Cinematography World #013

Rascals Publishing & Media Ltd!

Red Lion Yard, Odd Down, Bath

United Kingdom BA2 2PP

Tel: +44 (0) 1428 746 375

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

Social Media & Comms KAZ PEARMAN kaz@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.

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.

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 the UK, and is the founder/editor of CloselyObservedFrames. His interests include screenwriting, British New Wave cinema and the works of Ingmar Bergman.

Cover Image: Margot Robbie plays Nellie LaRoy in Babylon. © 2022 PARAMOUNT PICTURES. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

PLENTY

Happy New Year and best wishes to all of our readers and supporters around the world.

It’s going to be an exciting one, what with awards season upon us, copious films coming down the pipe, a host of different events to cover, plus some brand-new adventures of our own – all in focus.

We had a wonderful time at the 30th edition of the EnergaCAMERIMAGE Festival in Toruń, catchingup with friends, making new ones, and generally absorbing the incredible spirit of the cinematographic atmosphere, and we look forward to doing more of the same at the upcoming BSC Expo.

Cinematography World has now reached the grand old age of two – although as a team we’ve lived, breathed and reported on this particular field for far, far longer than that.

I was going to call this a ‘bumper’ edition, but ‘thumper’ is probably a much better description, with 14 DPs, plus a cult filmmaker, in this edition alone. Where else can you get so much bountiful insight into the hearts and minds of people who make moving images, and their very latest creative, collaborative work, from one publication? There’s more to come. So watch this space!

Wherever you are, please stay safe, and keep an eye out for one another.

SUBSCRIBE

You can subscribe to the print, digital, or print and digital, versions of Cinematography World. This will cover you for the six issues delivered over a 12-month period. Your email will also be added to our monthly newsletter update, unless you decide to opt out of these news feeds.

Cinematography World is part of Rascals Publishing & Media Ltd! The publishers emphasise that opinions expressed within Cinematography World Magazine are not representative of Rascals Publishing & Media Ltd!, but are the responsibility of individual contributors.

Cinematography World is created using responsibly sourced paper. All inks used during the printing process are vegetable based and virtually free from volatile organic compounds. Waste, paper, ink and consumables are recycled. Where this is not possible waste is sent to specialist centres for safe disposal.

Ron Prince photo by Joe Short www.joeshort.com

Official Media Partners

Ron Prince Editor in Chief

It was satisfying to bring all my tools to the table, all my previous experience, and somehow use it all… but in an invisible way

DP Natasha Braier ADF

Artistic Character. Modern Sensibilities.

ZEISS Supreme Prime Radiance Lenses

The ZEISS Supreme Prime Radiance lenses are designed to provide a unique look, no matter the sensor size. Capable of covering S35, Full Frame and beyond, you can be confident in developing a look all your own, no matter the camera you choose.

For more information: zeiss.com/cine/radiance

50 AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER

44 BABYLON

58 I WANNA DANCE WITH SOMEBODY

26 CORSAGE

62 THE FABELMANS

OPTIMISTIC OUTLOOK

As we head into this new year, there is much we can all take pride in. Empirical evidence shows the all-important growth in production. But, crucially, in a landscape which is offering more and more ways for the public to engage with film and moving-image work, we are seeing people come back to the cinema as well as watching at home. Big budget or small, the artistry of cinematography is playing an important part in transporting people.

At the BFI we are committed to ensuring the public has the opportunity to enjoy the art of cinema and are pleased to see audiences returning to the BFI Southbank, the BFI IMAX and also the BFI London Film Festival, as well on BFI Player and our extended network of cinema partners around the country.

The art of cinema, and what it brings to culture and the artform, has been very much to the fore in in our long-term work. For just over a year we have been working on a new vision and mission for the BFI to support and create opportunity for those who work and want to work in the sector, as well as for audiences who consume what we all make.

Our new 10-year strategy, Screen Culture 2033, which will take us through to our landmark centenary, sets out how we aim to transform access to our unique and valuable collections, cultural and education programmes, and use policy and research work, alongside a new BFI National Lottery strategy and £136 million funding plan, to build a diverse and accessible screen culture. A cultural and industrial approach that aims to benefit all of society and contribute to a prosperous UK economy.

This work involved extensive research and industry consultation and, when published in September last year, came at a time when we could all begin to reflect on just how far we’ve come after what has to be the most tumultuous period in our industry in recent times, and consider the road ahead.

A record £5.64 billion spend on film and highend television (HETV) production in the UK, reported in the BFI’s official 2021 statistics in February 2022, was welcome news in demonstrating how the sector had begun to recover in the wake of the pandemic. Production spend was £1.27 billion higher than for the pre-pandemic year 2019. The UK’s global reputation as the world-leading centre for production was underlined by 84% of the spend (£4.77 billion) coming from inward investment and co-production. The statistics also revealed the increasing investment made by streamers in single long-form productions, contributing £737 million to t he HETV spend of £4.09 billion.

Government support for production with the screen sector tax reliefs and the Film & TV Production Restart Scheme, administered by the BFI, have played an important part in the industry’s growth and recovery. The groundwork for further growth is underway with the expansion of studio spaces and production hot spots across the nations and regions, and working with industry to build up the skilled workforce that we need to meet demand and stay

on top of our game.

However, other research published by the BFI in July 2022, highlighted the significant and rapidly increasing challenges that UK independent film continues to face. The Economic Review Of UK Independent Film, undertaken by independent research company Alma Economics, showed this vital part of the screen industries is seeing plateauing production budgets paired with increasing crew, cast and studio space costs. Cost inflation across production is adding a further 20% to UK independent film budgets.

Despite the support of the BFI, BBC Film and Film4 as key funders, screen sector tax reliefs, and the new UK Global Screen Fund which is run by the BFI to support the promotion and export of UK independent film and co-productions, and national and regional funds, the review found that market challenges are raising concern about the long-term viability of UK independent film. The review also pinpoints measures as preliminary recommendations which are being unpacked and modelled with the industry in order to enable UK independent film to prosper and continue.

sector needs to contribute at least 1% of all production budgets to train the existing and future workforce, bringing it in line with training investment made by other industries, such as construction. This 1% could be invested in the ScreenSkills film and HETV skills funds, training initiatives run by productions or outsourced to training providers and partners, as well as the Apprenticeship Levy. Progressing this work will be the role of an industry-led stakeholder group convened by the BFI and the DCMS.

At a time when economic pressures are affecting people’s lives and industry resilience, our commitment to deliver against the National Lottery’s good causes mandate has never been more important. Our new BFI National Lottery Strategy 2023-2033 will guide how we invest approximately £45million a year over the first three years of the 10-year strategy period by prioritising filmmakers, education and skills, audience development, screen heritage work, innovation and industry services, and international activity. The new funds that will be active in these areas will be going live in the coming months with more information published here (https://www.bfi.org.uk/funding-industry).

Pressures facing independent cinemas, important as cultural places within their communities, is also of significant concern. The Culture Recovery Fund, administered by the BFI on behalf of the Department For Digital, Culture, Media & Support (DCMS), was a lifeline for independent cinemas during the pandemic, supporting 209 cinemas in England with £34.4m ensuring they could survive. It has been great to see audiences returning to the big screen after months of closure in 2020-21, however, we are cognisant of the challenges they face with the impact of rising energy costs whilst still grappling with recovery.

One of the most critical challenges facing the whole production sector is the need for training and skills development to address skills shortages and ensure the sector’s continued growth. Our Skills Review for scripted film and HETV, published in June 2022, found that while the record UK production spend in 2021 is important to the sector and the economy, this is leading to increasing –and often critical – crew shortages at all levels, which are beginning to negatively impact the industry and contributing to highly-stressed workplaces.

