK and decided it was probably something we needed to do in the US also.

“So, through our advisory board, which gives us access to key industry leaders and their research, we started sharing thoughts and ideas on industry trends and lighting technology concepts, as well as developing ideas for implementing future technologies. Out of this, we expect to have several products that will move into the pipeline for delivery to the industry soon.”

and as Soderberg notes, more such projects are in development.

“Virtual production is now the sort of Wild West of film production – something that everybody wants

MBS is constantly evolving facilities and expanding services for the global media market to do, but very few entities can actually afford to do it properly,” he adds. “We are positioned really well in that area to help our clients do research on it and expand that access across the industry.”

MBS is also well-positioned to participate in a wide range of industry training programmes addressing various demographics. Most recently, Hackman-owned Television City in Los Angeles, which is managed by MBS, recently announced the creation of Changing Lenses, a programme designed to promote diversity, opportunity, and training for underrepresented communities across the industry.

The same team has also partnered with the Women In Media organisation to create a programme for female applicants, selected by

Women In Media, that offers on-set technical training for grips, set electricians, set builders, managers and more. The UK-based Illuminatrix Rising programme to train, support and encourage female cinematographers also receives support from the company through PMBS, and other similar initiatives are underway or being planned.

Such involvement is part of the company’s belief that “democratisation of the industry” is particularly important, in Hariton’s words “to broaden the scope as much as possible and make opportunity in this industry available to a wider group of people.”

Despite all these facilities, initiatives, project, and resources, however, Newport points out that the real trick to MBS’ success is its ability to provide soup-tonuts support to clients and partners, no matter what aspect of their work might be involved.

“For us, it isn’t so much about providing grip and electric equipment, though we do that,” Newport says. “It’s also about being a resource to help clients figure out what facilities are available in our platform that could fit their project in whatever country, state, or city they are looking to be.

“We try to be a resource in these areas, whether it is helping finding space in a studio we own and operate, or at a partner studio that we provide equipment services to, or even in locating conversion space or warehouses, if other options aren’t available. We just want to be their go-to resource. And since many projects are global, we work to provide seamless transitions for them as they move from one location to another, or if they need to operate in more than one place at the same time.”

This initiative has included a sort of “virtual production laboratory” to develop virtual production workflows and ideas, according to Soderberg.

MBSi has already joined with other industry partners to provide technology to launch an LED-based virtual production stage service at Trilith Studios in Atlanta, CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD JULY 2021 19

WHO, WHAT, WHEN & WHERE

WHO, WHAT, WHEN & WHERE Opposite: (top) Arnaud Carney in Paris with Hollysiz on her music video ‘Thank You All I’m Fine’; (below) Andre Chemetoff on-set of Asterix.

This page: (top) Will Baldy; Maceo Bishop SOC shooing Untitled Ray Romano Project; Pat Aldinger with director Anuk Rohde filming Tones Of Dirt And Bone; and Simon Rowling wearing a RED headcam!

WHODUNNIT?

Our regular round up of who is shooting what and where MCKINNEY MACARTNEY MANAGEMENT LTD Dale Elena McCready NZCS recently worked on The Rising, an eight-part Sky series, and is now shooring on No Return. Stuart Biddlecombe is working on The Devil’s Hour for Amazon. Mick Coulter BSC recently wrapped on Outlander in Scotland. Sergio Delgado is filming Canoe Man for ITV. Mike Filocamo is working on Elite in the Ukraine and India. Gavin Finney BSC is shooting Darkness Rising for C4/HBO, directed by Peter Kosminsky. Jean Philippe Gossart AFC is prepping The Lark for Netflix, a prequel to The Witcher. Steve Lawes has finished on The Hot Zone: Anthrax in Canada for National Geographic. Sam McCurdy BSC is shooting Scriptures S1 in Canada for Warner Bros.. Andy McDonnell recently finished filming BBC’s You Don’t Know Me. John Pardue BSC is working on Signora Volpe for ITV Studios/Route 24. Chris Seager BSC is making Carnival Row 2.2 for

Amazon. Mike Spragg BSC recently wrapped on The Last Kingdom S5. Richard Stoddard lit Extinction for Sky One and Brassic S4. Robin Whenary is filming the Doctor Who Christmas Special in Cardiff. Denis Crossan BSC, Clive Tickner BSC and Alessandra Scherillo have been shooting commercials.

INTRINSIC In features, James Mather ISC has started on the Olivia Colman vehicle, Joyride, in Ireland for Subotica. Dave Miller is prepping the Michael Sheen feature, Age Of Tony, for Sigma Films. Nic Lawson is in prep for a Marvel feature. In television drama, James Mather ISC has also been grading the Irish drama Kin. Nic Lawson has graded Annika in Glasgow, where David Liddell begins prep for Crime. Malcolm McLean continues operating on The Ipcress File. Richard Donnelly is shooting on The Nevers S2. Tony Coldwell has finished on

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Silent Witness. Tom Hines recently wrapped on The Canterville Ghost in Herefordshire, before beginning the second block of The Chelsea Detective.

Andrew Johnson has returned for more Holby City. Bebe Dierken has been shooting drama in Germany, and Rasmus Arrildt DFF has been busy in his native Denmark. Ciaran Kavanagh has completed on Charmed in Canada. Gabi Norland operated on Ted Lasso, Stella Vortex and CURS>R, and has been both lighting and operating on live-streaming performances by The Ballet Rambert. Martin Roach, Gareth Munden and Dave Miller have been shooting commercials.

ECHO ARTISTS Stuart Bentley BSC has wrapped on director John Crowley’s Life After Life for BBC. Nadim Carlsen recently shot The Long Night for director Ali Abbasi. Carlos Catalan is filming Eps 4, 6 and 8 of Amazon’s The Power with director Shannon Murphy. Federico Cesca ASK is prepping S2 of Industry for HBO with director Birgitte Staermose.

David Chizallet AFC is shooting Dead Lions with director Jeremy Lovering for See-Saw/Apple TV. Nick Cooke has concluded on the series This Is Going To Hurt for Sister Pictures/BBC. Ruben Woodin Dechamps lit the short, Weekend Dad, with director Dorothy Allen Pickard for BBC/ BFI. Edgar Dubrovskiy is shooting the Sky documentary The Devil’s Advocate with director Sam Hobkinson. Bonnie Elliott ACS is shooting The Shining Girls with director Daina Reid for Apple TV. David Gallego ADFC is lensing Laura Mora’s The

Kings Of The World. Lachlan Milne ACS NZCS has wrapped on A24’s The Inspection with director Elegance Bratton. Will Pugh has concluded on the series Crime for director James Strong. Niels Thastum DFF is working with director Pernille Fischer Christensen on the series Leonora. Maria von Hausswolff is shooting Hylnur Palamason’s feature Vanskabte Land. Nicolas Canniccioni, Rachel Clark, Andrew Commis ACS, Charlie Herranz, Jo Jo Lam, MacGregor, Anders Malmberg, Lorena Pagès, Christopher Miles, Michael Paleodimos, Korsshan Schlauer, Noel Schoolderman, Bartosz Swiniarski, Chloë Thomson BSC, Felix Wiedemann BSC and Sean Price Williams have all been busy in commercials.

LUX ARTISTS André Chemetoff is shooting Asterix & Obelix: The Silk Road directed by Guillaume Canet. Ari Wegner ACS is prepping Sebastian Lelio’s next

feature The Wonder. Michael McDonough BSC ASC is prepping for Lou, directed by Anna Foerster. Arnau Valls Colomer AEC is lensing The English, directed by Hugo Blick. Jessica Lee Gagne has wrapped Ben Stiller’s new series Severance. Jody Lee Lipes ASC has started prep on Dead Ringers, starring Rachel Weisz, written by Alice Birch. Jess Hall BSC ASC is prepping for Chevalier, directed by Stephen Williams. Thimios Bakatakis GSC shot an Aston Martin ad directed

by Luca Guadagnino. James Laxton ASC is prepping for The Lion King follow-up, directed by Barry Jenkins. Giuseppe Favale shot a Doritos ad helmed by Henry Scholfield. Nanu Segal BSC shot Emily, directed by Frances O’Connor. Matyas Erdely HSC lit a Lego ad directed by Traktor, and a Eurosport ad helmed by Henry Hobson. Anna Franquesa Solano is framing Expatriates, directed

by Lulu Wang. Piers McGrail ISC is prepping Nell Gwynn, directed Glenn Leyburn and Lisa Barros D’Sa. Rina Yang shot an NDA commercial directed by Bradford Young, and is prepping for Nikyatu Jusu’s feature Nanny. Lukasz Zal PSC is shooting Jonathan Glazer’s untitled next feature.

Ula Pontikos BSC has finished Russian Doll S2, directed by Natasha Lyonne. Tom Townend is on Joe Cornish’s Netflix series, Lockwood & Co. Guillermo Garza shot a Johnson & Johnson TVC, directed by Vincent Haycock. Rasmus Videbaek is prepping the next instalment of The Crown for Netflix. Bobby Shore CSC is shooting Conversations With Friends, directed by Lenny Abrahamson. Mauro Chiarello lensed an Estrella

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WHO, WHAT, WHEN & WHERE

WHO, WHAT, WHEN & WHERE

Opposite: (top) Denis Crossan BSC; (below) John Pardue BSC on The Watch;

This page: Alessandra Sherillo; Will Pugh on the dolly shooting Crime.

ad, directed by Ian Pons Jewell. Manuel Alberto Claro has finished on Kingdom Exodus, directed

by Lars von Trier. Jakob Ihre FSF has wrapped on Johan Renck’s feature Spaceman. Krzysztof Trojnar is shooting 2nd unit on 1989, directed

by Baran Bo Odar. Martijn Van Broekhuizen NSC has finished shooting block on Sky Atlantic’s Gangs Of London, and David Bird is shooting the 2nd unit. Adolpho Veloso lensed a Trillum spot, directed by Pantera. Adam Newport-Berra shot Bear, directed by Chris Storer. Leo Hinstin AFC is lensing Lisa Azuelos’ feature I Love America. Ruben Impens SBC is lighting Felix van Groeningen’s next feature 8 Montagne. Christopher Aoun BVK is prepping Sisi, a new series directed by Sven Boshe.

Steve Annis has wrapped on the feature Inside, directed by Vasilis Katsoupis. Adam Scarth has completed on Pretty Red Dress, helmed by Dionne Edwards. Alexis Zabe has wrapped on Tuesday for director Daina Oniunas-Pusic.

SARA PUTT ASSOCIATES George Amos is a new signing to the roster, whose credits include Tomb Raider and The Power. Emily Almond Barr is prepping for the new series of Sanditon, which she will light for director Charles Sturridge. Giulio Biccari continues on Stay Close for Red Productions. Yinka Edward is working in Nigeria and South Africa on a project titled Damages. Sashi Kissoon is prepping the Sky Arts/ National Theatre feature Death Of England. David Mackie is lighting 2nd unit on The School Of Good And Evil for Netflix. Duncan Telford has returned to light The Cockfields S2 for Yellow Door Productions.

Andrei Austin ACO Associate BSC SOC has wrapped on Judd Apatow’s The Bubble, and started prep on The Man Who Fell To Earth. Jon

Beacham ACO is in Belfast with DP David Mackie on the 2nd unit of The School For Good And Evil for Netflix. Danny Bishop Associate BSC ACO SOC has wrapped on All Quiet On The Western Front, which shot on location in Europe. Ed Clark ACO is in Morocco working on Rogue SAS for Kudos Productions. James Frater ACO SOC has started on John Wick 4. Ilana Garrard ACO is in Turkey re-starting on The Swimmers. Zoe GoodwinStuart ACO did dailies on Stay Close, The Rising and You Don’t Know Me. James Leigh ACO has wrapped on The Offenders S1, and is prepping for Sanditon S2. Will Lyte ACO is working alongside

22 JULY 2021 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

DP Jamie Cairney on a Netflix/Mike Myers comedy. Vince McGahon ACO Associate BSC continues on See Saw’s Embankment, starring Gary Oldman. Julian Morson ACO Associate BSC GBCT is prepping on the much-anticipated fifth installment of Indiana Jones. Alastair Rae ACO Associate BSC continues on The Lost King in Scotland. Aga Szeliga ACO is working on Red Gun for HBO. Tom Walden Associate ACO has started as A-camera/Steadicam on The Midwich Cuckoos for SnowedIn Productions, working with DP David Katznelson BSC. Rick Woollard has been operating Steadicam on Alex Garland’s Men, Apple TV’s Estuary and commercials for BA, Ladbrokes, BT, Hyundai, Persil, Vodafone, McDonald’s and Boots.

WIZZO & CO Murren Tullett has joined the agency and graded

Jim Archer’s feature Brian & Charles. Diana Olifirova has wrapped Netflix’s Heartstopper, directed by Euros Lyn. Molly Manning Walker has finished on the opening episodes of Superhoe alongside director Dawn Shadforth and is now prepping a feature. Antonio Paladino is shooting a drama in Berlin. Karl Oskarsson IKS is shooting Netflix’s Man Vs. Bee with director David Kerr.

Susanne Salavati has wrapped Jane Gull’s feature, Love Without Walls. Tim Sidell is prepping Peter Strickland’s new untitled feature. Sverre Sørdal FNF is prepping Malou Reymann’s followup feature to A Perfectly Normal Family. Hamish Anderson is prepping BBC’s Get Even. Steven

Ferguson is shooting Chloe for director Amanda Boyle. Luke Bryant is prepping Neil Marshall’s feature The Lair. Adam Gillham continues shooting an embargoed drama. Nick Dance BSC has wrapped his episodes of Gentleman Jack S2 for director Ed Hall. Hãvard Helle has graded The Loneliest Boy. Ryan Kernaghan continues shooting Karen Pirie in Glasgow. Richard Mott is prepping ITV’s Our House with director Sheree Folkson. Aaron Reid has graded Stephen, a three-part drama directed by Alrick Riley. Jan Richter-Friis DFF is shooting an embargoed drama in Texas. Seppe Van Grieken SBC is prepping The Midwich Cuckoos directed by Jennifer Perrot.

Nicola Daley ACS has graded her episodes of Gentleman Jack S2 and joined a Netflix drama.

Charlie Goodger is prepping a drama alongside Jim Archer. Ben Magahy is shooting the featuredocumentary Abbey Road, directed by Mary McCartney. Christophe Nuyens SBC continues shooting an embargoed Netflix drama. Oli Russell shot on US drama The Good Fight and completed the grade on Sex Education S3. Gary Shaw continues shooting the opening episodes of His Dark Materials S3. Arran Green shot the short, Find The Light, directed by Missy Malek. Fede Alfonzo framed for Jack Clough, Will Bex for Jim Gilchrist and Joe Douglas for Femi Ladi. Franklin Dow shot with Joe Connor, and Theo Garland with Connor Byrne. David Procter lit for Darius Marder, and Patrick Meller for Sam Brown.

PRINCESTONE Of the agency’s camera/Steadicam operators…

Junior Agyeman is shooting Pretty Red Dress for BBC Films/BFI, directed by Dionne Edwards.

Simon Baker ACO is filming on the second Downton Abbey movie with DP Andrew Dunn BSC. Cosmo Campbell ACO is on Amazon Studios’ The Power, with director Reed Morano and 2nd unit DP Carlos Catalan. Michael Carstensen ACO is in Wales working on Disney+ TV series Willow for DP Stejn van der Veken, starring Warwick Davis.

Matt Fisher ACO worked on the next series of See for Apple TV in Toronto, and is now shooting Disenchanted in Dublin for Disney Films with director Adam Shankman and DP Simon Duggan ASC. Rob Hart ACO is filming The Girl Before, a thriller series for BBC1, with director Lisa Bruhlmann and DP Eben Bolter BSC, starring Gugu Mbatha-Raw and David Oyelowo. Tony Jackson ACO is shooting on The Power. Tony Kay ACO is shooting on The Larkins.

James Layton ACO is prepping for the Apple TV+ series Wool from the Silo series of novellas

by Hugh Howey, starring Rebecca Ferguson, directed by Morten Tyldum, with cinematographer Hagen Bogdanski. Nic Milner is 2nd Unit DP and operator on The Peripheral for Amazon Studios/ Warner Bros, directed by Vincenzo Natali. Dan Nightingale ACO is shooting Sherwood, a sixpart BBC drama from House Productions. Peter Robertson Associate BSC ACO is filming on The Little Mermaid, for director Rob Marshall and DP Dion Beebe ACS ASC. Diego Rodriguez is the DP on Juventus: All Or Nothing, a documentary shooting in Turin, Italy about the legendary football club. Joe Russell ACO is on Red Gun, the Game Of Thrones prequel, at Leavesden Studios with DP Fabian Wagner. Sean Savage Associate BSC ACO SOC is filming on Amazon Studios’ Citadel, an action-packed spy series starring Priyanka

Chopra, Ashleigh Cummings and Richard Madden, directed by Anthony and Joe Russo, and will move on to operate on Aquaman 2 at Leavesden Studios.

Fabrizio Sciarra SOC Associate BSC GBCT ACO is shooting on Paramount Pictures’ Dungeons And Dragons in Belfast with DP Barry Peterson.

Peter Wignall ACO is in Budapest working on Borderlands starring Cate Blanchett, Jack Black and Hailey Bennett. Tom Wilkinson ACO is also in Budapest shooting with DP Richard Rutowski ASC on the next series of Amazon Studios’ action thriller Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan, starring John Krasinski as the CIA agent.

BERLIN ASSOCIATES Will Baldy is shooting The Sandman for Netflix.

Sarah Bartles Smith is lighting a pilot for Tidy

Productions. Harvey Glen has been shooting spots and doing dailies. Len Gowing shot the second block on ITV’s The Bay S3 in Manchester with director Nicole Volavka. Alvaro Gutierrez filmed a block on Killing Eve for Sid Gentle Films with director Anu Menon. Annemarie LeanVercoe is shooting Murder In Provence for ITV with director Chloe Thomas. Nick Martin is framing The Offenders for Big Talk Productions/BBC1 with director Stephen Merchant. Toby Moore shot an episode of BBC’s Call The Midwife and an episode of ITV’s Vera S11. Trevelyan Oliver is shooting The Tuckers S2. Tom Pridham shot 2nd unit on Trapper Keeper for Barking Lion Productions.

Benjamin Pritchard has wrapped on Teacher for Clapperboard/C5. Andrew Rodger is shooting block two of BBC’s We Hunt Together with director Bex Rycroft. Pete Rowe is shooting Dodger for NBC Universal with director Rhys Thomas. James Swift recently shot a block of All Creatures Great And Small S2 for Playground Entertainment/C5 with director Sasha Ransome, and a block of Call The Midwife. Simon Walton is shooting Shetland for ITV with director Siri Rodnes. Matt Wicks is on BBC2’s The Witchfinder for Baby Cow. Phil Wood is working on Ragdoll for Sid Gentle Films/Alibi.

Simon Rowling completed the short, Daddy’s Girl, and shot an Edinburgh Gin spot.

Jordan Buck lit commercials for Vashi with Oliver Duggan, TU with Leone Ward, and Virgin with Tash Tung. Chris Clarke has graded the short, Just Johnny, with director Terry Loane and shot TVCs for Spotify, Sky Sports, Standard Chartered Bank and Fiat. Anthony Dod Mantle DFF BSC ASC is shooting Lonely Boy with Danny Boyle. Simon Dennis BSC is working on American Crime Story S3 with director Ryan Murphy in the US. Sam Goldie enjoyed the release of Big Boys Don’t Cry, the RSA documentary he shot with director Gray Hughes, and has filmed a Porsche ad in Finland with director Miika Vaso. Catherine Goldschmidt is prepping Red Gun for Geeta Patel. Stuart Howell is shooting The Peripheral with Vincenzo Natali.

Eric Kress is working on Borgen S4 for Netflix.

Suzie Lavelle BSC is shooting Conversations With Friends for director Lenny Abrahamson.

David Luther is lensing new series The Swarm with director Luke Watson. Seamus McGarvey

INDEPENDENT TALENT Darran Bragg is shooting The Larkins with director Andy de Emmony. Bjorn Bratberg is filming The Long Call with Lee Haven Jones.

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CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD JULY 2021 23

WHO, WHAT, WHEN & WHERE

WHO, WHAT, WHEN & WHERE

Opposite: (top) Kit Fraser shooting The Fantastic Flitcrofts; (centre) Sashi Kissoon gets to grips with a script; (below) Tom Wilkinson working as A-cam/Steadicam on Jack Ryan; This page: Pete Rowe shooting Dodger.

BSC ASC is prepping for Wonka with Paul King.

Andreas Neo shot commercials with Pitch director Lee Cheney, and for Discovery with Michael and Chris McKenna. Roman Osin BSC is lighting The Last Voyage Of The Demeter with André Øvredal.

Tat Radcliffe BSC is filming Matthew Warchus’s Matilda. James Rhodes has been shooting live music with Georgio Testi and Paul Dugdale, including promos for Coldplay, Fontaines DC, Jack Garratt and the Glastonbury Live Stream. George Richmond BSC is prepping Matthew Vaughn’s feature Argyle. Christopher Ross BSC is shooting The Swimmers with Sally El Hosaini. Ben Seresin BSC ASC shot a spot for Hyundai x Marvel with US director Luke Monaghan. Carl Sundberg is framing Flowers In The Attic for showrunner Paul Sciarrotta.

Mark Waters lit a special episode of Doctor Who. Maja Zamojda BSC is working on The Great S2, starring Nicholas Hoult and Elle Fanning.