The Skills Review concludes that the production

Cutting across all our funding decisions, and also at the heart of Screen Culture 2033, are three core principles: equity so everyone can develop a meaningful relationship with screen culture, regardless of their background or circumstances; UK-wide, so that everyone across the four nations of the UK is able to experience and create the widest range of moving image storytelling; and environmental sustainability, from reducing the BFI’s own carbon emissions to supporting wider industry efforts to get to net zero. You can read much more about how these are embedded into the strategies here (https://blog.bfi.org.uk/long-read/nationallottery-strategy/our-national-lottery-strategicframework/ ).

We are an industry of strength and growth, across art, tech and craft. At the BFI we will do all we can, working with industry and partners UKwide to ensure this continues.

Ben Roberts Chief Executive BFI

The production sector needs to contribute at least 1% of all budgets to train existing and future workforces

BSC, BAFTA & ASC ANNOUNCE AWARD NOMINATIONS

The BSC, BAFTA and ASC have announced their respective award nominations. The BSC nominated five films in its Feature Film category, sponsored by Cinelab Film & Digital, are…

•All Quiet On The Western Front (Netflix), DP James Friend BSC ASC

•The Banshees Of Inisherin (Searchlight), DP Ben Davis BSC

•The Batman (Warner Bros.), DP Greig Fraser ACS ACS

•Elvis (Warner Bros.), DP Mandy Walker ACS ASC

•Tár (Focus Features), DP Florian Hoffmeister BSC

The 2023 BSC Awards Night will take place on the 11th February at London’s Royal Lancaster Hotel.

The five films in the Cinematography category at the 2023 EE BAFTA Film Awards are:

•All Quiet On The Western Front, DP James Friend BSC ASC

•The Batman, DP Greig Fraser ACS ASC

•Elvis, DP Mandy Walker AM ACS ASC

•Empire Of Light, DP Sir Roger Deakins CBE BSC ASC

•Top Gun: Maverick, DP Claudio Miranda ASC

The ASC’s announced Outstanding Achievement Award nominees in theatrical feature film include:

Sir Roger Deakins CBE BSC ASC for Empire Of Light (Searchlight Pictures)

Greig Fraser ACS ASC for The Batman (Warner Bros.)

Darius Khondji AFC ASC for Bardo, False Chronicle Of A Handful Of Truths (Netflix)

Claudio Miranda ASC for Top Gun: Maverick (Paramount Pictures)

Mandy Walker ACS ASC for Elvis (Warner Bros.)

Winners will be announced during the 37th Annual ASC Awards ceremony on March 5, 2023, at The Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, Calif. The event will be live streamed worldwide. Last year’s ASC feature film winner was Fraser for Dune. He went on to win the Oscar for Best Achievement in Cinematography.

FLORIAN HOFFMEISTER BSC TAKES GOLDEN FROG FOR TÁR

Florian Hoffmeister BSC’s lensing of the thriller Tár, from director Todd Field, topped the 2022 Camerimage main competition, collecting the Golden Frog during the closing ceremony.

The Golden Frog win gives cinematographer Hoffmeister a boost in the 2023 Oscars race, with three out of the last five Golden Frog winners going on to earn Oscar nominations in cinematography. Those titles include DP Greig Fraser ACS ASC for Lion (2016), Lawrence Sher ASC for Joker (2019), and Joshua James Richards for Nomadland (2020).

In other main competition awards, Darius Khondji AFC ASC took home the Silver Frog for Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s latest Bardo: False Chronicle Of A Handful Of Truths, and Cinematographer Jamie D. Ramsay earned the Bronze Frog for Living, directed by Oliver Hermanus.

Bardo also picked up The International Federation of Film Critics Award for Best Film, while

Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis, shot by DP Mandy Walker ACS ASC, picked-up Camerimage’s coveted Audience Award.

The 2022 event marked Camerimage’s 30th anniversary. The main competition jury was led by director and visual artist Lech Majewski. He was joined by producer Fred Berger, cinematographers Markus Förderer and Arthur Reinhart, and production designer Jan Roelfs.

LEGENDARY AND MUCH-LOVED DP BRIAN TUFANO BSC DIES AT 83

Brian Tufano BSC, the veteran, BAFTAnominated cinematographer known for his collaborations with Danny Boyle, has died. He was 83.

The news was confirmed by Tufano’s agent at McKinney Macartney Management, with Jon Wardle, director of the UK’s National Film & Television School – where Tufano had previously worked as a department head – posting a tribute on Twitter.

“Very sorry to have to share that cinematography legend and former NFTS head of department Brian Tufano has died,” Wardle wrote. “He shot so many amazing films and did so much to champion new talent, in particular female DPs. We loved him and will really miss him.”

Tufano began his career at the BBC as a projectionist, working his way up to cameraman within the film department in 1963 on small-

ASC TO HONOUR STEPHEN GOLDBLATT BSC ASC WITH LIFETIME AWARD

The American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) will honour the extraordinary careers of five of its members during its 37th Annual Awards for Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography Gala on March 5, 2023.

screen features with directors including Stephen Frears, Ken Russell and Alan Parker.

In 1992 he was assigned to the series Mr. Wroe’s Virgins and worked with director Danny Boyle. Boyle took him along on his feature debut, Shallow Grave, and continued to work with Tufano on such films as Trainspotting and A Life Less Ordinary. In 2001 Tufano won the Bafta Award for Outstanding Contribution to Film and Television.

The contributions of Oscar-nominee Stephen Goldblatt BSC ASC will be recognised with the 2023 Lifetime Achievement Award; Darius Khondji AFC ASC will be presented with the International Award; Fred Murphy ASC will be tapped with the ASC Career Achievement in Television Award; Charlie Lieberman ASC will pick up the Presidents Award, and Sam Nicholson ASC will take home the Curtis Clark ASC Technical Achievement Award.

Born in South Africa and raised in England, Goldblatt’s distinguished body of work includes Academy Award and ASC Award nominations for Batman Forever (1996) and The Prince Of Tides (1991). Goldblatt’s television contributions earned him Emmy nominations for the HBO television movies/miniseries Angels In America (2004), Path To War (2002) and Conspiracy (2001).

“Stephen Goldblatt’s vision and influence can be seen in many of the most memorable stories told over the last 40 years,” said ASC president Stephen Lighthill ASC. “We are looking forward to celebrating this well-deserved milestone with him.”

A Full Spectrum For Luminous Skin Tones

The unique, phosphor-converted MIX® LEDs produce more of the wavelengths found in human skin tones.

Rosco’s Patented MIX® Technology

Six LEDs – Phosphor-Converted Red, Green, Blue, Phosphor-Converted Lime, Phosphor-Converted Amber, and a 4000K White – combine to produce a superior white light

The perfect output for the perfect close up.

created with MIX®

DMG MAXI, DMG SL1, DMG DASH, DMG MINI

REMEMBERING OSCAR-WINNING DP OWEN ROIZMAN ASC

American cinematographer Owen Roizman ASC, who was nominated for multiple Oscars during a phenomenal career, has passed away at the age of 86.

In 2017, Roizman was presented with an honorary Oscar for his achievements and contributions to the film industry, which included nine years of serving on the Academy’s Cinematographers Branch. Roizman also represented the branch on the Board of Governors and received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the ASC in 1997.

Roizman’s second feature film as a DP was William Friedkin‘s The French Connection in 1971, which earned him his first of five Oscar nominations. He went on to shoot such iconic films as Play It Again, Sam, Friedkin’s The Exorcist (for which he earned a second Oscar nomination), The Taking Of Pelham 1 2 3, The Stepford Wives, Three Days Of the Condor, and Network.