MYMANAGEMENT Welcomes Carlos Veron, originally from Buenos Aires, who spent many years in the US, now based in London. He has worked on hundreds of projects – commercials and music videos, plus shorts and features that have screened at the Hamptons, Palm Springs, Rome, Buenos Aires and Berlin Film festivals. Petra Korner AAC is prepping HBO’s His Dark Materials S3 at Black Wolf Studios in Cardiff. Ashley Barron ACS is shooting All Creatures Great And Small S2 block three in Yorkshire. Todd Banhazl teamed up with Oscar-winner Adam McKay to shoot the HBO pilot Showtime, chronicling the professional and personal lives of the 1980’s LA Lakers. Chris Dodds shot for John Lewis directed by Sam Robinson and a 3Mobile ad with director James Kibbey through Unit9. Dominic Bartels continues his collaboration with Black Lab for a long-running commercial project, and shot a Catsan project with director Brad Lubin through Mindseye. Craig Dean Devine wrapped on Ladhood S2 directed by Jonathan Schey, and is shooting Stath Lets Flats S3 directed

by Andrew Gaynord. Filip Marek lensed spots for Skoda with director James F Coton, Swyft directed

by Jara Moravec, and Stimorol with director Paco Cruz. Pete Konczal teamed-up with director Jonny Mass for a BMW shoot in LA and a JayZ and Beyoncé music video directed by Emmanuel Adjei via The Directors Bureau. Sam Meyer has been

24 JULY 2021 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

Robbie Ryan BSC ISC worked with Slow West director John Mclean on a Django Django music video, plus shorts in Dingle, Ireland and Bradford, England. Jon Chema lit a Martell TVC in LA with director Child, then a Spravato ad in Lexington, Kentucky with director Tarik Karam.

shooting music videos and ads including Fanzone directed by Dean Moore, Holly Humberstone & Greentea Peng with director Raja Verdi, and KSI with Troy Roscoe and AJ Tracey with director Curtis Essel. Knucklehead enlisted Sy Turnbull to shoot with The Dempseys on spots for Amazon and Boots before an Aviva commercial through Adam & Eve directed by Rob Spary-Smith. Nicolaj Bruel DFF shot in Tuscany through Mercurio on a Sammontana spot with director Martin Werner, and with BRW Filmworks for Mulino Bianco. Adric Watson shot with Archers Mark director Will Williamson for BT Beyond Limits in Wales, before heading to Kiev to shoot JP Cooper’s ‘She’ music video directed

by Greg Davenport at OB Management. Ahmet Husseyin lensed for Nike with Stink, shot an Eloise music video with Lowkey director Nicolee Tsin, plus a short film called Bystander with director Mahmut Akay. Jallo Faber FSF is prepping on the feature Troll with director Roar Uthang, shooting in Norway. Arnaud Carney has been with director Melanie Laurent on a Eugenie VR shoot and a lit a Cacharel spot through Downtown Paris directed by Hugo Lopez. Gaul Porat lensed a CNN spot in Miami with director Charles Todd before heading to Aspen to shoot a Toyota/Olympics promo directed by Leo Zuckerman. Ekkehart Pollack lit back-to-back on car jobs for Citroen with director Henry Littlechild, Toyota with Jake Scott, Bugatti with Ali Bach, and Mercedes with Claas Ortmann.

Paul O’Callaghan has wrapped on Imposters,

a three-parter directed by Gareth Johnson, for Raw TV/Netflix, and did 2nd unit days on His Dark Materials. Todd Martin collaborated with Division 7 directors Similar But Different for Spotify, Biscuit Filmworks director Dan Difelice for a video game brand in Kiev, before heading to Mexico City to lens Mitsubishi with directors Boki & Chelo.

Ben Coughlan continues his teamwork with Vevo, filming their long-running DSCVR series. Lee Thomas lit three campaigns for Secret Escapes in Wales, Scotland and along the Jurassic coast with directors Alan Friel, Jacques Salmon and Chris Thomas through 76 Ltd, plus the shorts The Fool’s Mate directed by Cian Llewelyn, and Bald with director Luke Bather. Darran Tiernan is shooting Netflix’s crime-drama series The Lincoln Lawyer, with Ted Humphrey as showrunner, EP and one of the writers. Jo Willems shot in Toronto on the adaptation of Windsor McCay’s Little Nemo In Slumberland with director Francis Lawrence.

Daisy Zhou teamed-up with director Charlotte Rutherford for an Urban Decay shoot in New York, Prada in LA directed by Martine Syms, followed by a Cuervo Dobe Tequilla shoot helmed by Emma Westenberg. David Lanzenberg is working with director Tim Burton on Wednesday, the live-action Addams Family spin-off series on Netflix, starring Jenna Ortega. Ian Forbes shot for WeTransfer with director Leo Leigh, and went to Devon to shoot the BFI short film Seagull with director Dean Puckett.

WORLDWIDE PRODUCTION AGENCY Vanessa Whyte has wrapped principal photography Ted Lasso S2 for AppleTV+ with directors Matt Lipsey and Sam Jones, and is now shooting a comedy pilot for BBC3/HBO Max/ Various Artists Limited with directing duo Rosco 5. Stephen Murphy BSC ISC has concluded principal photography with directors Hiro Murai, Donald Glover and Ibra Ake on Atlanta S3 for FX, and graded the horror thriller No One Gets Out Alive with director Santiago Menghini for Imaginarium/Netflix. Tony Slater Ling BSC shot with director Adrian Shergold on drama Wolfe for Sky/AbbottVision and is now prepping Stephen Moffat’s thriller Inside Man with director Paul McGuigan for BBC1/Netflix/Hartswood Films. Manoel Ferreira SASC is working on the Netflix drama Fate: The Winx Saga S2 in Ireland with director Ed Bazalgette for Archery Pictures.

Callan Green ACS NCZS is prepping the feature Barracuda in Greece with director Richard Hughes for Millenium Media. Ruairi O’Brien ISC continues on the final block of Amazon’s The Power with director Neasa Hardiman. Arthur Mulhern continues on C4 prison drama Screw from creator Rob Williams and STV Studios. Ed

Moore BSC is lighting the The Birth of Daniel F. Harris with director Alex Winckler for Clerkenwell Films/C4. Mattias Nyberg is shooting the comedy series Mammals with director Stephanie Laing for Amazon/Vertigo Pictures. Andy Hollis is working with writer-director-actor Mackenzie Crook on Worzel Gummidge S2 for Leopard Pictures/ ITV. Anna Patarakina FSF has wrapped on three-part series The Tower with director Jim Loach for Mammoth Screen/ITV. Baz Irvine ISC has concluded on the first block of UK version of Call My Agent with director John Morton for Amazon/

Bron Studios/Headline Pictures. Marc Gomez Del Moral is shooting Sky Studio’s drama series Blocco 181. Catherine Derry has wrapped on CURS>R with director Toby Meakins for Stigma Films, and is prepping the romcom A Christmas Number One, with director Chris Cottam, for Genesius Pictures/ Sky Original Cinema. PJ Dillon ISC ASC shot That Dirty Black Bag with director Brian O’Malley for Palomar/Sundance TV. Angus Hudson BSC has graded BBC political thriller series Ridley Road with director Lisa Mulcahy. Mattias Troelstrup DFF has graded the second block of Hanna S3 with director Weronika Tofilska for Amazon/NBC Universal. James Medcraft worked with director Jay Brasier-Creagh and Squire for a McLaren promotion and Le Col’s new aerodynamic cycling clothing range. Jake Gabbay lit a fashion spot with director Irene Baqué for Fossil via Dog Eat Dog, and shot with Knucklehead director Hugh Rochfort for We Are England Cricket. Matthew Emvin Taylor shot a spot for Gillette with Prodigious director Chris Thomas, followed by a Brewdog ad with Biscuit director Jeff Low. Marcus Domelo filmed a Facebook ad with Agile Films’ director Zack Ella, and a Network Rail spot with directing duo The Queen and Filming Scotland. Benjamin Todd shot for Morrisons with director Henry Scholfield and Academy, and Pandora via London Alley/ Compulsory with director Hannah Lux Davis. Tibor Dingelstad NSC has graded the first block of Hanna S3 with director Sacha Polak for Amazon/ NBC Universal.

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CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD JULY 2021 25

STUDENT UNION•TISCH SCHOOL OF THE ARTS

TISCH SCHOOL OF THE ARTS•STUDENT UNION

GATEWAY TO THE STARS

Below: 3LR’s Barry Grubb (left) Opposite: (main) – Tisch students make the most of NY’s skyline,

by Cameron and Photo Matthew LloydLaventure; (right) This page: (top) – students shooting in Washington Opposite:Square, FoS/4 New studioYork; line visiting DP Ellen Kuras ASC Mia Bottom: Cioffi Henry (r); of with fixtures. adding (below) shooting in the elements, pic by technology to Elnura the 3LROsmonalieva. product mix.

Photo: NYU Tish Students ©Branda: Courtesy of NYU Photo Bureau

By Natasha Block Hicks

Located close-by the iconic Washington Square Park, New York University’s Tisch School Of The Arts regularly sees its Graduate Film alumni collecting some of the industry’s highest accolades, sometimes within just a few years of graduating – directors Spike Lee, Martin Scorsese, Cary Fukunaga and Chloé Zhao, and DPs Bobby Bukowski, Andrij Parekh and Joshua James Richards, to name just a few.

H

ere we join chairperson, Barbara Schock, and DP Mia Cioffi Henry, cohead of cinematography and head of 1st year studies, to find out what makes Tisch so successful.

“I was enamoured with how the programme breaks you down at the beginning to the very bare minimum, then builds you back up to be this really collaborative, coherent voice,” says Cioffi Henry of her own time as a Graduate Film student at Tisch.

Based in the Kanbar Institute Of Film & Television, ‘Grad Film’ admits 36 students per year onto its Master Of Fine Arts (MFA) degree programme.

Entry is rigorous and competitive. Candidates are required to submit an application form and a fivepart portfolio of creative works including new written pieces as prompted by the school. A filmmaking background is not a prerequisite.

26 JULY 2021 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

“We are looking for people with stories to tell, period,” says Schock, “we’re internationally renowned for the development of the singular voice in filmmaking.”

Successful students undertake three years of coursework followed by an additional, optional, thesis year. All students follow the same curriculum for the first two years with eight classes per semester across all the cinematic crafts including writing, editing, sound, producing and directing. It is not until the third year that they can focus on a single craft, such as cinematography.

“It’s our philosophy that performing all the creative and technical roles on a film set creates really well-rounded filmmakers,” comments Schock.

The first project the students shoot is a four-minute silent film on 16mm, facilitated by Grad Film’s ongoing partnership with Kodak Film Lab NY.

“We really love teaching on analogue film,” says Cioffi Henry, “for the visual aesthetic, but also because we want students to have purposeful shot lists, and to think before they shoot. They get that basic muscle built in early-on, and it really shows in their later work.”

After their baptism by celluloid, students move on to the Sony FS7, and then in the second year and above they shoot on ARRI Alexa Minis, Alexa Classics, Red Cameras and 35mm film, and also get to visit local rental houses such as Panavision and ARRI to test industry-standard equipment. Students have the use of a teaching soundstage for their productions, and a black box space where the sound and beginner cinematography classes are held. They can also access a further stage at the school’s Todman Centre, and use New York’s Kaufman Astoria when it is available between professional productions.

“We really consider the city to be our set, however,” emphasises Schock, explaining that they encourage students to utilise the various rich backdrops of New York City, including all the boroughs.

“The time in the classroom is really valuable,” Cioffi Henry continues, “but a lot of it is in preparation for the project that students shoot or in service of the project on the way back.” Production continues throughout the semester and – what with each student directing four short films in the first half of the programme, acting as crew for their classmates, and carrying out directing exercises set for the weekends – life is busy.

Tisch pushes itself to be an example of inclusion and diversity

“I probably shot 20 shorts in my time here,” laughs Cioffi Henry, “which was helpful, since I had never shot anything before I came to Tisch.”

Cioffi Henry’s return to Tisch was facilitated by Tony C. Jannelli, Grad Film academic director & head of cinematography, himself a working DP and camera operator known for The Silence Of The Lambs (1991, DP Tak Fujimoto), who invited her to give a class as an Adjunct Instructor (visiting tutor).

“I really fell in love with the process of teaching,” explains Cioffi Henry, and so she returned full-time.

This was made possible by Grad Film’s flexibility in allowing its permanent and adjunct staff to continue to shoot projects outside of the school. Cioffi Henry recently took leave to shoot the indie thriller Superior (2021), directed by Erin Vassilopoulos.

Grad Film’s full-time cinematography staff include Cioffi Henry, Jannelli and Serbian DP Tatjana Krstevski known for The Load (2018). Frederick Elmes ASC, whose credits include Blue Velvet (1986), Wild At Heart (1990), Synecdoche, New York (2008) and Paterson (2016), is a regular adjunct instructor, teaching all the third-year cinematography classes. Other adjunct instructors have included Peter Deming ASC known for Mulholland Drive (2001), Christopher Manley ASC who shot Mad Men (2007-2015), Patrick Capone ASC whose credits include Succession (2018-2021) and Vanja Černjul ASC, DP on Crazy Rich Asians (2018).

Twice a year, a visiting DP will take one of Grad Film’s regular lectures, and the programme also offers a series called The Chair’s Workshop, whereby the chair introduces a new guest each week to give a masterclass followed by a demonstration on the school’s soundstage. Guests have included Vittorio Storaro ASC AIC who shot Apocalypse Now (1979), Eric Messerschmidt ASC, winner of the 2021 Academy Award for Mank (2020) and a virtual Q+A with James and Sir Roger Deakins CBE BSC ASC. A rifle through Grad Film’s directory shows a range of age, ethnicity, nationality and gender in the teaching staff. From Spike Lee, the programme’s artistic director and a Grad Film alumnus, through to Cioffi Henry herself, Tisch pushes itself to be an example of inclusion and diversity.

“It means a lot to me that I can be this young

person, mother, working cinematographer, black woman, all of those things, as an example for the students,” says Cioffi Henry.

The school publishes a 15-paragraph charter of commitments on its website, including such points as requiring mandatory anti-racism training for staff and students and a promise to create a Black Student Council.

“We attract such a diverse group of applicants and we really take that seriously,” states Cioffi Henry. “We are constantly revising our film list and bringing in adjunct instructors who work on projects with a diverse visual aesthetic. Then the stories that come out of the school tend to be that of representation and that attracts more students as well.”

Being a cinematography student at Grad Film, primarily a writing/directing programme, has some specific advantages.

“We always use cinematographers from within NYU,” states Cioffi Henry. With a smaller ratio of DPs to directors, this means that budding cinematographers are in-demand.

“We have a showcase for cinematographers twice a year,” Cioffi Henry continues, “so that students get to know the cinematographers in the other classes.” ARRI Rental sponsors the event and the associated Volker Bahnemann Award For Outstanding Cinematography, which is a cash prize to a fourth year DP showing excellence in their field.

Other student film showcases include Tisch’s First Run Film Festival, which culminates with the Wasserman Awards, incorporating the Néstor Almendros Award For Best Female Cinematographer, and the Second Year Showcase, a public screening of the results of two semesters’ back-to-back filmmaking.

Professional relationships forged while students at Tisch often carry forward into graduates’ careers.

Alumni classmates DP Joshua James Richards and director Chloé Zhao were nominated for the 2021 Academy Awards for their work on Nomadland (2020), with Zhao picking up best director for the film, plus a BAFTA for best cinematography for Richards. Cioffi Henry’s former classmate Erin Vassi-

lopoulos called her up to light Superior, selected for Sundance 2021.

Tisch takes an active role in supporting its alumni and keeping them connected, through its Class Notes social media feed, alumni directory, workshops, networking opportunities and associations, such as the Tisch London Alumni Club. With around 50% of its student body hailing from outside the United States, and the school’s permission to shoot second year and thesis films abroad, these connections can be far-reaching.

NYU estimates of costs accrued by a full-time student attending Tisch are around £60k total per annum, however there are various forms of financial aid available for attendees, including Federal and State Aid for US Citizens and a variety of scholarships, bursaries and loans.

Costs can be softened by student cash prizes, such as the aforementioned Bahnemann Award, and in addition, all students are eligible to apply for a number of third year grants given out by patrons, such as Ang Lee and alumnus Martin Scorsese.

Panavision supports student projects with its New Director’s Grant, consisting of a camera package, and $150,000 is available every year to film productions in the form of the Black Family Film Prizes.

This list is by no means exhaustive.

Another way to offset costs is for students to work for the school for a wage. Technical assistants, for example, can work as in-class assistants for up to ten hours per week, and six graduate assistant (GA) posts are available for third-year students who have the aptitude to help teach junior students what they have previously learned.

“I think GA is a very prestigious position because it really puts you at the forefront of your class as a strong shooter, somebody who’s helpful, collaborative and technically-minded,” says Cioffi Henry, who was previously a GA herself. Thus, skills and knowledge generated within Grad Film are invested back into the school, and potential future professors given the teaching bug.

CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD JULY 2021 27

ONE TO WATCH•CAROLINA COSTA AMC

CAROLINA COSTA AMC•ONE TO WATCH

Opposite: on the set of Swipe Night, an interactive series for Tinder/Picture This page: (top & below) checking the light and enjoying the illumination on the set of El Baile De Los 41.

Photo by Amaury Barrera and Pablo Casacuevas.

Selected Filmography (so far): El Baile De Los 41 (The Dance Of The 41) (2020), Wander Darkly (2020), Mano De Obra (Workforce) (2019), Crystal Swan (2018), Hala (2019), They (2017), Flower (2017) and Las Elegidas (The Chosen Ones) (2015).

Rodrigo Prieto AMC ASC has such a versatile career and is also known for being a kind soul. That’s what I strive for. Also, Ava Berkofsky – we graduated from AFI in the same class. It’s great to ‘grow’ in this industry and have by your side a friend who is also the most talented cinematographer I have ever met.

When did you discover you wanted to be a cinematographer?

I’m not sure I had a ‘eureka’ moment. I always knew since I started writing and reading that I wanted to tell stories. One day in my English class at uni in Rio a friend said his dad was a DP and I remember thinking ‘Oh that’s what I want to do’. At that point I was studying journalism and really didn’t know people in the film industry. I have a clear memory of the first time I stepped on a film set when I was 20. It was a short film being made in London, but I knew I had found my place in the world.

What’s the best advice you were ever given?

‘If you aren’t early, you’re late’ – from Rod Marley, a 1st AC who trained me in London. He was so right. I truly believe in ‘right time/right place’ and work hard to be in the right time and right place. I think there’s an element of ‘alignment in the universe’ for things to work in a certain way and I always feel blessed by that.

Where did you train?

London College Of Communication where I earned a BA Honours in Film & Video. I also trained with the GBCT in the UK, which really helped me start in the industry. I worked as a clapper/loader in London for many years and tried to get all the on-set experience I could from gaffers and DPs. I had the fortune to have the dear Sue Gibson BSC as my mentor, who pushed me out of my comfort zone and that’s why I started shooting after I left AC’ing.

Later I studied at the American Film Institute, in Los Angeles, where I earned my masters in cinematography, and that really shaped me to become who I am with my work today.

What life/career lessons did you learn from your training?

Every job is a new challenge, every film is a new lesson. If you have no experience in the world and no empathy for people, then the camera and all the tools won’t make you a good cinematographer.

DRIVING THE ACTION 28 JULY 2021 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

What are you favourite films, and why?

Movies by Antonioni and Tarkovsky are always film school favourites. There are two films that made an impact when I was younger…

Betty Blue (1986, dir. Jean-Jacques Beineix, DP JeanFrançois Robin AFC) – for the power in its use of colour and symbolism.

Before The Rain (1994, dir. Milcho Manchevski, DP Manuel Teran) – I was impacted by the exploration of time/space and the importance of ‘words’, and even now I can’t watch it without crying.

Recently I really loved Burning (2018, dir. Changdong Lee, DP Kyung-pyo Hong) and Sound Of Metal (2019, dir. Darius Marder, DP Daniël Bouquet) – both great indies, with excellent performances and cinematography that fully supports the story.

Who are your DP/industry role models?

Sue Gibson BSC and Seamus McGarvey BSC ASC are people I met in my early career and really look up to. I admire Amy Vincent ASC as someone who sticks with what she believes, and who is also extremely artistic and knowledgeable.

Away from work, what are your greatest passions?

Hiking is my favourite thing. Spending time with my girlfriend and our dogs.

It can be tough being a DP, how do you keep yourself match-fit?

I’m terrible at it, but it’s essential to be healthy for our work. I just started training and boxing. Along with the physical side, I believe taking care of your mental health and your spirit is just as important. I’ve been a Buddhist for many years and this practice has helped me put things in perspective. I have also started somatic experience therapy and I’m amazed at how resilient and wise our bodies are – even with all the crap we eat, the hours we spend on-set and the many nights drinking!

What advice would you give the ‘young you’ just starting out?

I would ask myself to have more patience, and enjoy the process more. No need to rush. A brilliant career is built step-by-step.

Where do you get your visual inspirations?

Everywhere. Right now I’m sitting in my office in Mexico City and there’s this little bit of light entering the room, but the sun is on the opposite side of the building at this time of the day. So I just stepped outside for a minute to see where it was coming from. A tree was chopped down and revealed a metal part of the building across the street: the sun hit it and bounced back into this room. So as I said, literally everywhere.

What have been your best/worst moments on-set?

Best: when you forget you are making a film and live with the actors in the scene. Recently whilst making El Baile De Los 41(The Dance Of The 41), director David Pablos and I were the only ones inside a small bedroom, aside from our operator Nico Gril and the actors. The scene got intense, and I remember grabbing David’s arm so hard and forgetting we had a camera in there.

Worst: when people cross the line, stop being professionals and talk to others not in a nice manner. I’m not saying everyone needs to get along tremendously and never argue, but everything should be in the best interest of the film. When it becomes about egos, I just can’t stand that, nor laziness. I can’t stand people who don’t care.

What is your most treasured cinematographic possession?

A clip (for gels) that gaffer Campbell McIntosh gave to me one of the last times he let me shadow him onset before he passed. He painted it gold and said that from that day on I was part of the ‘golden crew’. I always have it with me, every feature I shoot.

What is one thing people would be surprised to know about you?

I tend to come across as really serious, but people who know me see a big comedic side. Also because of the leadership and the social skills one must have to navigate jobs people don’t actually know how shy I am.

In the entire history of filmmaking, which film would you love to have shot?

Macunaína (1969, dir. Joaquim Pedro de Andrade, DP Guido Cosulich).

What are your current top albums?

In no particular order: Transa – Caetano Veloso; OK Computer – Radiohead; Mezzanine – Massive Attack; LA Woman – The Doors; Sticky Fingers – The Rolling Stones; Moro No Brasil – Farofa Carioca; Ao Vivo – Cassia Eller; and O Tempo Nāo Para – Cazuza.

Every job is a new challenge, every film is a new lesson

If you weren’t a DP, what job would you be doing now?

I would be an architect. I also have been trying to find a ‘sabbatical year’ to work with immigrants who cross the border between the US and Mexico.

What are your aspirations for the future?

I am happy where I am in my career now. But I do strive after shooting a bigger studio movie - maybe a Latinx hero? I would love to find a way to keep the artistic integrity of smaller, more auteur cinema, and take it to a big movie that everyone will pay and go see it.

What is the most important lesson your working life has taught you?

Work harder. And then work harder. Be humble and have empathy.

What’s up next for you?

I just wrapped on Insecure in LA, where I was the alternate DP on the last season. Back home in Mexico City I have started prepping a small indie for David Zonana for whom I shot Mano De Obra (Workforce).

I am also pitching a feature that I will direct/shoot called The Reluctance Of Time And A Sense Of Wonder.

Who is your agent?

In the US/Europe it’s WME. In Mexico/Latin America I am represented by 9am.

What is your URL/website address? www.carolinampcosta.com

CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD JULY 2021 29

SMOOTH OPERATORS•MACEO BISHOP SOC

MACEO BISHOP SOC•SMOOTH OPERATORS Really good operators are, in their DNA, a little bit like DPs and a little bit like directors

By Natasha Block Hicks

W

eeks away from wrapping on his first, ‘there-in-person’, feature film as a DP, Maceo Bishop SOC reminisces on the previous chapter of his career as a highly-regarded camera operator, which simultaneously peaked and concluded with his win of the 2020 BSC Operators Award, Feature Film category for Uncut Gems (2019).

“I wasn’t planning on doing that film, I was done with operating,” says Bishop of Uncut Gems, which was lit by Darius Khondji AFC ASC, “but Darius was very convincing. And, of course, I was glad that I did, because it was an incredible experience.”