LIGHTING FOR VIRTUAL REALITY FROM DEDOLIGHT

The magic Chroma Link app from Dedolight allows for production in front of large LED walls, including the ability to pick eight different points or areas and instantaneously synchronise the intensity and colour of eight different multicolour lights to what is shown on the LED screens.

The app works with the Prolycht Orion 300 FS light, the Orion 675 FS light, as well as the Thunder panel light, and the new Dedocolor focussing multi-colour LED light Neo Color.

Adding additional optics from Dedolight to the Prolycht Orion lights, it is possible to intensify and concentrate the beam, to find the transition into the Dedolight Lightstream system, and its world of reflected light, where, with one of these lights you can now address 4-5 reflectors simultaneously, which can then reflect onward and activate further reflectors for backlight, talentlight and other kinds of accents.

EURO CINE EXPO ANNOUNCES COLLABORATION WITH BVK

Euro Cine Expo has announced an exciting collaboration with BVK – Berufsverband Kinematografie, the German Society of Cinematographers.

The partnership aims to increase visibility and promote awareness, with BVK exclusively supporting Euro Cine Expo (as a national & international trade show) within Germany. The German Society of Cinematographers (BVK) is the official representative of directors of photography and the whole camera department in Germany.

Taking place at the Motorworld complex from June 30th – July 1st, Euro Cine Expo 2023 will offer the cinematography industry an unrivalled opportunity to showcase its brands and network

in person as business continues to rebound from the pandemic. The event will deliver a festival feel for attendees with on-site restaurants, food trucks, and areas to socialise.

Dr. Michael Neubauer, BVK managing director stated:

“The BVK is excited about the opportunity to strengthen its international activities together with the experienced organisers of Euro Cine Expo and at the same time to have a new platform for professional exchange. We will use Euro Cine Expo to network

KIESEL APPOINTED NEW HEAD OF QUALITY MANAGEMENT AT ARRI

ARRI has welcomed Dr. Raphael Kiesel as its new head of quality management. Based at the company’s headquarters in Munich, he will convert customer requirements into products and services in an even more structured manner.

Dr. Matthias Erb, chairman of the executive board at ARRI, said, “ARRI has stood for the highestquality in the film industry since 1917. These standards must be further advanced globally in all business and corporate areas, and I wish Raphael every success

with this important task.”

Kiesel adde, “I am very much looking forward to this exciting position and am wellaware of ARRI’s heritage, and the responsibility that comes with it. Our goal is to further-improve upon the quality of ARRI’s products and services and to offer customers the very best that is possible.”rt, and production designer Jan Roelfs.

professionals even more strongly and to further develop the industry and the visual creativity.”

NANLITE RELEASES NEW PAVOTUBE II 15C/30C AND FORZA 60 II AND 60B II

Nanlite has released its new Pavotube II 15C/30C, expanding the possibilities for creative lighting. The new PavoTubes feature technological upgrades, both internally and externally, and utilise RGBWW colour mixing technology with accurate colour reproduction, making them fully capable of bringing colourful visions to life.

On-board control of PavoTube II 15C/30C has been optimised with a more intuitive two-knob operation. One short press of the dimmer button reinstates the previous intensity setting instantly. All improvements allow for a more convenient and smooth lighting control experience.

Also from Nanlite, the new Forza 60 II and 60B II. Forza 60/60B II delivers stunning output inside

SUNBELT RENTALS UK ACQUIRES ALPHA GRIP

Sunbelt Rentals Limited has has acquired the London-based film, TV and commercial grip specialist Alpha Grip (UK) Limited.

Commenting on the acquisition, Andy Wright, Sunbelt Rentals UK CEO, explained: “Our continued expansion into the UK film and television market is made stronger by our recent acquisition of grip specialist, Alpha Grip. Now we will offer our clients a completely integrated, full-service production solution, which will be a true differentiator in today’s industry”.

Wider CCT range of 2700-7500K with G/ M±150 adjustment allows for more comprehensive lighting options during different times of the day, making it easier to shoot photos and videos in varied environments.

The two tubes output more power compared with the previous versions—although they come in almost the same dimensions. PavoTube II 15C and PavoTube II 30C are 10% and 20% brighter respectively. Users will have more confidence in terms of intensity for use as a key light, fill light, and other applications.

ultra-compact bodies, illuminance levels stand at 3,420lux/2,096lux@1m with light only. With maximum/constant output modes incorporated, Forza 60B II features uniform light ratio while adjusting CCT from 2700K to 6500K.

Both Forza 60/60B II also perform excellently in colour rendition, CRI and TLCI rated at 96 and 98 respectively. Building in 11/12 special effects with each parameter adjustable, Forza 60/60B II allow creators to bring their imaginations to life with the help of multiple control options, including on-board, 2.4G, Bluetooth, and DMX/RDM.

WIM HONOURS INDUSTRY WOMEN & GETS CALIFORNIA STATE COMMENDATION

Thisyear’s Women In Media Holiday Toast kicked off with a surprise tribute. California Assembly woman, Wendy Carrillo, made a special appearance to present a California Legislature Assembly Certificate to Women In Media’s founder. Carillo stated, “On behalf of the 12th Assembly District, it is my honour to recognise you, Tema Staig, as the founder and executive director of Women In Media for your tireless efforts, promoting parity and gender balance in the film and entertainment industry. You have provided the tools and resources necessary to assist our

community in realising economic empowerment and reaching their fullest potential.”

In addition to Warren, WiM honourees included executive producer/writer/director Deborah Pratt (Quantum Leap), Oscarwinning costume designer Deborah L. Scott, (Avatar: The Way Of Water, E.T., Titanic), supervising sound editor Becky Sullivan (The Woman King), and cinematographer/camera operator Michelle Crenshaw (The Ranch). The event was hosted with the generous support of

Speaking about the acquisition, Alpha Grip owner, John Tadros commented, “It’s a great opportunity for us to join Sunbelt Rentals UK, working closely with Movietech, PKE and MAS, as well as with WFW in Canada. Together, we have an extensive combined knowledge and experience of the production market that is primed for further growth.”

Women In Media promotes gender balance in the film and entertainment industries through networking, professional development, and advocacy for filmmakers who work above and below the line.

DELIVERY OF LEITZ HUGO CINE LENSES BEGINS IN EUROPE

The much-anticipated Leitz Hugo cine lenses from Ernst Leitz Wetzlar GmbH have begun delivery, with two sets arriving at rental houses in France and Sweden. Stockholm-based Ljud & Bildmedia received a set from Camera Nordic. The second set went to equipment rental RVZ in France.

The Leitz Hugo lenses are among the most compact, high-speed optics for cinematography. Based on the iconic Leica M glass, the Hugo full frame lenses feature a production-ready housing

with expanded focus and iris scales, an LPL mount, and T1.5 aperture through the set with the option of an additional 50 mm T1.0 lens.

“We are excited to get the Leitz Hugo lenses out into the market,” said Rainer Hercher, managing director of Ernst Leitz Wetzlar. “Making these outstanding optics available to cinematographers has been a long-time dream of the company and we can’t wait to see the images that will be created with these lenses.”

Leitz will be demonstrating the lenses at various

Zach Sokoloff, senior vice president at Hackman Capital Partners.

events, including the BSC Expo in London and the AFC Micro Salon in Paris.

SIXTY82 LAUNCHES THE TPM29S BOX TRUSS

Sixty82 presents the all-new TPM29S, a new 29cm box truss that is fully compatible with the M29 series box truss.

TPM29S is up to 25% stronger than similar box trusses enabling it to withstand the most demanding conditions. An improved design of the diagonal braces helps to increase the strength and stability of the truss system, while the new optimised shape and dimensions provide better support to withstand higher forces.

with the current M29 Series and can be seamlessly integrated into any M29 Series setup.

NAB AND NAB SHOW CELEBRATE CENTENNIAL YEAR

The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) and NAB Show are celebrating their centennial year in 2023 with activities, events and a commemorative website.

The 2023 NAB Show Centennial Celebration commemorates 100 years since the first NAB Show in 1923 and offers opportunities for attendees, exhibitors and stakeholders to share their memories, participate in interactive engagements and enjoy exclusive onsite parties and events.

ARRI ACQUIRES CLAYPAKY

NAB has launched “Celebrating 100 Years,” a comprehensive website that provides an interactive journey through the organisation’s history and evolution over the years. The site offers a timeline detailing landmark achievements, moments in broadcasting and at NAB Show, along with image galleries, broadcasters’ stories and a NAB Hall of Fame.

The organisation also kicked off “Share Your Story,” a community campaign, encouraging

individuals to share special memories, serendipitous moments or remarkable stories about broadcasting and NAB Show.

NEW ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY FOR CINEO STAGELYNX APP

Cineo Lighting has released its new and improved Cineo StageLynx App (version 3.2.4a) on the Apple and Google Play App stores for mobile, tablet, or desktop use.

has acquired Claypaky from AMS Osram. With this takeover, the film technology company gains one of the top lighting manufacturers in the entertainment and stage industry.

ARRI

“With Claypaky as part of our corporate group, ARRI will become a leading lighting solutions provider with top brands for both the motion picture and live entertainment markets,” emphasised Dr. Matthias Erb, chairman of the ARRI Executive Board.

“The expertise, passion, and dedication to lighting that distinguishes both companies also demonstrates that we are well-matched. These similarities form a strong foundation for building a successful cooperation and the further development of our business areas.”

Marcus Graser, CEO of Claypaky, added, “We are very happy to be joining the ARRI family. Together with ARRI, we will continue to work on our vision to create the best-in-class lighting equipment and services while offering world-class reference products to an even broader customer base.”

Designed for lighting professionals, the Cineo StageLynx App provides a seamless user experience when controlling or testing each Cineo light. The easy-to-use app automatically scans for Cineo fixtures when the “Find” button is tapped. The app detects each instrument allowing the user the ability to configure all light settings while easily and efficiently networking multiple Cineo Lights together.

“The Cineo StageLynx App was developed to be identical to the built-in console on our lighting instruments. This innovative

approach makes the transition between the light and the app intuitive and unified. Our commitment is to lead the way by providing content creators pioneering technology solutions that exceed expectations,” said Chuck Edwards, VP of LED Innovation for Cineo Lighting.

#BEMOREMARK

Our regular round up of who is shooting what and where

INDEPENDENT TALENT GROUP:

Dan Atherton is prepping new TV series Trinity, directed by Brady Hood. Chas Bain has graded A Town Called Malice, directed by Jamie Donoughue. Darran Bragg is shooting The Lazarus Project S2 with Sean Spencer. Bjorn Bratberg was in Scotland shooting block 1 of Annika S2, starring Nicola Walker. Jordan Buck shot with directors Tim Brown and Anne Hollowday at 1stAveMachine. Miguel Carmenes lit a spot for FaceIt for Anattic in Copenhagen, Warsaw, Sao Paolo and Rio, and a Mae Muller promo with director Dumi. Chris Clarke lit for Tubby Bros on a Lego ad, and with Laura Borgio for BP. Ben Davis BSC is prepping Ilya Naishuller’s Heads Of State. Arni Filippusson is shooting Boat Story, directed by Jack and Harry Williams. Sam Goldie is lighting on The Inheritance for director Aku Louhimies. Katie Goldschmidt has returned for House Of The Dragon S2. Stuart Howell has prepped Interview With A Vampire S2. Rick Joaquim recently shot lots of promo’s including Pip Millett with KC Locke, DJ Nathan Dawe with Troy Roscoe, and lit a short film for Netflix with director Jed Shepherd.

Suzie Lavelle ISC BSC is shooting Severance S2 in New York. John

Mathieson BSC is shooting God’s Spy in Belgium and Ireland, the true story of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who went from being a pacifist preacher to an assassin of Hitler. Seamus McGarvey BSC ASC is shooting Joe Wright’s Mussolini series Andreas Neo joined the team on Disclaimer as prelight DP on the volume stage. Mark Patten BSC has started preparations on Andor S2 with Janez Metz.

Stephan Pehrsson BSC is prepping The Venery Of Samantha Bird in Vancouver James Rhodes has graded the feature Femme, a development of the award-winning short film by the same name,

directed by Ng Choon Ping and Sam Freeman. George Richmond BSC is lighting Deadpool 3 for Sean Levy. Chris Ross BSC is doing the opening block of The Day Of The Jackal Ashley Rowe BSC is prepping Belgravia with John Alexander. Carl Sundberg is shooting Halo 2 Maja Zamojda BSC is shooting block one on My Lady Jane, based on a book by Brodi Ashton, Gemma Burgess, Cynthia Hand and Jodi Meadows.

LOOP TALENT: Welcome to DP Alistair Little, who has an extensive portfolio in commercials, plus narrative credits including Chloe Wicks’ Cradled for C4’s On the Edge series, and the pilot Unfair, with director Meg Campbell. His second unit credits include Ragdoll with Sid Gentle Films, and Pack Of Lies for Sister Pictures. Emma Dalesman wrapped on the UK leg of the feature The Buckingham Murders, directed by Hansal Mehta, and flew to India to shoot the remainder. Matt North shot an HETV production in Wales. Martyna Knitter shot a sports documentary and is in discussion for an HETV show. Ali

Asad is in discussion for multiple projects. Tania Freimuth is prepping for a feature and spoke on a panel for World Television Day. Aman K Sahota lensed the film Showrunner in Liverpool. Jon Muschamp is shooting The Trap, a feature directed by Lena Headey. Matt Gillan won Gold for the Straight 8 competition with Iris Worldwide. Rik Burnell has graded the documentary Red Herring. The agency also welcomes Guadeloupean DP Jerry AmadiPradon, who has an exciting portfolio of narrative, commercial and music promo work, including the French TV series L’Amour À L’Épreuve, and a stunning Nightmares On Wax promo for Compulsory.  Paul MacKay shot commercials for Natwest and Coca Cola Kyle Macfadzean lit TVCs for Dunhill and IWC. Tom Turley has been shooting commercials with directors Peter King and Jonnie Malachi. Olly Wiggins worked on spots with Marcus Liversedge, and Lorenzo Levrini is now shooting a feature in Italy. Tom Watts is lighting commercials. Bertrand Rocourt collaborated with Jeurgen Teller. Nicholas Bennett framed spots for ITV and The Gate. Chris O’Driscoll has been shooting in Amsterdam, Scotland and Egypt. Camera operator Jem Rayner GBCT ACO has joined Loop Talent Diary Service. Grant Sandy-Phillips was as B-camera/ Steadicam operator on Midtown Michael Vega is working on commercial projects. Laura Seears is connecting with new DPs. Michael Eshun-Mensah operated on commercial projects and did Steadicam dailies on Grime Kids James Anderson ACO did dailies on Boat Story in Leeds. Jack Smith operated B-camera/drone on the USA weather channel series, Uncharted Adventures

This page: (from top) 1st AD Danny McGrath, director Joe Wright, operator Peter Robertson and DP Seamus McGarvey BSC ASC; Emma Dalesman on The Buckingham Murders; Nicholas Bennett on-location; and Tom Watts. Opposite: Arthur Mulher ISC on Sex Education; Stephen Murphy ISC BSC on Mr & Mrs Smith; and Andy Hollis shooting Entitled.