Unusually, Khondji and director-brothers Josh

and Benny Safdie had invited Bishop to be part of their preparation process on Uncut Gems, looking at locations and participating in discussions ahead of the tight 30-day shooting schedule.

“They had their eyes on it being a collaborative experience from the very start,” reveals Bishop. “I feel 30 JULY 2021 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

it is so important for people to understand that the earlier an operator can be part of the conversation, the more we can offer back to the project. I’m so grateful to the Safdies and Darius for letting me into their creative process.”

Born in Detroit, Bishop was raised in Cambridge, Massachusetts, by his mother Rachel, an activist and member of the Students For A Democratic Society (SDS) and the League Of Revolutionary Black Workers. A single parent, Rachel would take her young son along with her to meetings, marches and parties.

“My mom was always taking pictures,” remembers Bishop, “ and she was the one who put a camera in my hand. I grew up wanting to tell stories. So when I got to college, I decided I was going to study journalism.”

Once enrolled at the University Of Massachusetts (UMass), Bishop’s attention was captured by a film studies module offered by Hampshire College, one of a Five College Consortium giving the state students of UMass access to their private tuition. With no existing filmcentric degree to switch to, Bishop utilised an experimental programme to develop his own curriculum around classes offered by the Five Colleges.

“I called it Film Studies, Social and Political,” states Bishop proudly, “I was always pulling my mom’s activism into my world. My civil rights studies professor, Michael Thelwell, had been a consultant on a documentary series called Eyes On The Prize (1987-90, a landmark series documenting the history of the civil rights movement in America) and managed to help me get an internship at the production

company. That was my first job in the film business.”

Bishop moved to New York after he graduated where, thanks to his local grandmother, he could be sure of at least one nourishing meal per week whilst he pursued work in camera assisting. After some 13 years of success in that role, he was ready to progress within the camera department.

“I had a young family at the time and Steadicam offered the possibility of making a living in New York City,” says Bishop. “I wanted to bring some humility to the role, to do it more quietly than I had seen it done before. When I was an assistant, Steadicam was considered a rarefied thing. It would come in and all the air would be removed out of the room.”

Bishop explains that he approached Steadicam operating as if he were a translator, through which the DP and director’s ideas could funnel.

“I think the DPs that I worked with appreciated the focus remaining on the story,” he affirms. “Really good operators are, in their DNA, a little bit like DPs and a little bit like directors too. That way they can be sensitive to the needs of those around them.”

Bishop’s first notable professional relationship as a Steadicam operator was with American Gangster DP Harris Savides ASC, whom he met when he replaced an outgoing operator on a commercial Savides was lighting. Pleased with Bishop’s work, Savides invited Bishop back on further commercials work and then the two began to hunt out a feature project to do together.

“We finally found Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (2011). But by that point, Harris knew that he had brain cancer,” reminisces Bishop sadly, “he was not able to finish that project.” Chris Menges BSC ASC ended-up replacing Savides, but by this point Bishop’s name had begun to circulate and several notable DPs were to look to his services as a Steadicam operator over the next few years, including Sir Roger Deakins ASC BSC CBE on Revolutionary Road (2008), Bruno Delbonnel AFC ASC for the

location on really long Anamorphic lenses, usually two lenses tighter than a traditional medium or wide shot, plus the actors weren’t using marks, so I was having to be instinctual and committed to every moment. The full tool bag of skills that I’ve learned over the 14 years of being an operator were at play in the operating on this film.”

The production had rented such a range of the heavy G- and E-series Panavision Anamorphic lenses that the lens cart blew a tire on one of the first days of shooting.

“There was probably something wrong with the tire,” laughs Bishop, “but we all thought it was funny.”

This was a light moment in an intense schedule.

“People have described the film as like a two-hour panic attack,” says Bishop, “and as an operator, you really do have to tune-in to the emotions of the scene and respond to it. Rodrigo would say that, as the operator, it’s in your hands and you have to make a choice for everyone, particularly

the audience. My take on it is that I’m guiding the audience, thinking where they would want to be to find the truth of the moment.”

Never one to rest on his laurels, Bishop is now pushing himself as a newly-fledged DP. Uncowed by the pandemic, since retiring from operating he has worked as cinematographer on A Christmas Carol (2020), a live-streaming of the Dickens classic morality tale with actor Jefferson Mays playing every one of the 50 plus parts, and has also managed to ‘remotely’ light a new Peter Hedges (About A Boy) feature. Now Bishop is actually onset, and there-in person, as the DP for American comedian Ray Romano on his as-yet-untitled feature directing debut.

“It’s been a great experience so far and it’s exciting because it all feels so new,” Bishop enthuses. “I want to stay out of my comfort zone as much as possible because that’s where so much amazing learning happens.”

The virtual light source provides the illusion of natural light from infinity.

Works even in the most confined settings.

PB70 - Parallel beam

OUTSIDE THE COMFORT ZONE

Coen Brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis (2013) and Janusz Kaminski ASC for Spielberg-directed drama Bridge Of Spies (2015), for which Bishop also operated B-camera.

It was with Rodrigo Prieto ASC AMC that Bishop first developed a multi-feature partnership.

The Mexican DP interviewed him for the Oliver Stone drama Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010), Bishop’s first full feature credit on B-camera and Steadicam.

“With Rodrigo, that was where I really started to develop as an operator,” says Bishop, “he has an incredible attention to detail. I really absorbed a lot working with him.” Bishop would operate for Prieto on two further features: The Wolf Of Wall Street (2013) and A Midsummer Night’s Dream (2014).

“There are shots in The Wolf Of Wall Street that feel so true to that film,” reflects Bishop. “There’s a single take scene in the Wall Street ‘war room’ where the camera starts off moving around the whole room and ends with Leonardo DiCaprio delivering his monologue to it. That’s a really fun one.

“But actually the shots that I’m really proud of are not necessarily the biggest shots,” he continues.

“When you’re so deep, so steeped in the story that you’re unaware of the mechanism, then I think that’s a great thing”.

Bishop credits Khondji with many of these immersive operating experiences. His first feature with the Iranian-born DP was Woody Allen’s film Irrational Man (2015), following with Bong Joonho’s Okja (2017) and Bishop’s final feature as operator, Uncut Gems.

“Darius has been probably the most supportive DP that I’ve worked with as a camera operator, because he always went further to include me in the creative process,” says Bishop. “I feel really proud of a lot of the shots that we pulled off in Uncut Gems. There was so much going on in the moment, yet we managed to capture these incredible, intense scenes.”

The shooting conditions on Uncut Gems were certainly challenging, which Bishop cites as at least part of the reason he was recognised with the BSC Operators Award.

“It’s very claustrophobic as a film, everything is very tight,” explains Bishop. “We were filming on

Opposite: (top) shooting Uncut Gems; (below) working on Bridge Of Spies.

This page: (clockwise) shooting with Mitch Dubin and Steven Spielberg on Bridge Of Spies; working with DP Charlotte Bruus Christensen DFF ASC on The Girl On The Train; Maceo pictured with Dariusz Khondji AFC ASC and Chris Silano during Uncut Gems.

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29.06.21 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD JULY 202114:17 31

LAND•BOBBY BUKOWSKI

BOBBY BUKOWSKI•LAND

WALK ON THE WILD SIDE

By Iain Blair

C

inematographer Bobby Bukowski ASC’s career spans three decades with close to 100 feature films to his credit. These include The Messenger (2009), Rampart (2011), Time Out Of Mind (2014) and The Dinner (2017), all with frequent collaborator Oren Moverman, together with Mark Pellington’s Arlington Road (1999), Ramin Bahrani’s 99 Homes (2014) and Dee Rees’ The Last Thing He Wanted (2020).

Bukowski is also a lifelong lover of nature and the great outdoors, qualities that, coupled with his gift for creating beautiful images and striking compositions, made him the ideal collaborator for Robin Wright when the movie and TV star took on the challenge of directing her first feature film, Land, in which she also stars as the lead character.

Land is a powerful and confident debut, and a beautifully-shot movie that follows the journey of Edee Holzer (Wright), newly-widowed and stunned by tragedy. She jettisons her old life in exchange for a spartan cabin, with no power or water, and a solitary existence in the remote mountain wilderness of Wyoming. Living off the grid and without any prior wilderness experience, Edee is buffeted by the elements and unprepared for nature’s formidable realities – including wolves and marauding bears.

She struggles to survive, but a timely encounter with a local man, Miguel Borras (Demián Bichir), opens the door to a deeper understanding of nature as he teaches her the skills she needs to live in harmony with nature.

Here, Bukowski, talks about working with the award-winning actress and the challenges of shooting on top of a mountain, sometimes in arduous conditions.

Is it true you wrote a letter to Robin Wright about being the right DP for the job?

Yes, I read the script, and that knew I was perfect for it. I’m such a nature guy at heart and love being in forests and mountains, and it hit me in such deep ways – emotionally, visually and psychically. And, there was virtually no dialogue in the first 20 to 30 pages, so it really excited me as a DP. So I wrote this love letter to her film and all the landscapes, and then we met and began talking about it.

32 JULY 2021 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

Hadn’t you worked with her before, on Rampart?

Yes, and that’s when I first realised how interested she was in directing. I was lighting this bar scene for her close-up, basically with a lightbulb and some diffusion. She was very focused on what I was doing, watched every step, and asked me all these questions about the process. Actors aren’t usually interested in all that, so I could tell right away that she was very intent on learning as much as she could about lighting and camerawork.

This was your first collaboration with Robin as a director. What visual references did you both discuss and use?

We didn’t actually look at many visual references, but we did talk a lot about what the landscape meant narratively at different points of Edee’s journey. I’d sent Robin this image of a lone person, a tiny woman in a vast wilderness, which

Heavy snow, blizzards, icy winds, freezing temperatures… I was in my element really spoke to me. So the idea was that at the start of the film, nature and the wilderness is hostile. She’s not part of it, but is fighting it. Then, as time progresses and she learns more and more about her surroundings, and as Miguel teaches her things, she becomes more integrated with the landscape and nature, more at ease, more at home.

How did you approach the look of the movie?

At the start of the film we shot Edee as this small, fragile person lost in the wilderness, and there are a lot of subtle changes as the story progresses. We begin with very high contrast and very crisp colours that emphasise how sharp and dangerous the landscape is.

Then all the colours and contrast gradually become softer, with more greys and creams, and we began placing the camera lower to the ground, and shooting through bushes and grass in the foreground to show how she’s becoming more integrated with her surroundings.

How long was the prep and shoot?

Prep was about three weeks, and then it was a 30-day shoot on top of an 8,000-foot mountain in Calgary, Canada, which doubled for Wyoming, The big challenge was that we had to capture all the seasons over the three-year period of the storyline, all in 30 days. So the original plan was to start in

Opposite: Land, a Focus Features release; (right) actor/director Robin Wright with DP Bobby Bukowski.

Photos by Daniel Power/Focus Features.

September and do all the scenes set in summer, fall and spring, and then come back later to shoot our winter scenes. It started off with beautiful warm weather, but winter suddenly hit us at the end, so that meant adjusting the whole schedule on a daily basis to deal with the bad weather, and we got it all – heavy snow, blizzards, icy winds, freezing temperatures. It was pretty extreme.

I know you’re an avid outdoorsman, but wasn’t that extreme even for you?

(Laughs) No, I was right in my element, and I could monitor how the wind was moving and how the light was changing constantly.

Robin told me you even slept in Edee’s cabin on top of the mountain for most of the shoot.

Talk about the benefits and challenges of shooting on location.

The original plan was to build two cabins – one on the mountain, and one on a soundstage – and then shoot most of the cabin scenes on the soundstage. So our production designer, Trevor Smith, and his team built this great log cabin from scratch and moved it piece-by-piece up the mountain to this perfect location.

When I saw it I said, ‘Why the hell are we even bothering with the other one on the stage?

We’ll have to put all the bluescreen up for the windows and not be able to capture the light and all the elements and so on.’ So I told Robin, ‘Come up to the cabin and see the beautiful views from the windows – you won’t have any of that on a stage.’ She got it immediately. It’s more beautiful, more flexible. And yes, it was cold. The cabin had no water or heat, and it wasn’t comfortable but it allowed me to see things from Edee’s perspective.

And I had the camera and lenses with me all the time, so I could grab them, run out and shoot a sunrise or an icicle melting or snow falling. I loved it.

Was this the toughest shoot ever?

Yes, I’d say so. It was physically so gruelling, especially as I was also operating the camera, but I had very high expectations of the wild beauty I’d be able to capture, and all that was unscripted. I’d just grab the camera and shoot whatever caught my eye.

Tell us about your camera and lighting choices.

I shot with the ARRI Alexa Mini, with Cooke Speed Panchros, Angenieux Optimo Zooms and an Easyrig. I love natural light, so I used very few lights, mostly ultra bounce, unbleached muslin, a lot of solids, large and small, to create contrast. Sometimes I’d use an ARRI M40, plus s30 and s60 Sky Panels.

Did you work with a colourist on the LUT? Yes, with colourist Joe Gawler. We worked on that before we even got going on the film itself. In terms of the DI, Joe and I have done over 20 films together now, so we know the language and the tools we use, and it’s a really good collaboration.

This time it was all done remotely because of Covid.

He was in Harbor Post, New York, and I worked from home on a calibrated iPad. I found the whole process quite successful. Of course, I really missed being in the room with Joe as usual, where you can scroll though and maybe discover stuff together, but I’m very happy with the way it turned out, and I think we got a very beautiful look.

ROBIN WRIGHT TALKS ABOUT SHOOTING LAND You’ve worked with many of Hollywood’s top directors and starred in such diverse projects as Rob Reiner’s cult classic The Princess Bride, David Fincher’s The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, Robert Zemeckis’ A Christmas Carol, Bennett Miller’s Moneyball, and M. Night Shyamalan’s Unbreakable. How did you prep for your directorial debut? Did you get advice from directors you know?

I didn’t talk to any. My main prep was with Bobby, and that collaboration was key to this.

Bobby and I had many meetings and watched movies that had inspired us, and we talked in-depth about how we wanted the film to feel and look when this character has all these elliptical memories.

And we’d share a lot as we were picking the shot lists and lenses and so on. Bobby was very big on mood boards, so we’d get to see how scenes would look and feel.

And then, nature is also a character in the film throughout, but at the start Edee doesn’t really see it or take it in at the beginning. It’s just there and very cruel, as nature can be. So we wanted that to look very different to later on where she’s communing with nature and appreciating the majesty of her surroundings.

Bobby is also a great outdoorsman. He loves nature, and really understood what we needed to capture in terms of nature. He even slept in Edee’s cabin on top of the mountain for most of the shoot, while my producer and I stayed in trailers behind it, so we could all live the movie we were shooting - and be right in the middle of all the storms and so on. If one hit at 3am, Bobby would grab his camera, head outside and get a timelapse shot.

Would it be fair to say that you and Bobby jumped in the deep end on this shoot?

(Laughs) Yeah, and it was brutal. The big challenge was, we never knew what to expect with the weather, and that area’s well-known for very unpredictable weather. So we had to be ready to constantly reschedule stuff on a daily basis. We’d be in shorts and T-shirts shooting a summer scene, and suddenly we’d get word the Chinook winds were coming, and they can be 70mph. So we’d have to shut down for an hour or so and wait for them to pass. Sometimes we’d get three seasons in one day, or rain no one had predicted, so it was constant change and reshuffling, and a very busy set. Of course equipment jammed and broke down because of the extreme cold. It was a very tough shoot, but it was worth it, and Bobby’s such an artist.

CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD JULY 2021 33

BEN SMITHARD BSC • THE FATHER

THE FATHER • BEN SMITHARD BSC Photos: (below) director Florian Zeller with DP Ben Smithard BSC on The Father.

MIND GAMES

Photos by Sean Gleason.

Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.

experience, except for one thing.

“There are many big movies taking up the stages, so we didn’t have many options. The one we used was high enough but not big enough, with a Rosco SoftDrop Translight backing something like 14-feet from the windows, and the other side of the set right up against the wall. I’d love to have had another four feet, but I had to make do with what was available.”

His lighting was dictated by his wish to stay imperceptible. “It’s all Tungsten Fresnels, every bulb was a Tungsten bulb. I like the old style of lighting, it’s very consistent and I can tell the colour temperature of everything, even if it’s dimmed down,” says the DP. “There’s a scene where it wasn’t perfect, though. Because of the problems with space, I had to use an LED lamp.

I knew it looked wrong on Tony’s skin but had no choice. I don’t think anyone else will notice, but I do.”

Another compromise he had to make was how it was shot. “I really wanted to shoot The Father on 35mm film, the project was perfect for that, but it was a small independent film and we couldn’t make it work. When we went digital, I knew I was going to shoot on the Sony Venice. I worked with it for the first time on my previous feature, Downton Abbey, and it’s a brilliant camera that gives a whole lot of options. I have a lot of admiration for high-end Sony cameras.”

Cinematographer Ben Smithard BSC created a space for the actors to shine in Florian Zeller’s empathetic, graceful, Oscar-winning and utterly terrifying cinematic journey through senility.

T

hough The Father’s plot may be simply outlined in one sentence – a story of a feisty 80-year-old Londoner gradually surrendering to dementia, which sends his daughter (Olivia Colman) on a rollercoaster of emotions – there is nothing simple about the film. For it assumes Anthony’s (Anthony Hopkins) perspective, an unreliable narrator who is not aware of his unreliability, whilst Zeller, a firsttime film director filming his own play, allows the audience to be as confused as the protagonist is.

Though The Father’s plot may be simply outlined in one sentence – a story of a feisty 80-year-old Londoner gradually surrendering to dementia, which sends his daughter (Olivia Colman) on a rollercoaster of emotions – there is nothing simple about the film. For it assumes Anthony’s (Anthony Hopkins) perspective, an unreliable narrator who is not aware of his unreliability, whilst Zeller, a first-time film director filming his own play, allows the audience to be as confused as the protagonist is.

It is hence hard to blame Smithard, eminent British DP with dozens of films and high-end TV series on his resumé, for actively campaigning to shoot it.

“Florian is French and wanted a French DP, but I loved the script and had a good working relationship with Tony Hopkins. So I begged my agent to get me a meeting,” explains Smithard, whose previous credits include My Week With Marilyn (2011), Alan Partridge (2013), Good By Christopher Robin (2017), Viceroy’s House (2017) and Downton Abbey (2019). “When we talked, I was relieved to hear that his only worry was that the language would be a problem. But, it never was,

34 JULY 2021 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

and we got along really well from day one.”

Because of the film’s nonlinear structure – Anthony’s shattered mind has us see other characters as different actors/actresses, whilst the apartment he resides in undergoes subtle shifts in interior design – the key word was: precision.

“You have to be an absolute perfectionist with this kind of movie as it hinges on nuances that may maintain or break the viewers’ immersion in the story,” Smithard explains. “My lighting and camerawork needed to be kept simple so as not to detract from the performances.”

It meant, among other things, a neat display of the apartment’s layout.

“We had a clever construct there, a series of simple, empty shots of the place that give the audience something to hold onto while the décor shifts,” says Smithard. “This is something you notice, what you don’t see is the subtle change in lighting. As the film goes on, the light that comes from the window gets lower and lower, like a normal sun. It was my visual metaphor for the light going out in Tony’s life.”

The project was quite intimate with only a few speaking parts and no more than three characters appearing in any one scene.

“It’s about trust between me and the performers.

I had to react to what they were doing, both as a DP and a camera operator, give them space to flesh-out the characters. You also had to be aware that because Tony Hopkins is 80, and such a well-prepared actor, that he was not going to do it 20 times. And he knew I wasn’t going to mess him around.”

Smithard shot The Father in six weeks on a stage at West London Film Studios and was happy with the

It was a bit more difficult to choose the lenses, as Smithard explains.

“I shot Downton Abbey with Zeiss Supremes, but they’re expensive and I tried to find something else. I chose nice medium format lenses but during prep I saw that, because they’re stills lenses and have wildly ranging T-stops, I was going to have to use more light than I had been willing to. So, I went back to Zeiss Supremes at the last minute, and it was a good decision. They gave me the flexibility I needed.”

After principal photography ended, Smithard worked with his regular colourist Gareth Spensley (formerly at Molinare, now at Company3 in London) to subtly enhance what had been done in-camera and make the performances shine.

“It’s important that I know that what I’m doing can be made a bit better in the grade,” says the DP. “It’s a detailed work with the colour and the shading of the bits of the frame. Grading for me is an instinctive thing and is about manipulating the image so that the audience looks where I want them to look.”

The film premiered at Sundance 2020 to splendid reviews, but had to be shelved for over a year for obvious reasons. Now, riding the wave of two Academy and two BAFTA Awards, it makes a grand theatrical comeback and seems destined to end up on many Top10 lists. Though the only thing

you need to know is that The Father is this rare kind of film for adults not afraid to be confronted with difficult emotions, in this case the horror and the poignancy of the fragility of the human mind.

Smithard is really proud of how it turned out.

“Sure, I could’ve been more elaborate with how

I have a lot of admiration for high-end Sony cameras it looks, but I don’t think it was necessary. The film is about great acting and great words – it’s brilliant.

Yes, I had to put up with things I didn’t necessarily like, but I enjoyed that challenge. It’s where I come from as a filmmaker: if you’re making a great story, it doesn’t matter how much money you’ve got, as long as you’re able to fulfil its potential. I believe we have.”

CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD JULY 2021 35

LINDA WASSBERG DFF•TOVE

TOVE•LINDA WASSBERG DFF

PASSION PROJECT

Photos: All shots from Tove, Courtesy of Helsinki Pictures.

By Ron Prince

D

P Linda Wassberg DFF harnessed Kodak 16mm, and operated a largely handheld camera, to depict a passionate and captivating portrait of Finnish artist/illustrator Tove Jansson, the legendary creator of the Moomins, for director Zaida Bergroth’s acclaimed bio-picture Tove.

Exploring themes about art, identity, desire and freedom, the movie centres on Jansson’s early, unconventional life among Helsinki’s liberal society – from just before the end of WWII to the mid-1950s – in which free-spirited artists carouse with politicians at illegal cocktail parties, dance to the latest jazz records and swap partners in open marriages.

The €3.4 million film, written by Eeva Putro, reveals how Jansson, an imaginative young artist who embraces life with gusto, found global success from an unexpected side-project in the creation of the beloved world of the Moomins, whilst also portraying her romantic relationships with both men and women – most notably her on/off lover/ husband Atos Wirtanen, the left-wing intellectual, journalist and cultural critic, and Finnish-Swedish theatre director Vivica Bandler.

Starring theatre-actress Alma Pöysti, in her debut feature-film role that has been hailed as “mesmerising”, Tove was selected as the Finnish entry for Best International Feature Film at the 93rd Academy Awards, and has been sold to over 50 territories worldwide. Also noted for its direction, costume and cinematography, Tove broke box office records in Finland in 2020, in spite of the pandemic, and now ranks as the highest-grossing Swedish-language Finnish film in the last 40 years.

Getting involved with production was more that just another job for Wassberg. Rather, it was an absolutely-must-do passion project.

“Tove Jansson is a hero for me. Like many Scandinavians, the Moomins were part of my childhood, but Tove’s life and her other artistic works have been of lifelong personal interest. So when I discovered a film was being made about her, I tracked down the producers to introduce myself with the hope of getting actively involved,” enthuses Wassberg, whose hails from Sweden, studied filmmaking at Den Danske Filmskole (The National Film School Of Denmark), and now lives in Copenhagen.

“When the producers realised my personal passion for the project, I was invited over to Helsinki, and had a two-hour meeting with Zaida,” Wassberg recalls. “She and I talked about our mutual love and admiration for Tove, and how we might bring her iconic story to the screen. We both agreed that whilst the Moomins are cute, cuteness was our enemy. We both wanted to break loose, to bring a certain wildness and energy to the cinematography that would reflect the times and the way Tove lived her life.”

A visual staring-point for Wassberg was Bergroth’s reference to director Lars von Trier’s multi-award winning Breaking The Waves (1996), 36 JULY 2021 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

which was shot entirely handheld using Super35mm cameras by DP Robby Müller. “Zaida wanted the same sort of visual power in her film. I was willing to experiment and we went from there,” the DP says.

Wassberg’s enthusiasm for the project saw her immerse herself for a full six months before production began. During that time she worked with Bergroth on the script and participated in extensive conversations with the director, and production designer Catharina Nyqvist Ehrnrooth, about the overall look of the film.

“Along with the Moomins, of course, we looked at a lot of Tove’s paintings, as they would feature in the film, and we watched archive 16mm footage of Helsinki, during and after WW2, and of Tove herself,” says Wassberg. “We found a book of

beautiful photographic stills, called Aho & Soldan – Helsinki In 1950’s Colours, to be very inspirational, and also watched a lot of biopics, such as Raging Bull (1980, dir. Martin Scorsese, DP Michael Chapman ASC), and The Fighter (2010, dir. David O. Russell, Hoyte van Hoytema FSF NSC ASC), for their use of handheld camera movement.

“All of this research stimulated a lot of dialogue between Zaida, Catharina and myself, about the natural richness of the colour and the quality of texture we wanted in the set/costume designs and the cinematography in Tove.”

It also started the debate about whether to shoot using digital or celluloid film. However, after

watching side-by-side test footage, Wassberg declares that, “it became pretty clear that 16mm film would give us the qualities we wanted. The digital images had the appearance of being lookalike imitations, the filmed images looked real, truthful and alive.”

She also adds, “Tove herself is known across Scandinavia through TV interviews that were all on shot 16mm film, so it was most appropriate for our audience to portray her via this familiar-looking medium.”

Filming on Tove took place over 27, often bone-chilling, shooting-days during January and February 2020, at locations around Helsinki. A replica of Jansson’s studio apartment was built on the stages at Angel Film Studios in the city. Due to travel restrictions caused by the impeding Covid pandemic, the city of Turku/ Åbo in Finland doubled for sequences in which Jansson goes to live and paint in Paris.

Wassberg worked with Bergroth’s regular camera/lighting crew, who were all Finnish and who, apart from gaffer Aki Karppinen and grip Juha Niskamost, were women, namely focus puller/first AC Elina Eränen, and Janina Witkowski second AC. Wassberg’s teenage daughter, Imelda, was

She and I talked about our mutual love and admiration for Tove employed as a production trainee.

“I had not collaborated with any of the crew before, and don’t speak Finnish, so I was a little concerned about how things would go,” Wassberg admits. “But, they had all worked with film before, and through a mixture of broken English, Swedish and Danish, plus the positive mood that Zaida created on-set, they made me feel at home – things worked-out just fine. They were easy-going and always had smiles, even during the coldest, harshest days of winter weather.

“I also think that having a small crew made-up mainly of women was very helpful when we shot the more intimate moments in the film. This was Alma’s first big role, and having a respectful attitude was important in making her feel safe and comfortable.”

Wassberg shot Tove using an ARRI 416 16mm

camera fitted with Ultra Prime lenses, supplied by Dagsljus Filmequipment AB in Stockholm, Sweden.

Her emulsions of choice were Kodak Vision3 500T 7219, for the movie’s dark/night-time scenes, plus Kodak Vision3 250D 7207, for day interior/exterior sequences. Focus Film Lab in Stockholm provided processing, 2K scanning and streamed dailies.

In the film, Tove slips blithely in-and-out of the frame, and the camera often weaves in-and-out of the action as the cast cavort in the numerous party scenes.

The DP estimates that 95% of her operating was done handheld, on the shoulder or with an EasyRig, with the remainder on the dolly and wides on sticks.

“Although handheld is very popular these days, especially in Scandi-productions, I had not done much work in this style, but I loved the interaction with the actors,” Wassberg relates.

“When combined with the texture, contrast and natural colour of the 16mm film, this approach made for a very interesting and engaging visual marriage – we had a modern linguistic style and an evocative, period image meeting together to convey an atmosphere that is very much alive. Zaida particularly loved the warmth of the golden wash that the 500T captured, and how both film stocks delivered an authentic look without anything ever feeling forced.”

In terms of lighting, Wassberg says the strategy was, “to keep things coming from a natural perspective – nothing cinematic, no moonlight or backlight on exteriors. Although Aki, my gaffer, is a man of few words and had to work with a minimal lighting package, he proved himself to be super-sensitive to what we wanted in every scene.

He was very skilful at integrating the lighting into a room, whether it was using silks to bounce-in light, or practicals and other small sources, and all controlled from an iPad. That was really fast and brilliant!”

Reflecting on her time shooing the film, Wassberg says, “it was a beautiful experience.

Coming back to filming on film, and working everyday with lots of love and respect between the crew and actors, Tove was one of the best shoots I have worked on in ages. This atmosphere started with Zaida, and filtered through us all. I made a great initial connection with her on a project that I was really drawn to, and we went on a special journey together through every single frame. I felt she was my soulmate.”

CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD JULY 2021 37

ANNETTE•CAROLINE CHAMPETIER AFC

CAROLINE CHAMPETIER AFC•ANNETTE

DESTINY’S CHILD

Photos: BTS shots from Annette.

Taken by Kris Dewitte.

By Oliver Webb

L

eos Carax’s debut English-language feature, Annette, tells the story of Henry, a stand-up comedian (Adam Driver), and his wife Ann (Marion Cotillard), an internationally-renowned soprano, whose life takes an unexpected turn after the birth of their daughter, Annette, who has a mysterious gift.

Remarkably shot by Carax’s go-to DP Caroline Champetier AFC, Annette features songs from the American pop and rock duo Sparks (who also cowrote the script), and opened 2021 Cannes Film

Festival in-competition for the prestigious Palme d’Or. Champetier has contributed to more than one hundred films since starting her career in 1979. She won the César Award for Best Cinematography for her work on Of Gods And Men in 2011, directed by Xavier Beauvois, a film that also earned the Grand Prix at Cannes in 2010. Her other collaborations with 38 JULY 2021 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

Carax include the low-budget odyssey​Holy Motors (2012), for which Champetier won the Silver Frog at Camerimage in 2012. She was president of the AFC between 2009 and 2012.

Who are your DP inspirations?

My heroes include many of the DPs I have worked with over the years, such as Nestor Almendros and Bruno Nuytten. I directed a documentary about Bruno, Nuytten/Film (2016).

Then come the American DPs, such as Vilmos Zsigmond ASC HSC, for example. I remember the first time I saw McCabe & Mrs Miller (1971) and The Long Goodbye (1973), both directed by Robert Altman. I was amazed by the atmosphere and the texture of the photography by Vilmos in those films.

How did you get involved with/ first meet Leos Carax?

Fourteen years ago Leos asked me to come to Japan to shoot Tokyo (2008), a triptych made by three directors – Leos directed the Merde segment, Michel Gondry did the Interior Design segment, and Bong Joon Ho directed the Shaking Tokyo segment. I went there with a beautiful little camera, the Panasonic DVX 100. It’s the same camera that the great Wang Bing used for West Of The Tracks (2002). I was using it like a violin and I think Leos fell in love with this camera. Some years after Tokyo, he wrote the script for Holy Motors (2012) and asked me to shoot it. We shot Holy Motors together, and then he asked me to work with him on Annette.

What were your initial conversations with

Leos about the look of Annette? What did he want to achieve?

I didn’t speak with Leos a great deal about the look. He sent pictures and references that were so sharp, so moving, that I understood the emotion he wanted. After I started working with Leos, it was never really a conversation, it was always simply to achieve a challenge. Each direction is a very technical question and a problem which you have to resolve. With Leos you don’t speak of general ideas, you only focus on your craft.

What creative references did you look at?

I know that Leos saw Phantom Of The Paradise (1974, dir. Brian De Palma, DP Larry Pizer) when he was very young and was absolutely amazed by it.

He always wanted to do a musical. We also looked at stand-up comedy for Adam Driver’s character Henry and some opera for Marion Cotillard’s Ann. The references and influences are not only one style, we took from everywhere.

What did these creative references inspire aesthetically?

In one of the stand-up shows we saw that the audience were lit with some colour spots falling on the audience. We kept that idea for all of Henry’s shows and to have the same colour spots on the audience. Each character is represented by a colour. For example, Henry is green and Ann is yellow. Almost all the movie takes place during night so there is a lot of black. I put colour here and there

Always take risks

to awaken those blacks.

What was the most challenging sequence to shoot?

There is a storm scene in the movie. We made a lot of tests, using reflections, for this scene. We had the boat on a gimbal and then, as in Holy Motors (2012) we added a screen with projected waves on the screen. We had real water around the actors on the boat. It’s difficult if you haven’t seen the sequence, but all of these decisions took three or four months. The actors also have to dance, so it was all about finding how much room they needed to dance. What is more interesting is to have this situation of danger. I was very clear that this situation of danger was more important when we are not necessarily on the boat, but outside of the boat, observing with the camera. Each sequence in the movie needed this kind of reflection and it took a lot of time to do the prepping.

Did you encounter challenges with the different locations?

Absolutely. It’s a clever question, because there was never one kind of location, it was always different type of locations. We had lots of spaces – a theatre, a real hotel, a studio, everything. The challenge was to keep an artistic line in all these different locations though the photography and the rhythms of framing. This line was mostly achieved by the colour and movement. There were lots of movements with the actors and most of the time the camera is in movement too. It sometimes could be very large movements, or very small movements.

There could be long, travelling movements, or Steadicam, and sometimes, but rarely, handheld camera. I always had a little dolly with me and we used lots of dolly shots.

Was it mainly a single camera shoot? Did you

operate?

I operated, but we also had several Steadicam operators during production. We shot with Sony Venice and Sony a7 Mark III cameras. We used two Sony Venice cameras shooting at 4K in 1.85:1 aspect ratio, using spherical Zeiss Supreme and Angénieux Optimo zoom lenses. I also used an old zoom, not a modern one at all, the Angénieux 25250mm that gives heavy blacks. I loved using that lens, and in the final grading I went closer to the texture I got from that lens with the shots that were done using the modern lenses.

Did you work with a DIT or a colourist onset?

I don’t work on-set with a DIT because I think it’s not the right time to do colour work. That really needs to be done with a colourist in post production. However, we did send the rushes every day to the lab and got back stills from a very smart dailies colourist working there. If I was not sure of the result on the dailies, or if I could not see the emotion I put into the cinematography, I asked them to process the footage again.

In France we don’t really work yet with colour scientists – that’s really missing from the process, and some colourists are more able than others to work on the curves. For Annette I asked for only one curve, because my concern was the blacks and darker areas of the picture – as you know all the movie is set in a theatre and or at night. I worked

with a freelance colourist, Peter Bernaers, for the final grade.

What were your working hours like during production?

We worked between 11- and 14-hour days.

We shot in Belgium and the prep was really a technical challenge. There were almost two hours of briefing and work every day before shooting. I think that without the prep we would not have been able to shoot the movie, as we shot with only €16m euros. With the amount of time of prep and all the reflections, we saved almost €5m.

What’s your mantra? Or best advice you ever had?

Always take risks.

Where do you get your visual / creative inspirations?

Everywhere: paintings, photos, and movies.

What challenges do women face in France pursuing a career as a cinematographer?

There are more and more women in the business, but not many of them work on large budget productions. The CNC (Centre National Du Cinéma et de l’image Animée/National Centre For Cinema And The Moving Image) is an agency of the French Ministry Of Culture, and is responsible for the production and promotion of cinematic and audiovisual arts in France. CNC is working for parity and gives bonuses to movies where parity is respected. There is an organisation called 50/50 working for parity too. On Annette there were lot of women in the production crew, hard workers and smart, and I am very proud of that.

What was it like being AFC president?

It was a strange time because I was the first woman to have this responsibility. Managing men is not easy all the time! I did some good work with my colleagues and made more contacts out of France and helped create more solidarity.

CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD JULY 2021 39

INSPIRATIONS•ED LACHMAN ASC

ED LACHMAN ASC•INSPIRATIONS +6 +5 +4

+3 +2 +1 + 1 /

Over Exposure Ligh 2 18% t Skin T - 1/ one R ange 2 -1 Dar - k Sk in T -3 one Ran -4 ge -5 Un de -6 rE xp os ed

EXPOSURE CONTROL

By Michael Goldman

Cinematographer Ed Lachman ASC explains his EL Zone System, already incorporated into Panasonic’s VariCams, which has the very real potential, the revered DP insists, to become the foundation of an eventual universal standard.

to a digital imaging technician to help me calculate this, yet exposure is supposed to be part of my job. So, I wanted to know why I couldn’t bring this analogue technique into the digital world so I could see it in the viewfinder.”

Lachman elaborates on the limitations of the digital world’s options for “seeing” exposure by noting that false colour and waveform readings are built around IRE composite video signal units.

“IRE readings are based on voltage measurements, which are linear, not logarithmic – a process designed by engineers,” he says. “But IRE stands for ‘International Radio Engineers’ because they were the ones who developed the concept for radio signals in the 1800s, not for anything related to photographic exposure.

“So, for cinematography, there was a discrepancy.

IRE units don’t precisely translate and aren’t consistent with stop values or light meter readings,” he continues.

“That’s because IRE readings change with the stops.

In a logarithmic system, if an image is at F2, and then you go to 2.8, you need to double the amount of light, but that is not something that would be apparent using IRE values. Yes, the waveform monitor shows you the general range of your negative, but it does not show you specifically where the highlights are or where the shadow is on the frame.

“And with false colour, there is no standardisation across the industry. That means Red’s depiction is

manufacturers and post houses.

Panasonic was the first to formally incorporate EL Zone into certain systems – currently as a firmware addition to its VariCam LT and VariCam 35 Cinema Camera models, allowing cameramen to see each stop of exposure represented by a particular colour through their viewfinder when they activate the EL Zone setting. Barry Russo of Panasonic’s product development and engineering division explains that it was “basically a no-brainer” to add such a tool to cameras whose operating platforms already supported false colour.

“The system made sense because it was very simple,” Russo says. “It’s easy-to-use and understand, and gives useful information at a glance. We originally called it ‘Exposure Map’ in the VariCam menu,

actor’s surrounding areas – windows, the floor, doors, whatever – based on where you place the exposure for the face.

“Now, it’s true that manufacturers may well produce cameras with more than six stops latitude from 18-percent grey. But that isn’t really a problem with this system, because 18-percent grey remains the most important part of the exposure, and that is largely because that is what will affect how the face looks the most.

meaning you can actually see a map of the exposure on the monitor when enabled. While we offer false colour in select camera models, it is limited in what it offers for exposure information and can be more difficult to read based on its very limited range of four to six stops versus 15 stops in EL Zone.

“Useful exposure information at a glance was a key consideration. In particular, one of the biggest issues we see with customers is getting skin tone exposure correct. EL Zone makes this simple by having half-stop and one-stop increments above and below the 18-percent grey. From our point-of-view, that makes it hard to miss getting the correct exposure on skin tones. Beyond skin tones, EL Zone uses one-stop increments up to plus/minus six stops.”

Indeed, Lachman explains that “the face, in particular, is the most important part of exposure. Once you get that right, you can base the exposure of the

and say the important area is where I will lose or keep detail, and they can calculate from there.”

Lachman emphasises that he expects other camera manufacturers to incorporate versions of the EL Zone system, and adds that it has relevance for monitors as well, and most importantly, big advantages for endusers, including documentary filmmaking applications, still photography, and more.

“The beauty of this system is that you can shoot with different camera manufacturers and they will have a standard between them to understand exposure,” he says. “I’ve made it very clear to all the manufacturers that this is not a proprietary technology. I’m very interested in it becoming a universal standard. I view it as a grammar, a shorthand, to communicate about exposure with the manufacturer of the camera, the cinematographer, the gaffer, anyone working on light levels on-set, and in post.”

“When you move out to extremities of the body, therefore, you can just make those two-stop values – minus four can represent two stops, and so on. The reason I felt there was no point in going further is that, if you have too many colours in the viewfinder, it can get confusing. So, the cinematographer can just designate

I’m very interested in EL Zone becoming a universal standard

T

he question of how best to properly control exposure values on-set has vexed cinematographers for generations, and veteran cinematographer Ed Lachman ASC, was no exception. In Lachman’s case, however, he decided to do something concrete to help modern cinematographers address this challenge by coming up with a new exposure tool for digital camera systems based on an analogue approach to the issue. He calls it the EL Zone System, which he has patented and already got one major camera manufacturer – Panasonic – to incorporate into some of its digital cinema camera systems.

EL Zone is based on a concept that percolated with Lachman for over 30 years before spending the last five years formally developing it and introducing it to the cinematography community.

“This is a system based on the way I was 40 JULY 2021 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

different than ARRI’s or Sony’s, for example. Everyone has their own interpretation of what false colour is.”

Therefore, Lachman felt it was better to revert to his understanding of Adams’ concept – to control exposure using an 18-percent grey baseline.

“It was really simple. I asked myself why not just find 18-percent grey in the digital world, and base my exposure off that, and try to get the camera manufacturers to work from that premise?”

Lachman says five years ago, when he first began trying to introduce the concept to major camera manufacturers, “I was up against the wall. They didn’t want to change. They had instituted false colour and histograms already, and then some cameraman like me taught to think about exposure from when I went to school,” Lachman explains. “I wanted to figure out how I can control a negative on-set and get a look that would let me precisely understand what I was photographing. I referenced in my mind Ansel Adams, the famed landscape photographer, and the way that he understood exposure in his work, basing it on 18-percent grey in order to comprehend how far he could go with over-exposure to read full detail, or how under-exposed he could go to still read shadow detail.

I thought, that is something I wanted to do in cinema.”

Lachman is referencing Adams’ Zone System photographic technique for figuring out the best possible film exposure for still photography – a technique Adams developed with fellow photographer and collaborator Fred Archer in the early 1940s.

Lachman’s notion was to bring to the world of cinematography their idea that reading the direct relationship between light and lens stops could provide

better exposure data. Now, he is working to bring the concept into digital cameras as a more accurate tool for determining digital exposure compared to using the concept of false colour or relying on waveform monitors.

“I long ago came up with my own personal zone system – shooting B&W Polaroids and marking them up based on the film stock, the ASA range, the light meter’s reading and rating, and how the lab developed the negative,” he says. “I looked at all those things to figure out where my 18-percent grey was coming out. When the digital world came along, I would still shoot a Polaroid on-set, write the stop values on the Polaroid to keep a record of exposure on-set, and help train my eye.

“In other words, I was basically training myself to pre-visualise what the negative was representing, and now, in the digital world, what you see on the monitor. But in the digital world, I had to be beholden

comes along and tells them to use something else?”

However, Lachman patiently drew-up proposals for the major manufacturers, “virtually everybody,” he says, and drew them into discussions on this issue that are now on-going in many cases, and which have more recently expanded to include monitor

CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD JULY 2021 41

RICHARD CRUDO ASC•LETTER FROM AMERICA

WAKE-UP CALL R

ichard Crudo ASC says the madness of abusive working hours needs to change.

This may seem a strange topic for a period in which the film industry has been running far below its capacity for a while, but what better time to tackle such an important issue?

Let me start with a quotation. “Our responsibility is to the visual image of the film as well as the wellbeing of the crew. The continuing and expanding practice of working extreme hours can compromise both the quality of our work and the health and safety of others.”

When the late legend Conrad Hall ASC issued this statement in 2002, he had just survived a punishing schedule on the feature, Road To Perdition (dir. Sam Mendes). His purpose was the reform of a policy which had become a type of sanctioned abuse.

Today, everyone is aware of the Sarah Jones tragedy. But they should also remember assistant cameraman Brent Hershman. In 1997 he was killed while driving home from a shoot in a sleep-deprived state. Countless others have barely avoided a similar fate. It remains a black mark on the industry that to date no substantive action has been taken to reignin the thinking that leads to excessive working hours.

None of us are lazy. In fact, no other occupation puts in the time we do – and in so many volatile combinations and environments. But while the human body is resilient and capable of staggering endurance, no one should have to call on those reserves to make a living.

Consider this common scenario.

Rise at 5:00am to be at the studio for a 7am call on Monday. But, instead of finishing an eight hour day at 3pm like most people, you work until 8pm. And you’re not done yet. There’s off-the-clock consultation with the director and producer, travel time home and perhaps a meal. No one jumps into bed the instant they walk through the door, so add at least half an hour of decompression time. Maybe a few minutes with the family or tending to other responsibilities. Now, you’ve been awake and at it for nearly eighteen hours. Then gradually push that 7am call forward each day so that by Friday this crucible begins at 5pm and ends at 7 or 8am the following morning. You’ll start all over the same way at 7am on Monday. I haven’t even factored-in overtime. Working on location? It’s worse. Now repeat that pattern for months on end.

It’s like living in a state of constant, impenetrable jet lag. Health, relationships and quality of work suffer; safety on-set is dangerously compromised.

Would an insurance salesman agree to this pace?

A grocery manager? An accountant? I promise you that the clerks who came up with this devilish design rarely approach a productive eight hours in their warm, dry offices. They probably don’t find themselves nodding-off behind the wheel during the drive home on the San Diego Freeway, either.

When you strip away the emotional and artistic attachments to what we do, the object of our

42 JULY 2021 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

What is important is that it needs to change.

For a deeper dive into this issue, check out the documentary directed by Haskell Wexler ASC and Lisa Leeman, “Who Needs Sleep?” http://whoneedssleep.weebly.com/ https://vimeo.com/ondemand/whoneedssleep Richard Crudo ASC Richard Crudo ASC is a cinematographer/ director with over 40 years of experience in feature films and episodic television. He is also a six-term Past President of the ASC and a Past Cinematographers Branch Governor of AMPAS.

passion is seen for what it really is – a job. It’s the best one in the world for many of us, but is it worth life and health? How this lunacy of abusive hours became standard procedure and why it’s allowed to continue are of no significance.