Gary Kent & Sebastien Joly ACO have been shooting commercials.

S4 in Wales, and attended recces in Scotland on the new drama Nightsleeper for Fremantle’s

WORLDWIDE PRODUCTION AGENCY: PJ Dillon ISC ASC wrapped principal photography on Three Body Problem for Netflix, and is now shooting on House Of The Dragon S2 for HBO. Stephen Murphy ISC BSC continues on Amazon’s Mr & Mrs Smith with director Karena Evans in Italy. Tony Slater Ling BSC is lighting Cold Storage for StudioCanal with director Jonny Campbell. Richard Donnelly ISC wrapped on the Irish unit of The Gone series for RTÉ and Three Body Problem for Netflix. Arthur Mulhern ISC completed his stint on Netflix’s Sex Education

Euston Films/BBC. Anna Patarakina FSF has started principal photography on Boat Story with director Alice Troughton for Two Brothers Pictures/ BBC/Amazon Freevee. Ed Moore BSC shot on Hijack for Apple TV+ with director Jim Field Smith, and is now on House Of The Dragon S2 for HBO. Ruairi O’Brien ISC BSC has graded the feature Jericho Ridge with director Will Gilbey for Dog Eat Dog. Tibor Dingelstad NSC continues on The Doll Factory with director Sacha Polak for Paramount+/Buccaneer Media. Callan Green ACS NZCS shot on Guilt S3 with directors Robert McKillop and Patrick Harking for Expectation TV/BBC. Xavier Dolléans AFC shot Mrs. Davis with

directors Alethea Jones and Owen Harris for Warner Bros TV/Peacock in Spain. Catherine Derry has wrapped on The Great S3 for Starz, and is now shooting A Thousand Blows with Tinge Krishnan for Disney+/Hulu. Nathalie Pitters has concluded on Dreaming Whilst Black for BBC/A24, as has Adam Barnett on Champion with director Caleb Femi for BBC, in Kingston, Jamaica. Jaime Ackroyd lit the feature Lollipop with director Daisy-May Hudson. Joel Devlin and Paul Morris shot on Bodies for Netflix/Moonage Pictures with directors Marco Kreuzpaintner and Haolu Wang. Vanessa Whyte worked on Ted Lasso S3 for AppleTV+. Andy Hollis has ended principal photography on Entitled with director Tim Kirkby for Showtime/ C4. Kanamé Onoyama worked on Top Boy with director William Stefan Smith for Netflix. Kolja Brandt framed on Beirut for Showtime with director Greg Barker. Marcus Autelli lit a spot for Adidas via Studio Beng Beng in Barcelona, lensed an Aldi ad in Manchester with Craft director Joe Dixon. Benjamin Todd was in Cape Town for a Burger King TVC via Riff Raff directing duo, The Sacred Egg. Amelia Hazelrigg shot with director Ally Green for Net-A-Porter with Bullion. Fabian Wagner BSC ASC lensed a spot with Pulse Films and director John Madden for Money Supermarket Beatriz Sastre wrapped with director Michael O Kelly and Recipe on an AutoTrader spot. Matthew Emvin Taylor lit for Hyundai

with Familia director Jeron Mol. Dan Holland shot ads for Butlins with Annex director Oscar Cariss, and for Barclaycard with Kode Media director Matt Carter

UNITED AGENTS:

A warm welcome to Michael Swan SASC at the agency. Remi Adefarasin BSC is shooting the feature Locked In for Gaumont/Netflix with director Nour Wazzi. Søren Bay DFF has wrapped on Three Little Birds with director Yero Timi-Biu for Tiger Aspect. Mark Nutkins has graded The Fuck It Bucket with director Laura Steinel for Left Bank Pictures. Philippe Kress DFF has concluded on The Turkish Detective with director Lynsey Miller for Miramax/ Paramount+. Donna Wade is grading Vera for ITV Studios. Danny Cohen BSC is shooting Slow Horses S3 for Apple TV. Damian Paul Daniel is working on a new feature documentary with Stefan Stuckert. Martin Fuhrer BSC is focusing on short form. David Higgs BSC has completed on Anand Tucker’s feature The Critic Matt Lewis shooting Philip Barantini’s series Boiling Point. Kieran McGuigan BSC is meeting for projects. Laurie Rose BSC is on The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power S2. Bet Rourich AEC is lighting Isabel Coixet’s latest film. John Sorapure is shooting The Wasp, a feature directed by Guillem Morales. Simon Tindall has graded Lawrence Gough’s episodes of The Gold. Ollie Downey BSC is shooting the final episodes of Netflix/Drama Republic’s One Day Laurens De Geyter SBC is prepping The Couple Next Door, directed by Dries Vos Sam Heasman is shooting Supacell for Netflix. David Rom is shooting Amazon’s The Devil’s Hour S2, and Simon Stolland is working on short form Si Bell is lighting Woman In The Wall for Showtime and BBC with director Harry Wootliff. Sam Chiplin, Charlotte Bruus Christensen ASC, Anton Mertens SBC and Juan Sarmiento G. are reading and meeting. James Friend BSC ASC is one of two DPs on Star Wars franchise Paradox for Lucasfilm. Milos Moore is lighting block 2 of A Thousand Blows for director Ashley Walters. Neus Ollé AEC BSC is shooting ads David Raedeker BSC is shooting blocks 1, 3 & 5 of Say Nothing with director Michael Lennox. Niels Reedtz Johansen was in Dominican Republic shooting Something In The Water for director Hayley Easton Street. Kate Reid BSC is on Invitation To A Bonfire for AMC. Ed Rutherford is in prep for The Serpent Queen S2 with director Justin

Haythe. Anna Valdez Hanks shot the short, Familiar Phantoms, for directors Larissa Sansoor and Soren Lind. Ben Wheeler is mid-shoot with director Paul Whittington on Two Tone for Kudos/BBC. Alex Barber was in South Africa on a Formula E spot with director Sam Walker. Laurent Bares is shooting TV series Platform 7 for Dancing Ledge in the UK. Alfie Biddle has started shooting TV series Loss & Return for director Andrew Cumming. Sam Care was in Cardiff, shooting an episode of Doctor Who for director Dylan Holmes Williams. Simon Chaudoir has been busy shooting in Lisbon, with directors Similar but Different on a Jack Daniels ad with Division, LA, and a Mastercard commercial in Cape Town with directors AB/ CD/CD for Merman, LA. Sara Deane has wrapped on 5lbs Of Pressure for director Phil Allocco. Lasse Frank lit a Delta Airlines TVC in Bangkok, with directors Alaska. Florian Hoffmeister BSC is shooting Night Country in Iceland for director Issa López. Stephen KeithRoach shot a British Airways spot in Mauritius with director Tim Godsall for Anonymous, UK. Tim Maurice-Jones BSC was in Cape Town shooting a Mountain Dew ad for Traktor. James Oldham recently shot Prancer: A Christmas Tale, which was released 4 th December in time for the holidays. Simon Richards was in Newcastle, shooting a new episode of Vera with director Paul Gay. Glynn Speeckaert AFC ASC has been shooting Largo Winch 3, for director Olivier Masset-Depasse in Belgium and Thailand. Marcel Zyskind lit the feature The Dead Don’t Hurt in Mexico and Canada for director Viggo Mortensen. Daniel Vilar has wrapped Dune 2 in Budapest as 2nd Unit DP. Haris Zambarloukos BSC is shooting A Haunting In Venice with director Kenneth Branagh.