It remains a black mark that no substantive action has been taken to reign-in the thinking that leads to excessive working hours

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F9: THE FAST SAGA•STEPHEN F WINDON ACS ASC

BIG, LOUD AND EXHILARATING

STEPHEN F WINDON ACS ASC•F9: THE FAST SAGA

Photos: F9: The Fast Saga.

All film Images (c) 2021 Universal Studios.

All Rights Reserved.

By Ron Prince

Movie franchises have helped to boost box office receipts for many decades. In 2021 they might just prove the rejuvenating shot-in-the arm the industry needs at a time when cinemas are struggling to survive.

Never was this more true than Universal Pictures’ F9: The Fast Saga – the ninth main instalment, and the tenth full-length feature, in the Fast & Furious franchise – which yet again delivers another breath-taking, action-packed, highoctane adventure, brought to the big screen by director Justin Lin and his go-to cinematographer Stephen F. Windon ACS ASC.

44 JULY 2021 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD JULY 2021 45

F9: THE FAST SAGA•STEPHEN F WINDON ACS ASC

STEPHEN F WINDON ACS ASC•F9: THE FAST SAGA

Photos: F9: The Fast Saga.

All film Images (c) 2021 Universal Studios.

All Rights Reserved.

Let’s break down some of the figures. Every Fast & Furious film has returned at least $200 million from box offices worldwide, and six have made more than $500 million. The most successful movie, Furious 7 (2015), took $1.5 billion, and made more money globally than Skyfall (2012), the most successful 007 James Bond movie, which itself raked-in a staggering $1.1 billion.

Including the spin-off Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw (2019), the family of films has grossed over $6.1 billion to date, placing it comfortably in the top five highest-grossing franchises of all time, with two more films set to come.

F9: The Fast Saga follows Dominic Toretto, played

by Vin Diesel, and his family as they seek to stop a world-shattering plot headed by Dom’s estranged younger brother Jakob, himself a quick-witted assassin and hotshot driver. The film, co-written by Lin and Daniel Casey, also stars Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson, Chris “Ludacris” Bridges and John Cena, along with special appearances by Charlize Theron, Cardi B, Kurt Russell and Dame Helen Mirren.

We always try to create energy and excitement The film is Lin’s fifth Fast & Furious movie, Windon’s sixth, and depicts increasingly imaginative plot lines, deepening character developments and daredevil driving, all designed to keep audiences coming back for more.

Made using some of the latest state-of-the-art techniques combined with traditional filmmaking technology, F9: The Fast Saga ricochets around the world with action sequences taking place in London, Thailand, Georgia and Edinburgh, and, for the first time it even propels two characters into space in an effort to destroy a satellite.

Ron Prince met-up with Windon over Skype, as the Australian DP was taking a day-off from shooting The Gray Man, directed by Joe and Anthony Russo in Prague, to discover more about his recipe in serving-up another beguiling blockbuster.

“The mandate from Justin and the executives at Universal was to ‘go big’, to press the pedal to the metal, and to deliver a film that would look amazing and sensational – that was the basic brief,” laughs Windon. “Trying to find the next visual experience for

46 JULY 2021 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

the franchise is always a task in itself. When you start reading the script, and consider a particular stunt, you often think, ‘How the hell are we going to shoot that?’. Whilst these films contain a visual interest from frequently shooting in multiple international locations, it’s getting much harder to close down a city for long periods of time. They have all been like that, and it’s challenging.

“However, we always try to create energy and excitement, that’s what we do, and it’s actually a lot of fun taking time to break down each sequence into what’s practical live-action, what’s VFX, and what rigs we can use to make things happen.

“Of course, there are different storylines, and along with the stunning locations, there’s now a lot of backstory to each of our characters, some are having existential crises, and all that helps to bring a certain uniqueness to each film, especially with F9: The Fast Saga. And there’s a lot of both traditional and ultra-modern technology – in the form of capture media, cameras, rigs, VFX and lighting – that can help you move things along visually.

“I went from shooting The Fast And The Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006) on 35mm to Furious 7 (2015), which was the first digitally-acquired movie. F9: The Fast Saga was always going to be a digital production, but as the narrative contained flashbacks to the very first film in the series, The Fast And The Furious (2001), I thought celluloid film would be great to evoke that period. So I suggested to Justin that we shot those moments, around 25% of the movie, on 35mm film. He liked that idea of very much. So F9 became a hybrid of analogue and digital from very early-on.”

The flashback sequences, including an early exciting car chase sequence, were shot using

Panavision Panaflex Platinum XL2 cameras fitted with uncoated Panavision Primo lenses, which had the effect of helping to desaturate the image and encourage halations for a more classical look.

However, Windon did not stop there. “Film grain was a subliminal part of the picture when we went to watch movies at the cinema back in the 1990s, and I really wanted encourage this texture in the movie by using film. During my career I have shot Kodak Vision2 5218 500T and, more recently, Kodak Vision3 5219 500T, more than any other celluloid filmstocks. These

CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD JULY 2021 47

F9: THE FAST SAGA•STEPHEN F WINDON ACS ASC

days only the 5219 500T is available. It has a nice level of grain, and it is incredibly flexible for all types of situations – you can mitigate against the light in bright circumstances using NDs, and it is fabulous for dark and night-time scenes.”

But Windon did not stop there either in search of his desired filmic aesthetic, as he explains. “To achieve the look I wanted, I used the technique of making an interpositive (IP) and then an internegative (IN) from the circle takes shot on the original 5219 500T negative, and then had the dupe negative scanned back in. Doing this gave a lovely rich grain, plus real crunch and contrast, to the image, that looked like it really was filmed back in the 1990s, and this became our tone and palette for the flashbacks.” Film processing was done at FotoKem in Los Angeles and Cinelab in London.

The rest of the production, set in contemporary times, however, was an all-digital affair, but not, as you might expect using large format cameras.

Windon instead went with the traditional ARRI Alexa SXT, shooting at 3.4K in ARRIRAW, using the same Panavision Primo lenses used on the 35mm-filmed parts of movie.

The whole movie was framed in widescreen 2.40:1 aspect ratio, “as we like the widescreen thing, and to me it suits the shape of a car,” Windon quips. “However, Justin is not a director who likes the

This film became a hybrid of analogue and digital from very early-on wow, perfect, high-rez, edge-to-edge snap of the digital image. He much prefers a certain softness to the picture. Although we shot tests with large format cameras, the images really did not suit our story. I set some basic LUTs during prep for the ARRI Alexa SXTs, and there was something far nicer and filmic in those pictures, which just seemed better for our story. We were very happy with our hybrid combination of IP/ IN second generation 35mm film negative and ARRI Alexa SXT as our looks for the show.”

Having shot so many films in the franchise, does Windon still feel the need to look at creative references? “Yes, I do,” he declares. “I am always looking at other images, films and photography. Even if they are not directly connected to the movie, they might give me an idea for a mood or an atmosphere.

“I’ve watched pretty much every classic car chase sequence at least 20 times over the years, and you always see something that will inspire you! Whether

48 JULY 2021 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

it’s Bullitt (1968, dir. Peter Yates, DP William A. Fraker ASC), The Italian Job (1969, dir. Peter Collinson, DP Douglas Slocombe OBE BSC ASC), or The French Connection (1971, dir. William Friedkin, DP Owen Roizman ASC). One of my favourite recent action films was Ford v Ferrari (2019, dir. James Mangold, DP Phedon Papamichael ASC GSC) – a very beautifullycrafted and entertaining film in my opinion.”

Windon also offers some tips for anyone wanting to convey the idea of fast and furious car action

the gaffer on the US shoots, with Perry Evans gaffer across the UK shoots.

A key collaborator was second unit DP Igor Meglic who played a crucial role, along with second unit director, Spiro Razatos, in shooting the car/ stunt sequences in Thailand. In Edinburgh Windon’s first unit shot simultaneously with this splinter unit, photographed by UK-based DP Callan Green and directed by stunt co-ordinator JJ Perry.

CRUELLA

on-screen themselves. “If real estate is tight and you need to sell speed, I have a checklist: add foreground where possible, check; place the camera low to the road, check; shoot at 22fps, check; sharpen the shutter a little, between 145º and 90º, check!”

Principal photography on F9: The Fast Saga took place over 90 shooting days, between May and November 2019, presaged by 16 weeks of prep, during which time Windon, Lin and other key crew members, including VFX supervisor Peter Chiang and second unit DP Igor Meglic, went on extensive scouts.

Shooting locations included Los Angeles, plus Krabi, Ko Pha-ngan and Phuket in Thailand, Tiblisi in Georgia, and Edinburgh, Scotland. Studio shoots, including the movie’s underwater sequences, were undertaken at MBS in LA. This was followed by a lengthy stint at Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden in the UK, where the production made extensive use of the facility’s 360º backlot and recently-built S and V stages.

The shoot predominantly used three cameras.

Geoffrey Haley SOC, recent winner of SOC Award for Cherry (DP Newton Thomas Sigel ASC) operated A-camera/Steadicam throughout, with Windon himself on B-camera, and Matt Windon, his brother, on C-camera. Peter Byrne was first AC, with Peter Chrimes working as key grip on the US and Thailand shoots, and Steve Ellingworth the key grip during the UK leg of production. Michael Ambrose was

“I enjoy operating and did more on this production than I have done on previous films,” says Windon. “Although these are big machines, and you have to deal with so much – like managing the schedule with the first AD, liaising with the VFX supervisor, the director and the second unit – I now feel comfortable with that level of management. I also had full confidence and trust in my amazingly-talented and dedicated crew to do what was needed.”

Indeed, that level of trust played a huge factor in another idea of Windon’s to move the action to an altogether different plane.

“One of the exciting things we did on F9, that we had never done before, was to tie-together the

F9: THE FAST SAGA•STEPHEN F WINDON ACS ASC BTS photo – DP Stephen F. Windon ASC ACS and director Justin Lin on the set of F9: The Fast Saga

second unit stunt action sequences with the first unit photography for those scenes. For example, the camera starts beside a fast moving-vehicle careering through explosions in the jungle, before it cranes-up and pushes-in towards the windshield and the actors, all as one seamless shot. Of course, shooting that for real would have been hugely problematic and dangerous for the cast. So working with Peter Chiang and Igor Meglic, we came up with a great solution.”

This involved shooting the second unit action sequences with devices that could record the fore/aft and side-to-side motion data of the vehicle, capturing all of the bumps, bangs, jolts and judders, as well as the moves of the camera. When it came to shooting

I had full trust in my amazingly-talented crew to do what was needed on the jungle set at WBSL, this data was then fed into a SISU Cinema Robots motion control camera rig, and a motion control base holding an identical vehicle, so that that camera and car movements could be replicated during the first unit photography.

“Motion control has been around for a long time, but the way in which it allowed us to marry and blend the second and first unit action shots together was a new things for us,” says Windon. “I did not attend the second unit photography abroad, as I was in the UK with the first unit. But I had complete confidence and belief in Igor to capture what we wanted. He and I spoke together everyday during those shoots, and he would send me photographs of the set-ups and stills from footage, so that we were all on the same page.

We used this sort of process multiple times in the movie, and it allowed us to do some truly astonishing shots that the audience will love.”

Windon hails from a long-established filmmaking

50 JULY 2021 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

family. His grandfather shot silent movies and early talkies during the 1920s and ‘30s in Australia, and his father was a stills and newsreel cameraman, who had to grapple with the move from B&W to colour acquisition on film during the 1950s and ‘60s.

“They both worked during times of great transition in film and TV technology, and I feel very lucky and grateful to have been around to see a couple big changes myself in the way films are now made,” Windon remarks. “During the first part of my career I shot on analogue film, but then came digital. The other big change has been the advent of LED lighting.

Along with digital capture, it is one of the most exciting developments in modern filmmaking, quite a watershed.

“The lovely thing about LED lighting is that, with the increasing pressure to shoot quickly nowadays, with seven major characters and often a special guest actor, your gaffer and lighting programmer can rapidly show you different lighting set-ups, colours and intensities very quickly.

“I like to layer the lighting in live-action shots – between fore, mid and background.

Whilst you can equally do that with older lights and gels, it just takes a few seconds to dial-up a warm colour on an ARRI SkyPanel, or similar fixture, in the foreground, put a cool blue/green in the mid, and something neutral behind. I really love that. We used a ton of ARRI SkyPanels on F9, along with Astera tubes, that you can either use in-shot like a practical or a fluorescent, or hide around the set. We even used the Asteras fixed on long parallel poles beside a car and programmed-in chase effects to simulate movement, as if the vehicle was passing street lights.”

Windon attended the final DI grade F9: The Fast

Saga, partly in-person and partly remotely, due to the pandemic – starting-out working at Efilm in LA with colourist Andre Rivas, before finalising the picture via a live 2K link between LA and a post-production facility based at Fox Studios in Sydney.

“Andre is a great young colourist with a bright future, and we managed to get through a lot of the grading when we were together in LA,” says Windon.

“Of course, in the latter stages of the DI we had a lot of final VFX coming-in from the different VFX vendors around the world, so most of the work was about getting those shots to sit invisibly with the main picture. I tend to stay-on for a few extra days after principal photography and set-up a look bible that the VFX teams can reference in terms of image colour and density. This helped to give a very high level on consistency across the final VFX shots, and the DI went very smoothly.”

He concludes, “I am delighted by the final result,

and was very happy to hook-up with Justin and many of our collaborative partners once again to make a film filled with new energy and excitement.”

LOKI•AUTUMN DURALD

AUTUMN DURALD•LOKI

TIME-LOOP

Photos: Cinematographer Autumn Durald, on the set of Marvel Studios’ Loki, exclusively on Disney+.

Photo by Chuck Zlotnick. ©Marvel Studios 2021. All Rights Reserved.

By Iain Blair

C

inematographer and California native Autumn Durald has come a long way since she graduated from AFI just over a decade ago. She began shooting microbudget films and commercials, quickly gained attention for her bold visual style and attention to detail, and got her first big break when Gia Coppola hired her to shoot Palo Alto, the 2013 indie drama and festival favourite.

Since then, she’s shot many features, including Ry Russo-Young’s The Sun Is Also A Star, Max Minghella’s Teen Spirit, Emma Forrest’s Untogether, and Coppola’s Mainstream, which premiered at the 2020 Venice Film Festival. Durald has also collaborated with director Spike Jonze on Apple TV+’s Beastie Boys Story and the Netflix comedy special Aziz Ansari: Right Now, shot music videos for the Jonas Brothers, Janelle Monáe, Solange Knowles, and London Grammar, and lensed commercials for Samsung, World Market, Red Cross, Lipton, Coca Cola and Nike.

So maybe it was just a matter of time before superheroes and Marvel also called on her talents, teaming Durald with director Kate Herron on Marvel Studios’ highly-anticipated live-action time-travelling television series Loki. The series stars Tom Hiddleston as Loki, the adopted brother of Thor and a previous antagonist to the Marvel Universe’s Avengers, as he has an unlikely influence across human history.

Here, in an exclusive interview, Durald talks about the challenges of the monster shoot and her approaches to the cinematography and lighting.

me the look I wanted, given how I like to light and shoot, and tweaked and modified them. We’d do tests, and I ended up with a great package.

Loki must be the most ambitious project you’ve ever shot and a big change of pace for you?

For sure! I veer towards moodier naturalism and realism and smaller projects usually. I’d been asked to meet about bigger shows before, though not as big as this, and had not been able to commit the time they take – months and months – as I have a family and a young son. But I loved this and the vision Kate Herron had for it, and we had similar references, so I was excited to be involved.

Tell us a little about your colour pipeline and the final DI? I do a lot of commercials in between all my film projects and work a lot with British colourist Tom Poole. We talked a lot about Loki and he made me a LUT for the show. Then I had my DIT Zach Hilton.

The way I work is that I like to colour as much as I can on-set after each set-up, so that dailies match that look which then carries through editorial and post.

But the final colourist was Matt Watson who works at Marvel’s own new post and DI facility. I have OCD so at times I find the DI very tedious (laughs), and when you have so many VFX like this, you can do passes but you’re still waiting on shots to come in and constantly having to go back. It helped that we did as much as possible in-camera, but as we speak I’m still grading. It’s been a marathon, but I’ve really loved doing it and working with such a great team, and I’m very happy with the way it looks.

How did you and Kate Herron approach the look of the show?

Kate’s done a lot of shorts and loves horror films, and she has great taste when it comes to contrast and mood and tone. So when I went into the meeting she had a lot of references that were movies I also love and consider a lot, such as Zodiac (2007, dir. David Fincher, DP Harris Savides ASC), Se7en (1995, dir. David Fincher, DP. Darius Khondji AFC ASC), Barton Fink (1991, dirs. Joel & Ethan Coen, DP Roger Deakins CBE BSC ASC) and Blade Runner (1982, dir. Ridley Scott, DP Jordan Cronenweth ASC). I felt it was meant to be as they were exactly what I would have used, and that we were on the same page.

What were the big technical challenges?

These shows, like this and WandaVision, are new for Marvel, but they have the budget, characters, 52 JULY 2021 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

You mentioned earlier that lighting is your favourite part of the job. Talk about what was involved on this show.

It was great as Kate was such a fan of my lighting style and very supportive of the moody, dramatic look I wanted. It helps so much when you work with people who share your taste, because at the end of the day there are so many layers and choices that go into the final image – from the camera and lens to the lighting, what you put on the lens, the frame, costumes, production design, and so on – and everyone on this show had really good taste.

I worked very closely with my longtime gaffer Brian Bartolini. This was our first job lighting on such a huge scale. We pretty much took over all the stages at Pinewood Atlanta, and had a lot of huge sets to pre-light.

It also really helped that we built so much, so it wasn’t all bluescreen, and that they planned to have real ceilings on this show. I know that sounds funny, but I like to shoot low and a lot below the eye-line, so on this you see all the ceilings and they’re all real.

Our lighting package was mainly Astera Titan tubes, Litegear units plus ARRI Sky panels. We used a 4x8 RGB Source Maker soft box through magic cloth on a Menace arm for close-ups, and a few Dino light rigs with narrow spot globes on Manitous for some of the large day exterior work.

we shot for five weeks before Covid hit and we then took a hiatus, not knowing what would happen. That stretched into six months ultimately. That was pretty gnarly, but then it gave me family time and we all picked up very smoothly where we left off.

scope and time put into them as if they’re movies, and we’re delivering a far bigger story over six episodes than you’d get in a two-hour movie. There’s a lot involved technically with all the action sequences and VFX and stunts and so on, but you have this great support structure from people who’ve all done this sort of production before. So it was great to come on and have all these methodology meetings with people who are well-versed in doing this stuff, and so creative and collaborative.

Doing something so huge and ambitious was new to me and Kate, and you don’t always have the answers right away for how you’re going to execute these big sequences. For instance there was a long sequence that takes place on some planet, with a lot of VFX work in it, and we did a lot of previz and methodology about how it should look and how we were going to shoot it. It takes time to problem-solve those kind of complex sequences.

Loki is full of huge action scenes and cinema-level VFX that look like they could have come straight out of the Avengers films. Did you study-up on all that?

Yes, and even though I was already very familiar with those films and Thor, I brushed-up on the whole storyline, and Tom Hiddleston gave a great talk about his character’s whole back story which was amazing.

Lighting is my favourite thing. I feel it should always be emotional and that character moments should be driven by lighting, so Tom’s talk was very helpful.

How long was the prep and did Covid interrupt the shoot?

It did, and it was crazy. I had about ten weeks prep, and I spent two weeks with Kate here in LA, before she left for Atlanta where we shot it all. I had eight weeks in Atlanta to prep all six episodes. Then

How did you make all your camera and lens choices?

I mostly shoot with ARRI Alexa in my feature work, but I also do a lot of commercials, and a director introduced me to the Sony Venice on a commercial we did. That was the first time I’d used it, and as someone who usually shoots with one camera I was very open to it, and I loved it. I fell in love with the way the Sony Venice renders colour and image, and the lenses I could use. So after that, I began using the Venice mostly, and when I came on-board for Loki I suggested using it and we did some tests.

Interestingly, Marvel had never used the Sony Venice before, except once on Black Widow, and because of all the VFX on this they wanted to make the right choice for everyone involved. For lenses I used Panavision. I’ve had a relationship with them for the past ten years and they’ve been so supportive. I’m a big Anamorphic shooter, so we ended-up shooting with the T-series Anamorphics. Panavision and Dan Sasaki really helped by working on the lenses to give

CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD JULY 2021 53

ZOLA•ARI WEGNER ACS

ARI WEGNER ACS•ZOLA

BOOGIE NIGHTMARES

Photos: Film stills and BTS shots from director Janicza Bravo’s Zola.

Photo credit: Anna Kooris / A24 Films

By Ron Prince

S

hooting on Kodak 16mm film, Australian cinematographer Ari Wegner ACS conjured-up a hellishly colourful confection for director Janicza Bravo’s salacious dark-comedy Zola.

Shooting on Kodak 16mm film, Australian cinematographer Ari Wegner ACS conjured-up a hellishly colourful confection for director Janicza Bravo’s salacious dark-comedy Zola.

The A24 film is based on an infamous 148-tweet thread, posted by Detroit waitress and avid poledancer, A’Ziah ‘Zola’ King, on October 27, 2015, in which she related a wild, 48-hour road-trip to Tampa, Florida, involving partying, stripping, prostitution, gangsters and an attempted suicide.

In the movie, adapted for the screen by Bravo and co-writer Jeremy O. Harris, Zola (Taylour Paige) meets Stefani (Riley Keough) while serving her at a restaurant. The two immediately bond over their love of pole dancing and the extra money this earns them. Just a day after they exchange phone numbers, Stefani invites Zola on a cross-country escapade down South, where she promises they can make thousands of dollars for just a few hours of dancing in strip clubs. Zola agrees, but suddenly finds herself partaking in a tense and chaotic odyssey that is actually a ruse for Stefani’s sinister pimp, called X (Colman Domingo), to cash-in on them both.

Wegner’s painterly, docudrama-style of 16mm cinematography on Zola has been described as fittingly gritty and visually enticing, with a confident sense of composition and place. Static camera shots reveal ominous depths to the story line, close-up lips are painted deep cherry red, a regular liquor store is reframed with an otherworldly alignment of bottles in rows, and shabby motel suites are lit to become all the more lurid-looking.

Bravo’s previous credits include the awardwinning short Gregory Go Boom (2013) and Lemon (2017). Wegner is known for her stark work on Lady Macbeth (2016), hyper-real lighting for In Fabric (2018), punk-style lensing on True History Of The Kelly Gang (2019), and the sense of unease that pervades the pictures on TV series The Kettering 54 JULY 2021 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

Incident (2016).

“Janicza is such an exciting and talented director. I saw her film Lemon at Sundance 2017, and thought this is someone I would love to work with,” says Wegner. “We initially met on Skype, and her energy and passion for Zola were electric.

The original Tweet thread is an amazing piece of literature, and I loved how Janicza and Jeremy’s script captured the essence of A’Ziah’s super-dark humour – her observations and her voice, and as well as the world of the Internet in 2015, which doesn’t seem like that long ago, but in Internet years that’s forever. Only someone as detail-passionate as Janicza would pick-up on the fact that this was going to be a period film, set just a few years ago.”