CASAROTTO RAMSAY & ASSOCIATES: Femi Awojide is shooting St Helena, a documentary with director Nadine Ibrahim. Laura Bellingham is working on Magpie with director Sam Yates. Simona Susnea shot on Heartstopper S2. Beatriz Delgado Mena worked on a commercial with Worldbuilding. Greg Duffield is due to start filming Trying S4 this coming March. Matt Gray is shooting The Killing Kind, before filming on James Strong’s Mr Bates Vs The Post Office this April. Ebba Hult is lit a spot for Alexander McQueen David Katznelson DFF BSC is working on The Tattoist Of Auschwitz , adapted from the novel by Heather Morris. Frank Lamm has commenced on Mary & George with director Oliver Hermanus. Hélène Louvart AFC has graded Karim Aïnouz’s feature Firebrand David Pimm is working on We Are The Lucky Ones Aaron Rogers is prepping Daddy’s Head, a horror feature for Stigma Films, and lensed Eshan Bhatti’s short, Peanut Annika Summerson BSC is shooting Netflix’s adaptation of Richard Gadd’s play, Baby Reindeer

LUX ARTISTS:

Rob Hardy BSC ASC continues shooting The Book Of Clarence with director Jeymes Samuel. Darius Khondji AFC ASC has wrapped Bong Joon Ho’s new feature. Arnaud Potier AFC

This page: (from top) Arseni Khachaturan on Bones And All; two shots of Alejandro Martinez at work; and Andre Chemetoff perched on the rocks. Englemageren (Angelmaker); and Alejandro Martinez. Opposite: (clockwise) Arseni Khachaturan with Luca Guadagnino on Bones And All; Rina Yang x 2; Shawn Peters; and Rina Yang again!

lit a Montefiore commercial directed by Frederik Bond. Jessica Lee Gagne continues shooting Apple TV+ series Severance S2 with director Ben Stiller. Mauro Chiarello filmed a Quickbooks commercial and a Miller spot, both directed by Ian Pons Jewel. Rasmus Videbaek is shooting on The Crown S6 with director Erik Richter Strand. Pat Aldinger has wrapped on the feature Bang Bang directed by Vincent Grashaw, starring Tim Blake Nelson . Jarin Blaschke is prepping Nosferatu, directed by Robert Eggers. Michael McDonough

BSC ASC is shooting The Decameron with director Michael Uppendahl.

Rina Yang

BSC lit a Jordan commercial

directed by Karim Huu Do. Eigil Bryld has wrapped No Hard Feelings with director Gene Stupinsky. Piers McGrail ISC has completed On Record for Netflix with Nash Edgerton. Guillermo Garza shot a Nar TVC directed by Isiah Seret. James Laxton ASC continues on the new Lion King movie with director Barry Jenkins. Benjamin Loeb has wrapped on Dream Scenario with director Kristoffer Borgli.

Harry Wheeler lenses a Stussy ad with director Frank Lebon. Leo Hinstin AFC has completed on Wake Up with directors Anouk Whissell, Yoann-Karl Whissell and François Simard. Julien Poupard AFC continues on an Unnamed Feature with director Ladj Ly. Nicolas Bolduc CSC is prepping Ourika with director Marcela Said. Kasper Tuxen DFF shot a Waitrose commercial, directed by Henry-Alex Rubin. Ross Giardina is lensing Sleeping Dogs with director Adam Cooper. John Lynch is prepping Rivals with director Elliot Hegarty. Alejandro Martinez is shooting Fallout with director Claire Kilner. Ula Pontikos BSC is lensing Mary And George with director Oliver Hermanus. Nanu Segal is shooting Curveball with director Philip Martin.

MCKINNEY MACARTNEY MANAGEMENT:

Stuart Biddlecombe is prepping The Veil for FX. Mick Coulter BSC and Alessandra Scherillo have been shooting commercials. Sergio Delgado recently shot episodes of The Great S3 for Hulu. Michael Filocamo is filming Screw S2 with director Tom Vaughan. Gavin Finney BSC is shooting My Lady Jane in London. Jean Philippe Gossart AFC is filming Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power S2 for Amazon. David Luther is shooting Alex Rider S2 for Amazon. Andy McDonnell recently

wrapped on Sex Education S4 for Netflix with director Dominic Le Clerc. John Pardue BSC shot Afghan Dream on location in Morocco and Hungary.

GRAVY CREW: Rupert Power ACO operated on the film A Cuban Girl’s Guide To Tea And Tomorrow, shot in Yorkshire, directed by Katherine Fairfax Wright, with DP Maz Makhani. Steadicam operator James Poole ACO spent most of 2022 in Saudi Arabia on Rise Of The Witches,

a 10-part fantasy-adventure series based on the best-selling books by Saudi author Osamah Al Muslim, located at purpose-built studios, including Saudi Arabia’s biggest purpose-built backlot in Neom. Chris Hutchinson ACO operated on Paramount +’s eight parter Sexy Beast Joe Bullen recently wrapped on World On Fire 2 in Belfast. Rory Moles ACO was busy doing dailies on The F*ck it Bucket and The Great S3. Emilio Schläppi ACO has been busy on World Production’s Fifteen Love Henry Landgrebe shot dailies on Ted Lasso 2, Dreaming Whilst Black and Vera, and then Gold with DP Simon Tindall. Mihalis Margaritas ACO shot dailies on Clerkenwell Film’s Baby Reindeer, a compelling true story and 2019 Edinburgh Fringe one-man stage-play, that follows writer and performer Richard Gadd’s warped relationship with his female stalker.

MY MANAGEMENT:

Congratulations to Adric Watson on winning the Golden Frog at the 2022 Camerimage Film Festival for his outstanding work on A Mouthful Of Petrol in the documentary short competition, directed by Jess Kohl. Nikita Khatsarevich lensed on The Rasmus x Kalush music video in Warsaw with director Leonid Kolosovskyi, and a football TVC for Borussia Dortmund with director Taz Tron Delix. Allison Anderson shot for Adidas in LA with Kamp Grizzly director Michael Johnson, plus John Deere for Spark & Riot in Kansas with director Cinzia Pedrizzetti. Arnaud Carney was in Cape Town filming Garnier ads with director Nans Noiron at Downtown Paris. Carlos Veron lensed on a Tropical Uprising & Avril Lavigne music video with London Alley director Hannah Lux Davis. Chris Dodds shot for M&S and Samsung with Just So director Zac Harney. Craig Dean Devine has wrapped on the feature Layla with director Amrou Al-Kadhi. Daisy Zhou lensed on Footlocker in LA with directors Chaos, plus Starbucks in Toronto with Smuggler director Allie Avital. Darran Tiernan ISC prepping on HBO MAX’s Batman spin-off, The Penguin, with director Craig Zobel in New York. Deon van Zyl lensed for Jaguar with Agile director Charlie Robins. Dominic Bartels filmed TVCs for Furniture Village with Black Lab director Marcus Thomas, plus John Freida with Spring Studiose director Mattias Pettersson.

Ekkehart Pollack lit for Lamborghini with director Manu Cossu in Sicily. Filip Marek shot for Coca Cola in Prague with Stink director Keith McCarthy. Ian Forbes has wrapped on second unit of the tennis drama

Fifteen Love, starring Poldark ’s Aidan Turner, for Amazon Prime, and did dallies on Netflix’s Heartstopper S2. Issac Bauman has wrapped on Loki S2 with directors Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead for Disney Plus.

Jallo Faber FSF FNF lensed for Tegner & Son in Prague and Stockholm with director Jon Holmberg, plus Nature’s Own with Smuggler director Filip Engstorm.