Of course, the visual aesthetic of any production does not exist until the director discusses their vision with the cinematographer.

Wegner reveals, “Janicza wanted a look that was playful and knowing, but also uncomfortably real. A look where we could highlight the strength and athleticism of this character, follow her sliding from a dream into a nightmare, with humour her only protective armour.

“Janicza already had a huge library of ideas and images – including the vivid colours in William Eggleston’s photographic work and the portraiture

by Deana Lawson. However, one reference that stood out as key was Hieronymus Bosch’s triptych The Garden Of Earthly Delights, this became the central touchstone for the visual arc of the film.”

Painted between 1490 and 1510, and housed in the Museo Del Prado, Madrid, since 1939, Bosch’s famous work is comprised of three panels separately depicting Heaven, Earth and Hell, each with its own distinct colour palette.

“The Garden Of Earthly Delights seemed to sum-up Zola’s journey in three acts, and served as a reminder as we shot,” explains Wegner, “At the start of the film, when we are in Heaven, our palette was calm, with pastel colours, a marshmallow softness to the contrast. When we enter Earth – moving from Detroit to Tampa – things get busier, vivid primary colours start coming in with a bit more contrast, until we enter Hell, where we meet blackness, and the highcontrast imagery becomes swampy and stressful.”

Production on Zola took place at locations around Tampa over the course of 26 shooting days, during October, November and December 2018.

“It was important to us to shoot in the place where A’Ziah’s story happened.” remarks Wegner, “Plus there is something visually distinctive about the light, atmosphere and colours of Tampa – blinding sun-bleached days and these vivid, humid nights.

“but for any coloured light we used LED fixtures, such as SkyPanels and Astera tubes, for the many different motel, hotel and club locations.

“This was actually the first time I had lit using an iPad to control the colours and dimmers on DMX, and it was amazing to have a gaffer like Chris who was so passionate about that. The Astera tubes were super-useful for things like our night-time car travelling scenes, where we could rig them up on the outside of the vehicle and design a chase sequence to perfectly match and enhance the existing street lights. As the film progresses we used increasingly discordant colour combinations – intensely saturated tones that don’t sit well together. I wanted that feeling of discomfort to be inescapable for the characters

The road surfaces, the buildings and signage, the types of trees, were all seemingly small details individually, but collectively those details created a sense of place that bind a film together.”

Of course, with Zola being a contemporary tale with garish colouring, it could have been considered a dead-cert for digital-origination. However, Wegner reveals that Bravo was dead-set on using analogue film from the get-go.

“There was never any doubt that Zola was going to be shot on film, and for me it was a treat to come back to shooting 16mm,” says Wegner who last shot analogue 16mm film on Winter (2013, dir. Amie Siegel). “What I love about shooting on celluloid,

especially 16mm, is that it is incredibly real and at the same time heightened - which actually describes quite well our approach to the film in general. Also, Janicza and I both love how film records skin tones, and this is a film that in many ways is about skin and bodies.”

Wegner worked with Panavision in New York

and Atlanta to supply a shooting package comprising of an ARRI 416 16mm camera plus Ultra Prime lenses. She went with a combination of KODAK VISION3 7219 500T and KODAK VISION3 7207 250D. Kodak Film Lab New York was responsible for the film processing.

“The ARRI 416 is a beautiful workhorse of a camera – compact, rock solid, intuitive, everything you need and nothing more. I love that camera,” she says. “The Ultra Primes are traditionally a very sharp lens, but when paired with the softness of the 16mm the result is really gorgeous.

“500T was the natural choice for our lowlight situations, such as night scenes and many of our interiors, and we shot mostly 250D outside.

Whenever I come back to film after not having shot it for a while I’m always so impressed with how robust film stock is, it really does excel when pushed to its limits – in ways that I don’t think digital can match just yet.”

“For example, the intense sun of a day exterior can strike the fear of god into any DP shooting digital. But having an emulsion like the 250D, the highlight roll-off is always going to look beautiful.

I also like 250D because it has a nice amount of grain and a wonderful pastel quality to it.”

“Above all, I was blessed to have such a beautiful cast to shoot, and I love how they all look in this film. We often had light and dark skin tones in same frame, and celluloid handles that so well.”

Wegner’s crew, who she describes as “wonderful collaborators”, were all Florida-based, namely: 1st AC, Stéphane Renard; key grip, Mike L. Germaine; and gaffer, Chris Hill.

“Our day interiors were generally lit with HMIs, to bounce-in natural-looking light,” Wegner recalls,

and the viewer.”

Apart from scenes requiring Steadicam, Wegner operated throughout the production. “It was very important to us that we centered Zola as the storyteller, so we spoke a lot about how to do that visually. We constantly asked ourselves what the best shots were to see the scene from where she was at – not just geographically in the room but as a character – what details she was noticing,

what she was feeling. It was essential that a viewer would know what her thoughts and opinions were, regardless of whether or not she choose to voice them.

“Sometimes that required a special shot on Zola, treating her differently to how we covered the other characters in a scene. At other times we did matching shot-sizes on everyone and knew that Taylour’s performance in combination with the editing and score would do that job better.”

The dance scenes, like any dance scene, required some careful planning. “Pole-dancing is incredibly athletic. Taylour trained so hard for that, which allowed us the great freedom to shoot any angle we wanted, angles that wouldn’t have been possible if we’d needed a body double. We wanted to shoot her in a way that captured the athleticism as well as the elegance of what she was doing – to say ‘this is work’, and that it’s also incredible and beautiful.

Early-on Janicza mentioned Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia – Festival Of Nations-and Festival Of Beauty (1938) and that was a turning point for me in understanding what those scenes could be.”

Wegner concludes, ”Janicza is an incredibly energetic and vibrant director, who creates an energy onset which is simultaneously playful and serious, risk-taking as well as meticulous. She is very detailoriented across all departments – from props and performance, to the lighting, framing and locations.

She has a holistic vision, in that there’s no part of the frame has not been rigorously considered by her.

That attention to detail, when all the elements come together is magical.”

CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD JULY 2021 55

THE REASON I JUMP•RUBEN WOODIN DESCHAMPS

RUBEN WOODIN DESCHAMPS•THE REASON I JUMP What was your approach to motivating the camera?

The observational parts of the film were all shot handheld and for the sections with the young boy we used a Mōvi Pro. For the heightened subjective moments each of our contributors would have an obsession or fascination with an action or object, which would either be a compulsion or form of comfort.

For example, with Joss it was electricity and the hum of 3-phase power, and with Jestina it was a small piece of red string. These gave us our key to each character and were often inherently visual capture.

For our objective coverage we just wanted to keep it dead simple, sitting with them and just holding a frame and waiting for the right moment. For the moments with Shun, we wanted to show his unending appetite to be in motion. Working with non-verbal actor Jim, playing Shun, was an amazing experience, as we were able to direct and guide him slightly

SENSORY CINEMA

By Ron Prince

Based on the book by Naoki Higashida, director Jerry Rothwell’s immersive and highly-acclaimed documentary, The Reason I Jump, explores the experiences of non-speaking autistic people around the world.

S

hot by DP Ruben Woodin Dechamps, and described as “ravishing to behold”, the cinematography evokes the sensory distortion, intense focus and literally different way of seeing for people on the autistic spectrum.

What attracted you to this project?

I had been keen to work with Jerry for a while, and this was one of those rare projects that attracted me, not only on a cinematic level, but also as an

you could feel comfortable looking but without judgement. We wanted to allow moments to playout with held frames, keeping it stripped-back where possible, without the temptation to look for too much coverage.

It felt really important that, although the sensory perception of reality by the film’s contributors may differ from a neuro-typical person, it shouldn’t be depicted as hallucinatory. We could dip into moments of overstimulation in the subjective parts,

I wanted to create an observational approach, which was an honest and quiet visual cinematic How much prep time did you have?

We had maybe a week’s worth of meetings and discussions about the visual approach before starting to shoot. We developed the look-and-feel on the job, starting out in the UK with some initial days with Joss, and then coming back to watch it together and decide how to develop the look and approach further.

Where did you shoot?

The shoot took us all over, from Broadstairs in the UK, to Washington in the US, Freetown in Sierra Leone, and New Delhi in India. The range of locations and contributors was key to showing different attitudes and approaches towards non-verbal autism.

Which cameras and lenses did you choose?

With the nature of the project it was decided to shoot digital from the outset. We shot most of the film on ARRI Alexa Mini and Zeiss Standard Speeds, with some pick-ups on Sony FS5. We opted to shoot spherical in 2:35:1 format to play with the layers of scale within our contributors’ sensory experiences.

I knew this was going to be a challenge, to be emotionally true to our contributors, and wanted a camera where the technical side of things would be

How long was the shoot?

The shoot took place across a year, with around seven weeks total shooting time.

advocacy for autism awareness. Naoki Higashida’s book provided the blueprint for the film and a really exciting springboard for developing our approach to the film.

What were your first discussions with Jerry about the film?

We wanted to invite the viewers into the complex, subjective experience of non-speaking autistic people through our contributors, their sensory worlds and preoccupations, using the words from Naoki’s book.

I wanted to create an observational approach, which was an honest and quiet visual cinematic experience, an invitation into intimate spaces, where 56 JULY 2021 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

but the objective should stay honest. When shooting subjectively and focussing on the contributors’ preoccupations we shot a lot of macro, as during our research the sense of scale and the seduction of detail kept coming up.

Naoki’s words, visualised through the journey of a young boy through landscapes, act like our spirit guide between the non-verbal and verbal worlds.

We wanted to highlight the feeling of peace and relaxation that came from movement. So our camera journeys through abstract visual landscapes with the boy, always moving, always drawn by this need for movement.

What research did you do?

I spent a couple of days together with Jerry and DP Richard Stewart to talk about how to tackle the look. Initially, Richard was going to do the observational photography, and myself the heightened subjective moments.

But it ended-up working-out that I shot the film.

We discussed the layers we wanted – objective, subjective and the layer with Shun, played by Jim Fujiwara, to the narration of Jordan O’Donegan. Autistic writers, Naoki Higashida, Donna Williams and Tito Mukhopadhyay, were very influential when exploring how to visually approach the film.

Films such as Leviathan (2014, DP Mikhail Krichman), The Possibilities Are Endless (2014, DP Richard Stewart) and Hukkle (2002, DP Gergely Pohárnok), were influences in terms of their tone and journeys into sensory cinema. The Wonders (2014, DP Hélène Louvart AFC) was an influence in terms of its operating and the balance between a documentary-like camera in a narrative setting.

minimal. The familiarity, simplicity and ability to break the build right down, with all the power in that sensor, made the Alexa Mini the obvious choice. We shot with Zeiss lenses as they have such a great small form factor and texture when combined with the Alexa Mini, and shot most of the film on 20mm, 32mm and 100mm Macro.

Feral Equipment in London provided all camera and lens equipment, and we travelled with this package, plus basic grip. We hired-in locally when we needed any additional equipment.

without him feeling as anxious about the relationship to the camera.

Whilst operating the Mōvi he kept on coming up and holding it as we tracked him, which ended-up becoming quite magical moments within the film.

And what was your approach to the lighting for storytelling purposes?

We shot predominantly with available and practical light, supplementing some of the interviews with LED fixtures. With Shun’s visual thread we planned shooting in the mornings and afternoons for a moodier palette. With our autistic contributors, where their existing daily routines provide such reassurance, we worked with what came our way, avoiding the midday light.

Who were your camera and key lighting crew?

For all the UK shoots I worked with Rich Savage who focus pulled and was the Mōvi tech. His ability to work out of a rucksack and understand the sensitivity around the contributors was a great asset. For the shoots abroad we hired local camera assistants who would data wrangle.

How did you blend-in during the shoot with the participants and their families?

One of the biggest challenges on this shoot was learning how to work with our contributors – to shoot with sensitivity, yet without being able to rely on the bedrock of language to understand and predict where the scenes may head. Here is someone whose neurological processing isn’t linear, with dissonant inner and outer realities. They may be super-anxious, not because you have a camera in your hand, which has just edged closer, but because of an experience

years ago that they can’t help but revisit. It differed between each of the contributors, but generally we had a day to get to know them and then would slowly develop a relationship with the camera being around.

Were there any happy accidents, unexpected things that worked out well?

Working with Jim, the non-verbal actor playing Shun, was full of happy accidents, from holding on to the ring on the Mōvi as I operated, to how he interacted with the objects around him.

It was quite a challenge keeping up with him, but it provided an authenticity and spontaneity, which would have been impossible if it had been a neuro-typical actor.

Where did you do the DI grade?

We finished the film at Dirty Looks in London. I created some looks in Lightroom from frame grabs which we discussed with Jerry, and then we worked from the Log-C in the DI to finish the film.

Is there a sequence or shot that you feel shows off your work to its best?

I think my favourite scene in the film is where Ben is communicating via the letter-board at home.

Although it’s not the most showy photographically, we were lucky with the location and light, and I like the simplicity of it. Ultimately it shows in real-time how this form of communication is possible. There are opinions that this is open to influence, yet for Ben it was clearly genuine. If there’s one thing I hope people can take

away from the film, it’s allowing tools like the letterboard to be used to unlock verbal communication.

How did this film challenge you/push your skills?

My biggest takeaway on this project was trying to keep it relatively simple, not to hunt too much for coverage, pick a frame and allow them to develop.

What’s up next for you?

At the moment I am prepping for a drama based on the Isle Of Lewis about surfing and hellfire, due to shoot in the early autumn.

CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD JULY 2021 57

HIGHLIGHT•PANALUX SONARA

AHEAD OF THE CURVE

By Michael Burns

A

s the lighting arm of Panavision, Panalux needs little introduction to readers of Cinematography World.

The company views itself as a creative partner with cinematographers, gaffers and lighting crews, closely watching how its customers are engaging with products and recognising real needs on-set.

That company ethos certainly seems to be true with the evolution of its flagship soft source, the Panalux Sonara 4:4. This variable-white LED soft light offers a high-CRI and high-TLCI to reproduce a broad spectrum of white light with full green/ magenta control. Designed to an industry standard 4’x4’ form factor, the fixture’s LED-array technology enables properly-rendered skin tones and allows for fine adjustments across accurate white points, subtle pastel hues, plus dialled-in X/Y coordinates, as well as a built-in library of select LEE Filters gel emulations (LEE Filters being another Panavision company). Connectivity includes native wireless LumenRadio CRMX as standard, DMX512 and Neutrik etherCON connectors, together with a removable controller for easier on-set access.

Innovation creation According to David Amphlett, technical director and senior manager of R&D and engineering at Panalux, the company was aiming to create a fixture that didn’t currently exist in the market.

“We identified a general requirement for a large format soft light,” says Amphlett. “Most of what was around at that time were either 2:1 panels or 1:1 panels. Historically, people would light through 4:4 frames, either with a single source or a multi-source Tungsten lamp behind it like a Dino. So, it was about producing something that would fit with a form factor that crews are comfortable with and repeatedly use.”

Panalux had clear concepts, which came out of a requirement for this form factor with certain specifications.

“We never wanted the Panalux Sonara to be a Swiss Army Knife,” Amphlett continues. “We wanted it specifically to solve certain problems. It’s aimed at producing really high-quality whites. It’s aimed at being a film light, not an entertainment light. So it doesn’t have a pure red chip, it doesn’t have a pure green chip. We haven’t made compromises on the design intent. We decided the direction it was going in, the part of the market that it was aimed at and the problems it solves.

“The innovation for Panalux Sonara lies in the quality of the whites, the breadth of the spectrum, and two key differentiators: it will produce much warmer and much cooler whites on the BBL (blackbody locus) than most products in the market. We achieve that by using broad-spectrum phosphors, and proprietary chips rather than off-the-peg chips.”

Light mood “Light is such an emotive thing,” continues Amphlett. “A lot of cinematographers want to work warmer than Tungsten, but the general approach in the market is to only go to 2700K or 2800K, which 58 JULY 2021 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

PVM-X2400

PVM-X3200

PVM-X1800

PVM-X Series Production Monitors is not much warmer than a Tungsten source.” The warmest CCT Sonara is capable of is 1600K. According to Amphlett, with this design Panalux was aiming to offer filmmakers a fixture as close as possible on the blackbody locus to candlelight, which he says most LED lights can’t achieve. “Rather than trying to achieve that by adding a red, we do it by adding a phosphor amber,” he adds. “That gives the light a very broad spectrum.”

The coolest temperature that the Panalux Sonara offers is 20,000K. “It would be very unusual for someone to offer a cold white at that end,” he says.

“But as it’s a large soft source, if you wanted to put some colour depth in a scene, you could use it as a top light.”

Another facility is X/Y control. “This is for either targetting specific white points or colour points, or to be used when source-matching,” says Amphlett.

“That’s becoming more and more important in the way that cinematographers are working these days.

If you’re matching against LED screens or backdrops, you want your light source to be putting out the same light as your screen.”

The user interface is another key feature. “I’m passionate about having all the most important information very visible and not buried deep down in the menu,” Amphlett says. “Wherever you are in the menu structure, the key pieces of information on Panalux Sonara are always visible.”

“It’s all about understanding the pressure on-set,” he adds. “We’ve got that knowledge in house. I was

a DP for 20 years, and other people in the company are very experienced gaffers, so we have significant experience with large, varied productions in our working life.”

From the start of the design phase to the rollout of the first beta units, Panalux Sonara 4:4 was in R&D for about 15 months. It was developed with constant feedback and evaluation, both from within and outside the company, and by keeping aware of scenarios being encountered by gaffers.

“It’s all about providing flexibility and features that one would use, rather than gimmicks or effects,” says Amphlett. “On The Crown, for example, the crew had a desire for a large soft fixture for pushing through windows. We saw that as a possible application for this kind of product.”

The reaction has been very positive, “from some very critical people,” according to Amphlett. “Gaffer John ‘Biggles’ Higgins took a number of Panalux Sonara 4:4s to use on All The Old Knives (DP Charlotte Bruus Christensen DFF ASC), and then almost straight away asked for even more.”

The fixture has also seen a lot of recent use in commercials including Haribo, with gaffer Stefan Lissner and Alessandra Scherillo as DP; Nike, with Stephen Mathie as gaffer for DP George Richmond BSC; Ladbrokes with Julian White and Patrick Meller; Sky, with Sol Saihati and John Lynch; a National Ballet spot from gaffer Bill Rae Smith and DP Dan Landin; and NatWest, with gaffer Genki McClure and Rina Yang as DP.

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HIGHLIGHT•PANALUX SONARA

Certain solutions require a special kind of space.

Power-up Innovation on the level of the Panalux Sonara isn’t uncommon at the company. “Panalux has a track record of bringing new products and concepts to the market,” says Amphlett, pointing to the company’s Flex Lights, FloBanks and TekTiles as examples.

Another recent innovation is the Panalux Power h40 hybrid generator. Combining a diesel engine with an advanced lithium-ion battery, the h40 is capable of delivering constant 240V AC power up to 40KW. “The hybrid generator was in design for about six or seven years,” says Amphlett. “It was ahead of its time in terms of what the market wanted. That’s changed fairly dramatically in the last couple of years.

“Historically, most diesel generators that are used in the film industry spend a very high proportion of their time running, but not doing any real work,” he adds. “They’re not running anywhere near their capability, which means they’re very inefficient.

It’s not good for maintenance, it’s not good for the environment. The benefit of a hybrid is that it switches-on instantly. It doesn’t matter whether it’s charging a phone or running out 40KW, the power that you need is there when you need it. And the hybrid can be matched with low-energy sources to reduce the overall impact on the environment.

“We’re in a pretty conservative industry, but there are some gaffers and DPs who are pretty passionate about doing everything they can to make a positive contribution to reducing energy and reducing pollution,” he adds. “LED lighting and low-power or hybrid generators go hand-in-hand, because you need less power, and then you produce less pollution.”

The importance of being rental Panalux is a rental house with its own R&D, engineering and manufacturing departments, a fact which impacts the bespoke approach it has to product design.

“Other manufacturers wouldn’t consider making only two or three hundred of a product,” says Amphlett. “They would need a larger volume to recoup development costs, but for Panalux, it’s not a problem to make a relatively short run.”

There will be another Panalux Sonara size. “The way Panalux Sonara is constructed is very modular.

We can pretty much make any size we want that drops down into a 1:1 form factor, so we can make 3:3 or 10:10 and it wouldn’t introduce complexity,” he says. “As we took a modular approach, scaling

Light is such an emotive thing

becomes a relatively simple mechanical exercise rather than a complete redesign.”

Panalux also has a fully-staffed team of trained technicians to service and repair products damaged during filming.

“We can turn them around very quickly,” says Amphlett. “When the Panalux Sonara comes home it runs its own test routine so that we don’t have to manually check certain features are working. That’s the experience of a rental company; we know what turning around 100 lamps that have to go out the next day requires in terms of labour. So we designed features into the light to make that easier for us operationally.

“But they never go wrong,” he smiles.

Dave Amphlett

8 1 C H A R L O T T E S T R E E T, F I T Z R O V I A , L O N D O N , W 1 T 4 P P creativespace@cvp.com | +44 (0) 20 8380 7400 | cvp.com

60 JULY 2021 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

RED•ON TOUR

ON TOUR•RED

Photos: Alan Piper with a RED Komodo; (l-r) Arun Ghosh, Dory Lakoma and Johnny Petts

ROSY RED

By Ron Prince

T

he idea of a quenching lunchtime beer in the Bricklayers Arms next door was a tantalising temptation when I went to visit the team at RED Digital Cinema’s new central London showroom on a sunny June day. However, with lockdown measures still in place, sense and sensibility prevailed and we conducted our powwow, at the company’s Gresse Street premises, slathered in anti-bac gel and at safe distances around the open plan office spaces.

For anyone with an interest in RED gear – and there are plenty of aficionados around since the company launched in 2005 as a disruptive 4K digital player – this place is a bit of a haven.

“We have the time, space and people here for a really good experience,” declares Alan Piper, managing director of RED in EMEA, an industry veteran of some 40-years good standing. Piper has previously held longterm senior posts at ARRI, Panavision and RED – this is his second spell at the company.

“Gresse Street is a perfect spot – close to bright media folks at production and post production houses in Soho – and, when lockdown eases-up, it will become a nice drop-by for demos, REDucation events and, perhaps, a beverage at the pub afterwards,” he adds.

The premises themselves were previously occupied by CVP, one of RED’s key dealers for the UK and Europe, which has now relocated its London showroom to nearby Newman Street. RED London’s space was acquired in late 2018,

and renovation work began in late 2019.

Now bedecked in corporate livery, the place has four hot desks for the team, as well as visitors, to conduct their daily business affairs, plus an 8K screening room, equipped with Blackmagic DaVinci Resolve grading, where RED shooting and workflow consultations can take place.

Dotted around the main showroom floor are podiums presenting the current range of 5K/6K/8K-capable RED Ranger, DSMC2 and Komodo camera bodies, which can be rigged-up

with a set of in-house Zeiss Supreme Primes. There’s a lock-up cabinet in the corner displaying historic cameras, including the original RED One and subsequent Scarlet and Mysterium.