Jo Willems ASC SBC has wrapped on Hunger Games - The Ballard Of Songbirds And Snakes, starring Hunter Schafer and Tom Blyth. Jon Chema lensed on GM Motors with Missing Pieces in Detroit, and Google with Scheme Engine in Atlanta. Lee Thomas shot for Farnborough Airport with director Matthew Hopper, and did a FIFA World Cup trailer and a Vodafone ad with director Jacob Mackay. Max Witting has lensed Kurt Geiger and Dior Baby with Wild Island Films. Minka

Farthing-Kohl shot a Michael Kors campaign with Partizan director Matt Baron in LA, and a music video for Don Toliver with director Alexandre Moors. Nicolaj Bruel DFF has been lensing in Mexico City with director Martin Werner on Liverpool. Paul O’Callaghan is with director Ceri Isfryn on a documentary feature for Netflix through Voltage TV and lensed on Audible spot with Sassy Films director Mike Baldwin. Pete Konczal ASC is prepping in Calgary on Fargo S5. Petra Korner AAC has wrapped Platform 7, an ITV mini-series in Leeds with director Sarah Walker. Pieter Vermeer has

VISION ARTISTS:

Benedict Spence is in prep on TV series Eric, for Sister Pictures and longtime collaborator Lucy Forbes, about a missing boy in 1980’s Manhattan. Jonas Mortensen wrapped Netflix’s One Day with director Molly Manners, and started prep on an NDA TV special with Merman and

wrapped on the feature Muzzle, starring Aaron Eckhart with director John Stalberg Jr. Ravenna Tran was in France shooting a gin ad with director Sofala Mai and lensed a BFI-funded short called Witches Robbie Ryan BSC ISC was in New Orleans lensing on Yorgos Lanthimos’ next feature for Element Pictures, starring Emma Stone, Margaret Qualley and Willem Dafoe. Shaka Agina lensed with Youth Beyond Borders director Aleah Scott, and Breaking Bread with Four 8 director David Hayes. Sophie Gohr DFF has wrapped on Danish thriller Englemageren with directors Esben Tønnesen and Julie Ølgaard through Hithero Productions/SF Studios. Stuart Dryburgh ASC has wrapped on the Amazon Prime TV series Fallout, an adaptation of the video game set in post-apocalyptic America, directed by Jonathan Nolan. Sveta Aparina was in Greece for a week working alongside Monika Lenczewska on the production Animal Sy Turnbull has wrapped in Kentucky on Desperation Road with director Nadine Croker, starring Mel Gibson and Garrett Hedlund. Todd Banhazl is lensing on Winning Time: The Rise Of The Lakers Dynasty S2 in LA. Todd Martin shot for Nike in South Korea with BWGTBLD director Jess Kohl, and is now filming the feature Judo with Academy Award-winning director Guy Nattiv in Tbilsi, Georgia.

director Tom McKay. Nick Morris has graded new Netflix series The Fuck It Bucket for Left Bank, directed by Alyssa McClelland, which follows a young woman’s struggles with eating disorders in high school. Anna MacDonald did camera tests for the upcoming documentary feature on Apollo 13 for Netflix titled Stranded In Space. James Blann has begun on the documentary feature With A Gun And A Radio, directed by Matt Houghton, about a famous 1970’s bank heist. Kia Fern Little graded The Long F Off, an instalment of C4’s anthology series On the Edge, directed by James Doherty, and is shooting an NDA Apple TV music documentary on a high-profile British star. Ryan Eddleston has graded Alice Lowe’s new timetravelling feature film Timestalker, for Western Edge Pictures/BFI. Stephen Dunn shot an exciting NDA documentary about county lines drug trafficking. Will Hanke is on Starstruck

saw the premiere of an episode of his world-travelling documentary series Limitless for Disney, that follows Chris Hemsworth as he explores different

S3, directed by Rose Matafeo. Jim Jolliffe

This page: Rina Yang; (row one) - Alejandro Martinez; Nadine Crocker with Sy Turnbull on Desperation Road; Jallo Faber at Triangle Of Sadness premiere; Lee Thomas with actor Jeremy Irons. (row two) –Shaka Agina on a Labrinth promo; Shaka again on the feature Breaking Bread; and Jake Scott. (Clockwise down) – David Bird; keygrip Adrian Van As, oP Jallo Faber and dolly grip Duane Els on a TVC for Lipton; Adric Watson receiving Golden Frog at Camerimage; Sophie Gohr on the feature Englemageren (Angelmaker); and Alejandro Martinez.

ways of life. Luciana Riso has begun on a Colombian-based Netflix feature, currently under NDA. Lorena Pagès shot additional photography for new BBC3 series Grime Kids, directed by Abdou Cissé. Tim Green has been working on a feature-length F1 documentary through North One TV in the US. Luke C. Harper  lensed two shorts – Honeybaby a conversation on race, directed by actor turned director David Jonsson, plus the UK’s first-ever trans-starring sci-fi Goodbye Python, directed by Frankie Fox, funded by BFI Network. In commercials, Courtney Bennett shot Adidas spots with Canada. Arthur Loveday lit Stormzy for Conde Nast. Eoin McLoughlin filmed a range of fashion pieces for Miu Miu, Balenciaga and Barbour. Jaime Feliu-Torres teamed-up again with director Bob Harlow to shoot Vodafone TVCs for Blink. James Watson lit Suzuki car commercials in India. Richard Mott joined Caswell Coggins various commercials. Kai Blamey was abroad shooting Gucci for Iconoclast with Akinola Davies. Rhys Warren was also overseas for fashion brand Ted Baker. Tim Fok continues his collaboration with Simon Willows shooting home brand ads through Agile Films.

WIZZO & CO:

Congratulations to Molly Manning Walker as Scrapper, directed by Charlotte Regan, will play in competition at Sundance 2023, and also to Darius Shu as Queer Parivaar, directed by Shiva Raichandani, won the Iris Prize for Best Film. Aaron Reid has wrapped and grades Netflix’s

WHO, WHAT, WHEN & WHERE

Supacell directed by Rapman. Fede Alfonzo has graded the feature Made In..., directed by Jack Armstrong. Murren Tullett has wrapped the feature & Mrs alongside director Daniel Reisinger. Oli Russell has graded Disney+’s The Ballad Of Renegade Nell Christophe Nuyens SBC continues on an embargoed drama. Susanne Salavati has done the DI on The Lazarus Project S2, directed by Carl Tibbetts. Adam Gillham is lighting A Gentleman In Moscow with director Sam Miller. Arran Green has graded Count Abdulla, directed by Asim Abbasi. Steven Ferguson is shooting on The Woman In The Wall with director Rachna Suri. Ryan Kernaghan and Charlie Goodger are prepping embargoed dramas. Matthias Pilz has graded the feature Excursion, directed by Una Gunjak. Nick Dance BSC has done the DI on his episodes of Grace S3, directed by Will Sinclair. Luke Bryant has grade the feature The Last Kingdom, directed by Ed Bazalgette. Ben Magahy has completed thye DI on Smothered alongside director George Belfield. Dymtro Nedria is shooting For Your Eyes Only in India, alongside director Sumit Purohit. Antonio Paladino is grading the feature Dance First, directed by James Marsh. Jan Richter-Friis DFF continues shooting Fear The Walking Dead in the US. Seppe Van Grieken SBC shot main unit days on an embargoed feature. Gary Shaw shot on The Burning Girls alongside director Kieron Hawkes. Sverre Sordal FNF is prepping a feature in India. Chas Appeti is prepping an embargoed drama, as is Karl Oskarsson IKS Tim Sidell BSC has graded Chemistry Of Death Nicola Daley ACS is shooting the final episodes of Halo Franklin Dow shot the short Capture, directed by Juliet Riddell. Henry Gill lit the short Medallion in Ethiopia with director Ruth Hunduma. Carmen Pellon Brussosa shot the short Best Dressed, directed by Victoria Bata. David Procter BSC worked with Darius Marder, Patrick Meller shot with Martin Kalina and Theo Garland with Finn McGough. Hamish Anderson shot with Andrew Lane, Will Bex shot with Chris Balmond and Joe Douglas shot with Noah Harris.