And, just in case you weren’t aware of the productions that have employed RED devices, one wall is covered with posters to remind you: recent TV shows such as Peaky Blinders (DP Si Bell) and Mr Robot (DPs Tod Campbell/Tim Ives ASC); features including The Death Of Stalin (2017, DP Zac Nicholson BSC), The Irishman (2019, Rodrigo

Prieto AMC ASC), The Two Popes (2019, DP César Charlone ABC), and Portrait Of A Lady On Fire (2019, DP Claire Mathon AFC); plus natural history programming, like the BBC’s Blue Planet.

Of course, 2021 has been a great year for sustaining RED’s profile around the world, with Erik Messerschmidt ASC winning the best cinematography Oscar for Mank, Steven Meizler collecting an ASC outstanding achievement award for The Queen’s Gambit, and My Octopus Teacher (DP Roger Horrocks) earning an Academy Award for best documentary feature – all shot on RED. “Whilst film, TV dramas and natural history are our rockbed, RED also has really strong client bases in commercials, together with firms doing multi-camera array and drone cinematography.

A good many of our clients are owner/operators and, despite shipping it during the weirdness of the pandemic, sales of the new RED Komodo have gone banzai,” says Piper, as he holds one of the shockingly small 6K-capable camera bodies in the palms of his hands.

Piper has assembled a youthful-but-experienced

and perfectly genial team to support RED’s cause, and it was a great pleasure to make a few acquaintances. Arun Ghosh leads the EMEA marketing effort, and is always looking for new ways to engage with customers, such as using the space as a ‘virtual’ demo room during lockdown.

Johnny Petts, sales engineer and accessories product manager, knows the ins-and-outs of digital cameras and workflows having previously worked in the DIT department on features such as Christopher Robin (2018, DP Matthias Koenigswieser), Rocketman (2019, DP Ben Davis BSC), and the Red Dragonacquired series The Dark Crystal: Age Of Resistance (2019, DP Erik Wilson). As showroom manager, Dory Lakoma keeps operations on the straight-andnarrow, and has supported recent virtual and inperson activities. Hailing from Poland, she has been a massive fan of the Camerimage Festival for as long as she can remember.

Other members of the company’s operations and technical services team, who could not be present for my visit, include: Paul Jones, Gary Clayton and Ivan Kadlec. On the commercial side

of the business, sales director David Webb, another veteran with senior roles at Fujifilm and Kodak on his CV, plus Brady Stone and Kyle Mark-Robinson, were all occupied on transactions with RED’s EMEA dealer network, which extends to Russia and other

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10/06/2021 19:08 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD JULY 2021 63

ON TOUR•RED

geographical territories on the peripheries of Europe.

Along with its London showroom, RED also retains a base on the lot at Pinewood Studios, which it has maintained since 2008, providing technical support, engineering and maintenance. “We’ll keep a foothold there, as it’s a very good focal point for RED users and people working on film and TV shows,” Piper says.

RED London was set to launch in April 2020.

However, due to the coronavirus outbreak this had to be postponed, and some furniture deliveries were lost in the process. Thankfully, these were delivered in June when restrictions in the UK eased. Undeterred, the RED London team managed to operate from September 2020 following UK Government

ScreenSkills: supporting growth and recovery UK-wide

guidance, which allowed a maximum of six people into the building.

Over that time the team has delivered: 45 Komodo, DSCM2 and Ranger demonstrations, 25-plus dealer/rental training events, halfa-dozen partner visits, and a host of virtual dealer/customer training sessions. One recent in-house event featured Texas-based motion control firm, SISU Cinema Robots, who attached a Komodo to one of their futuristiclooking camera-wielding arms.

Fuelled by the appetite for cinema and streamed entertainment, production levels are soaring in the UK and across Europe. Piper reports that RED’s business is in fine health, and is full of praise for the people and the protocols that have enabled this to happen.

RED London is open now and taking bookings for personalised demos of the latest cameras, so be sure to stay up-to-date with forthcoming events. We’ll definitely be back for the cheers… and the beers!

You can’t make great film, TV and animation without investing in the people

Email REDLondon@RED.com for more information.

Read the stories of the people we support at screenskills.com www.dopchoice.com

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RIDERS OF JUSTICE•KASPER TUXEN DFF

KASPER TUXEN DFF•RIDERS OF JUSTICE

FIFTY SHADES OF VENGEANCE

By Darek Kuźma

DP Kasper Tuxen DFF painted different shades of moral ambiguity in Danish screenwriter/director Anders Thomas Jensen’s weirdly intoxicating Riders Of Justice, a dark dramedy about the intricacies of human nature.

V

engeance is both bitter and sweet, as well as hilarious, morbid and gruesome, in this tale of a recentlywidowed soldier, Markus, who has to come to terms with who he is and how he wants to tackle the relationship with his estranged teenage daughter as he seeks revenge for his wife’s apparently non-accidental death in a train crash. Riders Of Justice is a performance-driven film that steers away from being defined by one style or genre, making you laugh, cry and feel morally dubious all at the same time. It is such a cleverly-designed emotional puzzle that you may well forget that it also offers an evocatively visual experience that enhances and multiplies the overall impact.

“We heightened the characters’ moral dilemmas, often informed by verbal humour, but wanted to leave it up to the viewers to decide whether to empathise with them or to reject their actions. This meant I had to do many subtle tweaks in-camera and yet stay invisible,” says Tuxen who collaborated with Jensen for the first time, and who was recommended for the job the director’s his regular DP Sebastian Blenkov. “We have a few slider and dolly shots, and several more complicated ‘oners’ as well, but the film is mostly handheld, and the camera never loses the emotional connection with the characters. It walks and reacts with them, but never becomes an additional character. It’s just a way into the story.”

The moral ambiguity of the film made Tuxen and Jensen watch films like Todd Phillips’ Joker

66 JULY 2021 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

(2019, DP Lawrence Sher ASC), Denis Villeneuve’s Prisoners (2013, DP Roger Deakins CBE BSC ASC) and Jacques Audiard’s A Prophet (2009, DP Stéphane Fontaine AFC) during prep to soak up their atmosphere.

“The themes in Anders Thomas’s films are so strong that you have to twist the environment a bit to balance them out,” says Tuxen. “For example, there’s no sun in Riders Of Justice. I don’t think many will consciously notice this, but it influences how you perceive the story.”

The camera never loses the emotional connection with the characters Tuxen shot the film using ARRI Alexa Mini equipped with Canon K35 Primes. “We tested Anamorphic and spherical lenses, but the K35s matched perfectly with what we intended – working well with little light and retaining a cinematic feeling.”

Most of the film’s dialogue scenes are set in Markus’s house and an adjacent barn as well as in a car in which the (anti)hero travels with a trio of fiercely-intelligent, kooky sidekicks: two statistics and probability experts, plus an emotionally-fragile

Photos: Riders Of Justice.

Taken by Rolf Konow.

hacker. They serve as catalysts for Markus’s violent actions but have their backstories gradually revealed as the plot thickens and unfurls, adding another layer of moral puzzle.

“Car scenes are the only ones where the camera goes static,” explains Tuxen. “I wanted to be in the car, but it was too complicated with four talking parts. We would have had to have taken one actor out, shoot a scene, take another one out, shoot a scene, etc. So, the camera was hard-mounted in a fixed place so as not to distract the viewer with its presence.”

Tuxen excelled at lighting two key interiors. “We shot Markus’s living room in a studio, which was super-challenging for me. Unlike Anders Thomas I don’t like to have full control over the set, I love using external conditions to improve my work, give it this intangible quality,” informs the DP. “The plot dictated the room had this late ‘90’s/early 2000’s IKEA aesthetic, which is not very filmic. I said, let’s approach this creatively, tweak the colours, try different things. We hid a number of Astera light bulbs in the room to give us different options and used them as the grid for light equipment. Also, I framed shots wider than usual, and did not get tempted to light from the ceiling as that screams stage right away.”

And then there was the barn, a spacious setting that serves as the technologically-advanced headquarters for the mismatched-but-deadly quartet.

“As the barn’s spatiality was a part of one of many visual jokes, and there was no existing light inside, we decided to fill it with fluorescents. It was the best way to make handheld usable and keep the visual continuity,” reminisces Tuxen. “Years ago, I shot the TV series Boss with Gus Van Sant.

In that show, the mayor’s office was a location the characters kept going back to, so we challenged ourselves to make it a bit different each time. I took the same approach with the barn – it’s night, it’s early morning, it’s overcast daylight. So we used a variety of ARRI SkyPanels, a small M-Series HMI package, and K5600 lamps, etc., to achieve that.”

Riders Of Justice is not only words, it’s also action, of both the neck-snapping-guns-blazing and the vigilante drama kinds. Then there’s the scene of the explosive train crash that might or might not have been an accident.

“We travelled with Anders Thomas on different trains to decide on geography and blocking,” says Tuxen. “It was going to be partly CG as we couldn’t allow ourselves to shoot in a real train carriage, but I’m analogue at heart. Together with my kid we’ve built a model and wrecked it in slow-motion. It may seem silly, but it was actually a good base for us to prepare for some of the challenges of the shoot.

We had to fake it on stage with chromakey, but I wanted it to be as realistic as possible. There were sixty SkyPanels hanging from a ceiling, space lights simulated the tunnel lights, to light that sequence.”

The film had 35 shooting days in January in February 2020 in Denmark and Sweden, with two separate days on Spanish island of Fuerteventura standing in for Afghanistan and Egypt.

“Shooting was a smooth process, because together with my colourist, Hannibal Lang, we settled on the look before the principal photography

started. We finished production a week before Denmark closed down because of Covid and we then tweaked it remotely in the editing and the final colour grade,” concludes Tuxen who emphasises that viewers should watch the film with their minds wide open.

“At the end of the day, Riders Of Justice is all about putting you in a series of uncomfortable positions and letting you decide what to think. This is the kind of cinema I would like to make more often.”

CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD JULY 2021 67

WILDFIRE•CRYSTEL FOURNIER AFC

CRYSTEL FOURNIER AFC•WILDFIRE

SISTERHOOD

Opposite: Crystel Fournier AFC with director Cathy Brady.

Photo by Barbara van Schaik.

This page: Crystel Fournier AFC at work, photo by Maeve Stone; the crew shooting on a pontoon,.

Photo by Barbara van Schaik.

By Darek Kuźma

L

auren is a thirty-something reticent woman who divides her time between a routine job in a cavernous warehouse and living peacefully with her husband in a small border town in Northern Ireland. The Brexit-enforced split from the Republic Of Ireland is nigh, casting a significant shadow over the populace that is still trying to heal from the generational trauma left by the Troubles, whilst Lauren struggles with her identity and inner demons. Suddenly, her younger sister, Kelly, reappears a year after she was reported missing, trying to rekindle the sibling bonds shattered by their mother’s suicide which shaped their lives in ways they still do not comprehend. And so begins an emotional journey of two women desperate for love and a sense of closure, who need to understand that the only way to break free from the trauma is by facing it together.

Cathy Brady’s feature debut is a complex story intertwining an immensely personal tale of two lost souls with a turbulent history. However, the director was keen on making it nowhere near the typical British kitchen sink realism. One of her ways was collaborating with Fournier, a cinematographer acclaimed for her exploration of different sides of being human under various layers of cinematic storytelling in films such as Céline Sciamma’s coming-of-age film Girlhood/Bande De Filles (2014).

“I liked the script’s different take on Irish history, but most of all I loved the way the relationship between the sisters evolves into something recognisable and inexplicable at the same time,” says Fournier. “Cathy had prepared it for years.

She had a strong vision and a shorthand with the actresses, but as soon as I joined, I was invited to shape both the film’s visual language and the character dynamics.”

Fournier used the precious pre-shooting time to get acquainted with actresses Nora-Jane Noone and the late Nika McGuigan, both in terms of learning how they would move, talk, and react in the film, as well as on a personal level.

“This wasn’t a film you just shoot, we became a family.

We shot in six weeks, plus some Saturdays with a small crew, but each day we felt energised by each other. The equipment we had, the lighting I set-up, these were just tools to capture the intimacy that had emerged before we walked on set,” recalls Fournier who decided upon ARRI Alexa Mini equipped with Zeiss Ultra Prime spherical lenses to make full use of the wider screen space of 2.35:1 ratio, and to infuse the elegantly looking sombre drama with a touch of surrealism to better depict Kelly’s increasing emotional volatility as well as an initially erratic bond she forms with her sister.

On the other hand, the memory-tinted flashbacks of the sisters’ fraught relationship with their mother, as well as some intense POV shots on a busy motorway, were shot with tilt-shift lenses.

“There’s not a lot of handheld camerawork in this film, but when it’s there, like on the motorway, you notice it, and it becomes a visceral experience for

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just be filmmakers telling stories without the need for a ‘label’ and hyphen in front of what we do.

But there’s still much more work to be done, as well as providing opportunities for other minorities to tell and make their stories. The world of storytelling will be all the richer for it when we get to that point.

French cinematographer Crystel Fournier AFC readily accepted the challenge of assisting writer/director Cathy Brady in making the intricately Irish story of Wildfire a universal tale crossing all borders the viewer,” says Fournier who operated the camera throughout the whole shoot, apart from a few Steadicam and drone shots. Even when it required her to shoot at night on a pontoon floating on a lake in which Lauren and Kelly take a swim.

“We put a track just above the water and put a dolly on it which I was able to operate. Not very comfortable, but I’m proud of these scenes and their poetic quality, especially that we shot at night in October and had to hurry not to risk the actresses’ health”.

The film was shot from October to December 2018, almost entirely on location, with a number of emotionally challenging pick-ups scheduled after McGuigan tragically passed away from leukaemia in July 2019.

“We were meant to shoot in summer, but it turned out great as we used the greens giving up to rusted reds and browns to inform the sisters’ relationship. Interior scenes have a certain visual restraint that goes well with Lauren’s state-of-mind, but when we go wide in outdoor shots the film feels different,” remarks Fournier.

Needless to say, for exteriors the cinematographer worked mostly with natural light.

“We sometimes used poly-board or something similar to manage contrast or improve faces, but I didn’t want to over-stylise the look. It had to remain subtle, like the camera movement – it’s discreet, designed to make you feel something is changing, even if you may not see it.”

“Night exteriors were pretty difficult, though. We wanted to have a sense of cinematic darkness that would feel real at the same time. Especially when

the sisters sit on a hill outside of the city, illuminated only by some distant city lights, in a place where you could actually forget about the harsh everydayness,” adds Fournier.

“So, we avoided sodium light and used mercury instead, things like that, but those were just small touches of something different that should not be consciously perceived by the viewer.”

One other memorable night-time exterior Fournier created was a flashback in which young Lauren and Kelly observe their mother taking photos near a spreading wildfire.

“This was done mostly on camera, only partly enhanced in post. I just needed more light than usual because if the exposure is at T5.6, the fire seems white.”

Fournier says that she is satisfied with how the long-gestating project turned out and hopes there are many others like that waiting ahead.

“I’m interested in what makes people become who they are, how emotions and feelings, even the ones we can’t control, shape us both personally and socially. Sure, this film can be viewed through a political angle, but for me it will always be a beautiful and poignant story of two fragile girls learning how to be with, and support, each other.”

Thus, ultimately, Wildfire, a bittersweet Northern Ireland-set drama dealing with matters that are foreign to audiences outside of that cultural zone, is as Irish as one wants or needs it to be. Some viewers may see it through the perspective of the country’s violent and troubled past, whilst others will watch it as a universal tale that can resonate at any latitude. And that’s ok.

SMALL CHANGE IS NOT ENOUGH Director Cathy Brady talks about Wildfire You set your film against a background of preBrexit Northern Ireland still coming to terms with the Troubles. Is this important to you?

It is. I was born and raised in borderland Northern Ireland and was in my early teens just as the Troubles were ending. I have some memories of that intense time before the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 brought peace. When I decided to set Wildfire in Northern Ireland present day I had no idea that Brexit would happen.

A lot changed over the five years developing this film. It made sense to include the impact of an on-coming Brexit, whilst also dealing with how the legacy of the Troubles is still reverberating within Lauren and Kelly’s life.

My intention was never to make a political film, but the more I grounded the characters and story, the more political it became. I hope that this is a film in which you get to walk in the shoes of these characters, understand that the past never stays buried and the best way to deal with it is through human connection.

film school on the same campus.

My first short, Small Change (2010, DP Luca Rocchini) literally changed my life and opened up a lot of doors. Step-by-step, short-by-short, I became a filmmaker. I was very careful about making my first feature. It had to be a story I was truly obsessed and passionate about. I ended-up finding my lead cast before I found the story. I was inspired by their unique energy and built the characters and story around them. It was a very collaborative and unique process. I was very fortunate to be surrounded by producers and funders that believed in that vision.

Wildfire is a female-driven story shot and shaped by many creative women, still something quite scarce in the film industry.

Yes, there are many female creatives in front and behind the camera on Wildfire. Overall, our set was quite balanced. I look forward to the day we can

I know what you mean, no one is using the term ‘male director’, right? But I do sincerely believe that Wildfire might have become a somewhat lesser film if shot by a man.

I don’t know. It’s hard to say. I think the relationship I built with the lead actresses was specific to our personalities and curiosities. I’m sure another writer/director, whether male or female, would bring their own take and alter the film accordingly.

One thing I do feel strongly about is that we aren’t seeing enough complex female characters in films – but it is changing. In Wildfire, Kelly is in a state of mania, she’s not able to edit herself.

Plus, she struggles with years of being told how to behave, how to talk, how to think. When she wants to communicate on her own terms, she’s told it’s not appropriate. I didn’t want to defend her, or judge her, but simply show how she is. This display of emotion can often be labelled as melodramatic or hysterical. I wonder would we be as quick to say the same about a male character going through the same experience or would we label it kitchen sink drama? I think this often happens with how female characters and female stories are received. Maybe in time as more complex female narratives are explored on screen this might fall away.

Is this why you decided to become a filmmaker?

Originally, I was studying an art degree but I fell in love with the photography of Gregory Crewdson, how he worked with actors to distil the essence of a story within one frame.

My love for filmmaking grew out of that passion for photography, I quickly realised that I wanted to work with moving images instead of a single image. So I left my art degree, did a couple of years working on various film sets in various roles and then finally transferred the remainder of my degree into a CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD JULY 2021 69

BENEDETTA•JEANNE LAPOIRIE AFC

JEANNE LAPOIRIE AFC•BENEDETTA Photo: (Below) Jeanne Lapoirie AFC on the set of Benedetta.

COLOUR ME SPIRITUAL

I love colours. I can’t do a movie if there’s no contrast or colour

By Darek Kuźma

French DP Jeanne Lapoirie AFC collaborated with Dutch provocateur Paul Verhoeven to give his most recent feature film, Benedetta, all the visual panache it needed.

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eligion and sex have always made for a controversial cinematic concoction capable of arousing the most seasoned viewers, yet throughout his career Paul Verhoeven has repeatedly proven he can take things to a whole new level. This is also the case with his latest feature film, Benedetta, based on a true-story of the eponymous novice, possibly with a gift of miracles, who joins a 16th century convent in Italy only to enter into sexual relations with another woman. This leads her to clash with the Church, making the film a thoughtprovoking tale of faith, love and passion in the age of reason..

Verhoeven is essentially an authority on making divisive, erotically-charged films, yet Benedetta certainly benefitted from having a woman’s eye behind the lens.

“I was surprised when producer Saïd Ben Saïd offered me the job. I never thought I’d work with Paul Verhoeven,” says Lapoirie, a veteran DP with over fifty feature films to her credit, with the likes of 8 Women (2002) for François Ozon, Robin Campillo’s Eastern Boys (2013), and Les Estivants (The Summer

70 JULY 2021 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

House) (2018) for Valeria Bruni Tedeschi. “I liked the script, the characters, the challenge of shooting an unconventional period drama, but I accepted the project because of Paul.”

Visually, the director did not want to push the envelope, but rather to focus the viewers’ attentions on the intricacies of the story, yet he had a particular look in mind.

“Paul gives a lot of freedom to his collaborators, but he was adamant Benedetta should be shot handheld, but without being shaky. Just to have a bit of vibration in the frame, a personal touch, yet to retain the flavour of classic filmmaking,” explains Lapoirie. “He asked me to watch some Hitchcock and Fellini films, and Eisenstein’s Ivan The Terrible (1944, DPs Andrei Moskvin/Eduard Tisse), but said those were just a loose framework that I should infuse with my ideas.”

That she did, implementing her particular style on Benedetta’s canvas.

“I love colours. Not just my favourite palette, but all colours. I can’t do a movie if there’s no contrast or colour. I remember the joy of taking still photos on Kodak Ektachrome. While making my first feature as a DP, Les Roseaux Sauvages (Wild

Reeds) (1994) on Super 16mm, I pushed the stock one stop to make the colours more vibrant,” asserts Lapoirie. “Period movies are often devoid of that, but not Benedetta. All the colours you see – those of the nuns’ habits, the covenant’s interiors and the candlelight – are integral to its visual language.”

The film is set both in the covenant’s gloomy chambers and in sun-soaked exteriors of an Italian town, with a number of night scenes infused with a hellish red glow of a comet flying by Earth.

“I had a contrasty and colourful LUT that I had used many times before. It makes black a bit blueish, whilst other colours are more on the yellow side which melded nicely with red hues of fire and candlelight,” offers Lapoirie. “When we graded Benedetta with my colourist Serge Antony, most of the work had already been done.”

Lapoirie used a lot of her favourite lighting equipment, too.

“It was mostly LED, a mix of SkyPanels, DMG Lumière SL1 fluorescent tube alternatives, Tungsten and HMIs that I was comfortable with.

They matched really well with many scenes lit by candlelight and torches. I wasn’t afraid of darkness and characters staying in shadows at all. Darkness was my friend,” adds Lapoirie. “There was one particular scene on the convent’s roof that I had to light using a drone because we could not put a lighting big tower on the ground, but apart from that, I had a good level of control over everything. Pretty creative stuff.”

Lapoirie also brought her preferred camera and lenses to the project. “In the past, when I shot on film, I always chose Kodak stock. I shot a lot of films on 35mm, and know how to organise the set. I tested other options but nothing came close. However, after making the transition to digital, I use the ARRI Alexa Mini with the compact Angénieux Optimo spherical zoom lenses, mostly 28-76mm and 45120mm. The only difference was that Paul wanted to have lots of coverage, so we shot with two Alexas, and I had the fast Leitz Summilux lenses for our complicated night exteriors.”

The film was shot between July and September 2018 on location, with a few greenscreen studio scenes done after the principal photography.

Principal photography took place in Montepulciano, Italy. Other locations included Val d’Orcia and Bevagna, also in Italy, as well as the Silvacane Abbey and Le Thoronet Abbey, in France. Lapoirie’s only regret was that due to scheduling problems they had to shoot the exteriors first.

“I would have preferred September, with less harsh sun, especially since Paul likes to do a lot of shots for quick cutting and shoots them in order inside a scene,” says the DP. “We shot this complicated sequence for five days straight in a

town square as if from the 16th century. Because Paul insisted on shooting chronologically, I had to prepare a lot of set-ups to keep the levels of light and shadow consistent throughout, no matter whether it was high noon or evening. It was a real challenge.”

Producer Ben Saïd has admitted that the story of Benedetta might be a „subject of controversy” and feared reactions from fundamentalist Catholic associations. Production was followed by a strong campaign of secrecy and no-one, unless working on the film, was allowed on the set.

So were Benedetta’s daring erotic scenes challenging for Lapoirie?

“Not really,” she says. “Paul has a relaxed attitude towards this stuff, he deals with it with lots of humour. It’s rather a technical challenge with all the

shots and close-ups. The crew and actresses Virginie Efira and Daphne Patakia adopted his mindset.

“You see, Paul runs a tight schedule. There isn’t a place for improvisation, everything is mapped-out.

Everyone knew days before what we would shoot and what was going to be visible in the frame. The scenes turned out beautiful, colourful and spiritual.

I’m proud of them.”

Lapoirie has a lot to be proud of, with Benedetta being a fearless cinematic feast of carnal pleasure and cerebral delight.

“You don’t see it but we had quite a small budget for such an ambitious project. We had to be creative with the challenges that lay ahead. I believe we fulfilled the film’s potential and made it visually exciting,” she concludes.

The film starts its journey in-competition at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival, where festival director Thierry Fremaux stated that, „Paul Verhoeven delivers an erotic and mischievous, also political, vision of the Middle Ages in a grandiose production.”

And whilst no one can predict whether it is going to join Basic Instinct (1992, DP Jan De Bont), Showgirls (1995, DP Jost Vacano BVK) and Elle (2016, DP Stéphane Fontaine AFC), in Verhoeven’s canon, it will definitely be remembered as one of his most visually-striking. And that is no small feat.

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GAFFERS CAFÉ•JEFF WEBSTER

JEFF WEBSTER•GAFFERS CAFÉ Photos by François Duhamel.

Copyright: © 2018 Lucasfilm Ltd. & ™. All Rights Reserved.

LIGHT FANTASTIC

By David Wood

34 5/12/87 School // Biola University, CA Training // Studied Cinema & Media Arts at university Worked at lighting rental house, began working on-set to gain experience Lives in // Pasadena, CA Hobbies/Passions // Lighting, hiking, camping, music and plants Age //

Born //

How did you get started?

I always knew this was what I wanted to do.

I grew-up making films with friends. By the time I hit high school I was producing for various class projects and realised I had a passion for filmmaking.

I shot as many projects as I could, testing out new cameras, learning how to light subjects, making lots of mistakes and learning from them.

After school, I started working at a lighting rental house, hopped on as many jobs as I could and met other young aspiring gaffers. We formed a group – a hive mind – of learning, trying new things and sharing knowledge with each other.

Learning the trade I learned how to be a gaffer by watching other gaffers and DPs lighting sets – I did a lot of reconnaissance in my early days as a lighting technician. I watched a lot of movies and would take screen grabs of my favourite shots and figure out how they lit them. I read the ASC Magazine a lot, taking notes and studying the BTS photos for new lighting concepts and equipment choices. You can always learn a lot from your colleagues too.

Discussing lighting with my friends over drinks has been a staple over the past ten years.

Working with DPs I really appreciate a DP who comes in with a plan. It doesn’t have to be super specific, but having a solid vision for how you want the show to look helps immensely as a jumping-off point for me to do my best work. I usually meet with the DP early in prep to discuss visual language, overall mood and tone. Once we dive into the specific sets, I can see what the DP is aiming for, and translate that into lighting fixtures 72 JULY 2021 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

and rigging it in a way that allows for not only the look to be achieved, but also to be adjusted quickly on the day.

Regular crew?

I run with a young and hungry crew. They may not have the decades of experience that some do, but they are all smart, capable, know the technology and put in 100% effort.

Programmer Derek Hoffman is a long-time best friend – we grew up and made movies together, and now we make movies together as working adults.

Derek’s incredibly smart and always knows the best way to approach and manage our complex lighting rigs, networks and data.

I’ve been with rigging gaffer Bobby DeChellis for the past few years. He’s absolutely hilarious and brings great energy. He’s always striving to improve and is an extremely hard worker, coming up with amazing ideas daily that make us all look good. A joy to be around.

Big break It came when I was asked to be the gaffer on the second season of Legion with DP Dana Gonzales.

We had worked together previously, but I didn’t feel I had the experience to tackle such a large show.

He stuck his neck out for me, despite my lack of experience, which gave me a chance to step-up.

That show pushed me far beyond what I thought I was capable of.

Not long after, I was approached by gaffer colleague – and long-time idol – Mike Bauman, who had just finished lighting tests for an untitled Star Wars project (The Mandalorian). Since I knew all the new LED technology from my time working on Legion, he thought I might be a good fit for the

project which would be utilising an LED volume – a virtual stage with walls and ceiling made of LED screens, 20ft tall, 75ft across, with integrated motion capture cameras. I knew very little going into the interview with Greig Fraser ACS ASC, but we got on well and he hired me. Greig had left early to start work on his next project, so DP Baz Idoine and I

began our work together that continued into season two.

Biggest challenge The Mandalorian has been the most challenging and the most rewarding. It’s the first time in my career where I’ve had to create workflows that didn’t really exist before. Every time I walk into a new set, I’m facing a brand new set of challenges that are unique to lighting in a video wall environment, and I can’t run to other gaffers for advice since I’m the first gaffer to have spent ample time inside The Volume.

Everyday is another science experiment to see what works and what doesn’t.

We work very closely with Manhattan Beach Studios (MBS), who provide our equipment packages for The Volume and surrounding stages.

They listen to our needs and always strive to provide the newest gear with the freshest technology.

Inside The Volume!

It’s tough because we’re running two units almost every day, have new sets moving in and out of The Volume regularly, and we’re always having to think outside of the box. On the prison ship set from The Mandalorian S1, we had hundreds of Digital Sputnik units that needed to be installed in very little time, all while programming the different effect cues and making sure everything was timed-out right. It was brutal working on a set doused in red light all day with the added bonus of white strobes putting the whole crew on edge. Baz came in with a great plan and Derek executed the cues with finesse. It was a team effort and at the end of the day, I’m really proud of what we accomplished in there.

On season two Baz Idoine and Matt Jensen ASC pushed the boundaries of what The Volume could do, creating a unique look and colour palette throughout the season (like the Ahsoka episode). We put our heart and souls into that season and I think we ended-up with something truly magical.

New virtual production technology The Mandalorian S1 was one of the first shows to utilise a full 360º video wall stage and ceiling, with the added bonus of live backgrounds and parallax. There are many advantages to working in a Volume. The video walls themselves emanate light and soft ambient light is easily added with light cards, but what people don’t quite realise is how much we augment the video wall lighting with our own. Not only does the “natural” light from the video panels spill everywhere and is difficult to control, but we’re limited by the maximum output of the video panels themselves.

Adding in hard light to The Volume is a challenge because of the space restrictions inside and out.

We built ‘The Beast-, a 40-module Digital Sputnik light mounted in a custom yoke that we used for our sun sources. We needed full colour control in order to match The Volume light, and there weren’t any hard, full colour LED lights available then. When S2 came around, we needed a little more output and harder shadows in order to sell real sun inside of The Volume, so we implemented more HMIs to our package.

Favourite kit Colour meter, light meter, gaffer glass and laser pointer. I recently built out a gaffer cart with my own monitoring station and secondary lighting console so I can run basic cues and effects from my cart. I have As one of the industry’s premier rental resources, we are extremely proud to support crews around the world with an unrivalled collection of production solutions the embrace both the conventional and the very latest in advanced lighting technology.

Whatever your production type, wherever you are, when it comes to lighting - we’ve got the lot.

MBS Equipment Company Lakeside Road, Colnbrook, Slough, Berkshire SL3 0EL +44 (0) 1753 987 888 mbseco.uk PMBS generic quarter.indd 2

been loving the Riedel Bolero comms systems, which we just started using on my last show. They allow for multiple groups or individuals to talk with each other on dedicated lines all from one belt pack. Incredibly efficient.

I’m loving all the new Fiilex and CreamSource units. The Fiilex P3 Color and the Creamsource Vortex8 are my new favourite lights; the P3 Color is a small, full colour 90w LED fixture, with different accessories to shape the beam and can be run off a small battery. The Vortex8 is a powerful, full colour, 8-pixel panel light, with a 20º beam angle, that can be softened with diffusers and built into large arrays.

Try to use the newest technology because it’s giving you more control and faster implementation every day What advice would you give to aspiring gaffers?

Always be trying new things and learning from new sources. Follow your curiosity. Watch a lot of movies. Try to reverse-engineer how a cinematographer lit specific shots in movies. Read books. Always try to use the newest technology

because it’s constantly giving you more control and faster implementation every day. Find a gaffer who can be a mentor. On-set experience with a gaffer who wants to teach will help you learn very quickly about what to do and what not to do. Find a crew that has your back and takes pride in their work. This is a team sport, so surround yourself with people who are talented, hardworking and constantly seeking improvement.

Cinematographer Greig Fraser ACS ASC says: This new age of filmmaking has really stretched a lot of departments’ traditional methods of working to the absolute limit. It became apparent to me quite a while ago, and quite clearly to Jeff and his team, that the systems that have been in place for the last 100 years are due for disruption. I love it when a gaffer I meet knows more about the future of digital lighting than I do. Jeff is passionate about this. He is able to combine this passion with an aesthetic, which is exactly what I look for in a gaffer.

Cinematographer Dana Gonzales ASC says: Jeff is one of those rare types of gaffers that come from photography first and lighting technician second. I prefer this as our discussions can be based on photography and aesthetics and we are always on the same page. Jeff is always making suggestions regarding the newest technologies, which is great as we are constantly striving to create cutting-edge visuals. LED is becoming an increasingly important element to filmmaking, meaning that large numbers of complex lighting universes can be offered via a dimmer board at the flick of a switch. It’s this kind of work that Jeff excels at.

STUDIO LOCATION FEATURES COMMERCIALS DRAMA TELEVISION EQUIPMENT GENERATORS TRANSPORT SUPPORT INNOVATION SAFETY SUSTAINABILITY 12/04/2021 18:08 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD JULY 2021 73

COLOUR & POST

COLOUR & POST

LIVE & LET DI

Opposite: FotoKem – The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It This page: (clockwise from top) Goldcrest Post NY – Grizzly II: The Revenge; Arsenal colourist, Aidan Stanford; Picture Shop’s new colourist Elodia Ichter; and BTS shot form Nomadland, which she graded.

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“Marcy Robinson, our senior colourist, spent six days with Suzanne bringing the old footage back to life,” Leight notes. “It was in surprisingly good shape and Marcy was able to bring out its beauty and crispness.”

Robinson says that it was a treat to work with film-original media and that Nagy was an insightful collaborator. “Suzanne wanted the look to stay true to the original film, while incorporating new material,” Robinson observes. “I appreciated her determination to maintain its integrity.”

The film has generated considerable interest among movie buffs and film critics, in part due to the before-they-were-stars presence of Clooney, Dern and Sheen, and seems destined to join the original Grizzly in cult status.

ilmLight, London: colour management and DI technology firm, FilmLight, has announced a new awards programme honouring colourists and the art of colour worldwide. The FilmLight Colour Awards are being organised in association with professional bodies and are open to colourists using any grading technology, with the winners announced at EnergaCAMERIMAGE 2021 in Poland.

Wolfgang Lempp, CEO of FilmLight said, “For all sorts of historical reasons colourists do not always get the recognition they deserve. The colourist today is far more than a traditional ‘colour timer’ doing matching and correcting. We believe the most satisfying results are achieved when DPs and colourists collaborate. Indeed, many colourists are now involved throughout the whole production lifecycle, from early lens and camera tests through to the very many deliverables now expected. When there is a true collaboration with the cinematographer, colourists make a real creative contribution to the feel and the atmosphere of a production. It is exactly this which we are looking to reward.”

In its inaugural year, the programme features four awards for best colourist: theatrical feature; non-theatrical or TV series; commercials or music videos; and the most innovative use of technology to achieve a creative result. Awards will be decided by a jury made up of cinematographers and other industry creatives. Entries close on 15 September, with a shortlist announced in October and the winners revealed at Camerimage in November.

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olinare, London: has launched a new production services department – helmed by head creative Darren Rae, supported by operations manager Patrick Barry – that kicks off with Moli Dailies, a digital dailies division offering a suite of secure solutions for remote working, media streaming and media storage.

Moli Dailies provides in-house, near-set and on-location dailies facilities for UK and international productions, offering dailies grading, 4K screening services, transcoding for editorial, dailies review and VFX pulls, plus SAN and LTO archiving.

Molinare has also rejuvenated its in-house post services to keep remote working a secure and flexible option. These include: MoliStream, a dualuse product supporting the streaming of media to remote locations for secure viewing on computers and mobile devices; MoliRemote, a multi-function tool allowing remote users to securely take control of equipment physically located inside Molinare’s facilities; MoliSync, designed for when bandwidth restrictions exist, or where creatives want to use their 74 JULY 2021 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

P own equipment; and MoliVault, for clients needing to store large amounts of media/data for extended periods of time without wanting to bear the cost of occupying high speed disk or cloud alternatives.

Rae’s appointment reunites him with Nigel

When Suzanne contacted us and said she had an unfinished film, we were not expecting this

Bennett, Molinare CEO, and Darren Woolfson, director of technology and visual services, who all previously worked together at Pinewood Digital on productions such as Devs, Dumbo, Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker and Pokémon Detective Pikachu.

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oldcrest Post, New York: recently performed a feat of post-production magic for one of the most unusual film releases of the year. Grizzly II: The Revenge, a thriller about a giant bear that attacks fans at a rock concert, was shot in 1983 by the late Hungarian director André

Szöts and DP Jean Badal.

Starring Steve Inwood, and including appearances by George Clooney, Laura Dern, Louise Fletcher and Charlie Sheen, the film was intended to be a sequel to Grizzly, a modestlybudgeted independent film that became the topgrossing independent film of all time upon its release in 1976, but it was left unfinished. That changed late last year when executive producer Suzanne C. Nagy retrieved the nearly 40-year-old original elements from storage and sought Goldcrest’s help in getting the film ready for its long-delayed release.

“When Suzanne contacted us and said she had an unfinished film, we were not expecting this,” recalls DI producer Ethan Leight. The Goldcrest team was most impressed by the lengths to which Szöts and Nagy had gone to shoot the film’s extended final scene, in which the monstrous bear runs amok at an outdoor concert. They staged an actual outdoor music festival on a military base in Hungary featuring the hard rock band Nazareth so that the production could record B-roll footage of the crowd.

Getting the original film in shape for videoon-demand and streaming release also took considerable effort. Goldcrest’s editorial team had to sift through hours of source media to find scenes that had gone missing over the years. Although Nagy had some of the original material digitally restored in London, other elements were badly marred by dust and scratches, requiring extensive processing and artifact removal. Despite the challenges, the final product turned out surprisingly well.

icture Shop, LA: colourist Élodie Ichter has joined the roster at Streamland Media outfit Picture Shop. Ichter, who joined from Harbor, recently collaborated with DP Joshua James Richards on the Oscarwinning Best Picture Nomadland, and will focus on picture finishing for feature and episodic content.

Ichter began her career at Éclair in Paris, where she focussed on the art of colour grading in a traditional film environment. During her career she has developed a repertoire of creative skills that are widely respected across the film and TV industry. Her credits include Marshall, Okja and The Shallows.

She also recently reunited with Academy Awardwinning DP Robert Richardson ASC on Venom: Let There Be Carnage, have previously collaborated with him as associate colourist on Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood.

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rsenalFX Color, LA: feature film and TV colourist Aidan Stanford has joined the company. Stanford is a 25-year industry veteran whose recent credits include the hit Lionsgate feature Knives Out as well as the TV series Better Call Saul (AMC), Bonding (Netflix), Briarpatch (USA) and Central Park (Apple TV+). He joins the Santa Monica firm Fotokem’s Keep Me Posted facility.

Stanford began his career as a photochemical colour timer. During his tenure at Technicolor’s film lab, he earned credits on dozens of major motion pictures, TV shows and documentaries including a 2002 65mm IMAX restoration of Lawrence Of Arabia. After making the transition to digital colourist in 2010, he continued to attract top assignments, including working as final colourist on ABC’s Emmy Award-winning series Modern Family, grading more than 40 episodes. Other notable work includes If Loving You Is Wrong for OWN, and Fresh Off the Boat for ABC.

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otoKem, LA: Dune, directed by Denis Villeneuve, releasing on October 1, is the anticipated iteration of the vast sci-fi universe created by Frank Herbert.

Villeneuve’s vision was captured by Oscarnominated DP Greig Fraser ACS ASC, who collaborated with FotoKem colourist David Cole, using Blackmagic Resolve to put the final touches on the images.

Of particular interest was a specialised photochemical approach Fraser and Cole used.

Although the entire film was shot digitally, the selects were output to film and scanned back in for the final colour grade. This process creates a more natural film look versus digitally inserting grain. Fraser recommended this process to Villeneuve in order to create the director’s vision and give the movie the look it deserved. With the support of Cole, they did tests early-on and showed the results to the director.

Fraser said, “By doing this, you inherently get some of the great attributes of film that we’ve lost in the digital age, as well as the great attributes that digital gives us that film would never allow.”

Colourist Mike Sowa recently worked on Concrete Cowboy, a Netflix film based on the book ‘Ghetto Cowboy’ (a true story of inner-city cowboys in Philadelphia). It follows Cole, a teenage boy, who goes to live with a father (Idris Elba) he has never known. Soon, Cole is involved with a group of African-American “cowboys” who rescue horses and use them to steer youths away from drugs and gangs.

Director Ricky Staub and cinematographer Minka Farthing-Kohl, worked with Sowa to deliver a visually gritty tale to match the story arc of Concrete Cowboy. The film was shot in dark environments, but the creatives wanted to make sure audiences could see facial expressions and the important visual cues happening in scenes.

Meanwhile, DI grader Mark Griffith has worked on all three installments of the Conjuring franchise, which includes the recent Conjuring: The Devil

Made Me Do It, directed by Michael Chaves, with Michael Burgess ASC behind the camera. Together the trio solidified the frightening images known to the trilogy using Blackmagic Resolve.

“During prep, Michael wanted to evoke the feeling of the ‘70s by muting colours, such as lush, exterior greenery. Overall, we aimed to achieve an amber, dusty look,” says Griffith. “Michael provided about a half dozen frames with colour ideas he wanted to reference. From those, he pointed out what he liked in terms of flesh tones, background lighting, and exterior colours and we discussed what looks would best coincide visually with the story.

“The biggest challenge on this project was incorporating the 750 visual effects shots on a tight schedule. Overall, we were looking for the right tone. My goal was to carry the colour palette over to the finished product. During that process, I refined scenes that needed to be a little brighter, or darker, or warmer, or cooler. It was done with the intention of guiding the viewers’ eye around the screen insync with what was happening in the story. There are times when we wanted the audience to be uneasy, and other times we wanted them to be comfortable or relieved.”

FotoKem colourist Alastor Arnold completed the colour on The Green Knight, the highly-anticipated Dev Patel starrer releasing in the summer of 2021, directed by David Lowery and shot by DP Andrew Droz Palermo.

As production continues to ramp up and content creation for a multitude of platforms increases, industry veteran Andre Trejo has joined FotoKem as VP of creative services, the theatrical dailies/finishing division of FotoKem. The role was previously led

by Tom Vice, who moves up to co-chief operating officer, overseeing operations across multiple divisions and business units. Trejo has worked with some of the most revered feature filmmakers in a career spanning over 25 years in senior roles at Technicolor and LaserPacific.

CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD JULY 2021 75

SHOOTING GALLERY•RICHARD BLANSHARD Our great friend, cinematographer and stills photographer extraordinaire, Richard Blanshard, is the DP/director on Cannes Uncut (Special Treats Production) – a behind-the-curtains film about the movies, moguls and money at the glamorous and glitzy Cannes Film Festival, releasing for the festival’s 75th anniversary in 2022. Having been an official ‘snapper’ during Cannes for many years, he kindly offered us some stills from his extensive photographic Cannes chronicles.

NEW DATES CONFIRMED: MUNICH • 1 - 2 JULY • 2022 1 - 2 JULI • 2022 • MÜNCHEN

YORAM GLOBUS & MENAHEM GOLAN

Left: Israeli film producers/directors Yoram Globus (l) and Menahem Golan (r), owners of Cannon Films, at the Cannes Film Festival, circa 1987.

MICHAEL POWELL

Right: English filmmaker Michael Powell, celebrated for his partnership with Emeric Pressburger, on a boat opposite La Croisette in 1984.

ANTONIO BANDERAS

Left: Spanish actor Antonio Banderas arrives at a party for the release of Desperado in 1995.

ANN-MARGRET

Middle: Actress Ann-Margret at a Golden Harvest press launch for The Return Of The Soldier in 1982.

KIDS

Right: Photographers at a photocall for the Larry Clark film Kids in 1995.

PATRICIA ARQUETTE & NICOLAS CAGE

Left: Actress Patricia Arquette and actor Nicolas Cage attending a special supper in 1995.

DAVID LEAN & OMAR SHARIF

Right: Director David Lean with Egyptian film star Omar Sharif in 1989.

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Europe's new event focusing on the technologies and craft of Cinematography Uniting the film industry across 2 days of exhibition & seminars

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Coinciding with the Munich Film Festival & delivering a world class seminar & workshop programme of events to run alongside the exhibition

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JOAN COLLINS & FINOLA HUGHES

Left: English actresses Joan Collins and Finola Hughes promote the film Nutcracker, aka Nutcracker Sweet, circa 1985, with a Rank Organisation banner in the background.

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SPIKE LEE & CAST

Right: Director Spike Lee and the cast of She’s Gotta Have It in front of The Grand Hotel in 1986 DAVID CARRADINE, OLIVER REED & SAVANNAH SMITH

Left: (l-r) David Carradine, Oliver Reed and Savannah Smith at The Carlton Hotel in 1978 ANTHONY HOPKINS

Middle: Actor Anthony Hopkins!

MUHAMMAD ALI

All photos courtesy of Richard Blanshard.

Right: Muhammad Ali surrounded by photographers at the launch of Freedom Road, on the Carlton Terrace, 1977.

FRED ASTAIRE & GENE KELLY

Left: Richard’s first Cannes assignment!

Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly stepping out at Hotel Du Cap in 1976 to promote That’s Entertainment Part II. CLINT EASTWOOD & SYLVESTER STALLONE

Right: Hollywood superstars Clint Eastwood and Sylvester Stallone pictured at the Eden Roc Hotel in 1995.

76 JULY 2021 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

eurocineexpo.com The first event will take place in a very unique venue within Munich - carefully selected to provide flexible exhibition space, breakout areas and an atmosphere like no other.

Save the dates

1 - 2 July 2022

For more information contact us on +44 1428 609 382 or email info@eurocineexpo.com