BERLIN ASSOCIATES:

Edward Ames has been shooting Waterloo Road for Wall To Wall/BBC. Al Beech shot a block of Silent Witness S26, and is now working on the next series of Midsommer Murders Sarah Bartles Smith shot a special of Intelligence for Expectation Entertainment, directed by Matt Lipsey. Andy Clark worked on The Love Rat for Clapperboard Studios in Cypress, with Katherine Churcher directing. Annemarie Lean-Vercoe shot on block

2 of The Chelsea Detective S2. Nick Martin framed the opening block of Dinner With The Parents for Big Talk Productions. Trevelyan Oliver is shooting Ghosts S5 for Monumental Pictures. Tom Pridham recently worked on The Secret in Malta for Gaumont, with director Adrian McDowall. Andrew Rodger is shooting Inspector Singh with director Suri Krishnamma in Malaysia and Singapore. James Swift shot on block 2 of Cobra S3 for New Pictures. Matt Wicks recently wrapped on block 3 of Debutantes for The Forge Entertainment, directed by Charlotte Regan. Phil Wood shot a block on Cobra S3.

DPB70

Page: (row one) Carlos Veron with director James Larese on a music video; Henry Gill.

two) Chris dodds on a Google shoot with dir. Sam Robinson; and Darius Shu Disney. (row three) Craig Dean Devine shooting the feature Layla; and DP Adric Watson, with actor Frankie Wilson, and soundperson Michel Kuligowski on Ironstone. DP Jon Chema (back) Ben Steen (l) Connor O’Brien (r); and Ryan Eddleston on the set of Timestalker, photo by Teresa Adamson.

SCREEN TALENT:

Yiannis Manolopoulos recently wrapped on Fracture, part of a horror anthology for Hulu, with director Jon K. Jones. Adam Sliwinski shot Strength Of A Woman for Sony.

SARA PUTT ASSOCIATES:

Emily Almond Barr lit block 1 of Cobra for New Pictures/Sky with director Charles Sturridge. Jan Jonaeus has wrapped on Challenge for Apple TV+/STV. David Mackie is working on the new series of Lazarus for Urban Myth/ Sky with director Pier Wilkie. George Amos is 2nd nnit DP on Warrior S3 in South Africa. Giulio Biccari is in South Africa lighting King Shaka. John Bretherton was 2nd unit DP on A Town Called Malice and stunts unit DP on Supacell. Andrei Austin is doing dailies on Séance and Grime Kids. Andrew Bainbridge continues as A-camera/Steadicam on One Day, the adaptation of the novel by David Nicholls. Danny Bishop is operating A-camera/Steadicam on The Acolyte for Lucas Films. Ed Clark operated on Black Cake, and is A-camera/Steadicam on Curveball James Frater is in Prague on Ballerina, a female-led spin off from the John Wick movies. Ilana Garrard is confirmed on Mary And George for Hera Pictures/ Sky, starring Julianne Moore. Zoe GoodwinStuart is B-camera on The Acolyte James Leigh is operating on The Lazarus Project for Urban Myth. Will Lyte has started on a 6x60min project for BBC/Two Brothers Pictures called Boat Story. Vince McGahon is A-camera/ Steadicam on Slow Horses Julian Morson operated on Wicked Little Letters, with director Thea Sharrock and DP Ben Davis BSC. Al Rae is confirmed on The Palace for HBO, directed by Stephen Frears, shooting in Vienna and London .

Aga Szeliga has been working on Hulu’s The Great S3. Tom Walden operated on The Ballad Of Renegade Nell Rick Woollard has been working on commercials with North Six, Mai Productions, Pulse Films and Great Guns. Chris Maxwell worked on Screw S2 for STV/C4.

PRINCESTONE: Of the agency’s camera/Steadicam operators… Junior Agyeman recently finished on Netflix’s series Champions, with director John Ogunmuyiwa and DPs Christopher Sabogal and Robin Whenary, wth the final leg of filming in Jamaica. Simon Baker ACO is still filming on The Crown S6, with directors Christian Schwochow, Alex Gabassi and Stephen Daldry and DPs

Adriano Goldman

ABC BSC ASC and Sophia Olsson for Left Bank Pictures/Netflix, being filmed in Majorca, Barcelona, Paris, England and Scotland. Cosmo Campbell ACO is shooting on Extraordinary 2, a comedy series for Sid Gentle Films/Disney, with DP Alvaro Gutierrez and Toby MacDonald directing, at Three Mills Studios and locations in East London. Michael Carstensen

ACO has been working on The Diplomat, a new television series for Netflix with director Alex Graves and DP Julian Court BSC, plus dailies reshoots at

Pinewood on Marvel Studio’s mini-series Secret Invasion, with director Ali Selim and DP Eben Bolter BSC. Rob Hart ACO operated on The Burning Girls, a for Buccaneer Media and Paramount+ directed by Kieron Hawkes, with DP Gary Shaw, and starring Samantha Morton. Tony Jackson ACO went to Bucharest for 20 th Television miniseries We Were The Lucky Ones with director Thomas Kail and DP Tim Ives. Tony Kay ACO has been shooting on TV productions including Paramount+ series Sexy Beast, Three Little Birds mini-series written by Sir Lenny Henry with DPs Soren Bay DFF and Felix Wiedemann BSC. Tony also filmed a Swedish House Mafia concert at the London 02 Arena with director/DP Jason Ellis ACO, and IMAX shoot using ARRI Trinity with Sony Venice 2 and Angenieux 22-60 zoom. James Layton ACO has finished filming on the feature Promised Land for Revolution Films with director Michael Winterbottom and DP Giles Nuttgens BSC. Dan Nightingale ACO is on Sexy Beast for Paramount+, with director Michael Caleo and DP Bebe Dierken BVK. Peter Robertson Associate BS ACO iis shooting on the eight-

part Mussolini biopic at Cinecitta in Rome, with director Joe Wright and DP Seamus McGarvey BSC ASC. Sean Savage Associate BSC ACO SOC Camera is shooting second unit at Shinfield Studios on Disney TV series Paradox , with DP Oliver Loncraine. Fabrizio Sciarra SOC Associate BSC GBCT ACO has been filming in Belgrade on the Sony Pictures’ feature Horrorscope, with directors Spencer Cohen and Anna Halberg and DP Ellie Smolkin ACS. Peter Wignall ACO is on Guy Ritchie’s new series The Gentlemen for Netflix, with Richie directing the first two episodes, and DP being Ed Wild BSC.

This page: (from top) Acolyte crew; Dmytro Nedria; Andrew Rodger and equine friend; Franklin Dow on Bastille’s Hope For The Future, photo by Juan Minotta; Franklin Dow on Mexican Dream feature, with Juan Minotta, photo by Andy Hewitson; Adam Sliwinski on Strength Of A Woman. Row three: Junior Agyeman on the set of Champions. Joe Douglas. Row five: George Burt on Joe baby; Tony Kay on set of Swedish House Mafia promo using Trinity; Yiannis Manolopoulos on Fracture; Murren Tullett in Milan; and Nick Dance BSC on the set of Grace.

CROWN JEWEL

By Ron Prince

Echoing the protagonist’s desire to emancipate herself from royal protocol and oppressive duty, German cinematographer Judith Kaufmann BVK’s framing is seldom stationary, whilst rich hues and the innate texture of Kodak 35mm celluloid film imbue the image with a painterly blush, in Marie Kreutzer‘s purposefully-unconventional and absorbing biopic, Corsage.

It’s Christmas 1877, and Empress Elisabeth of Austria, nicknamed Sissi, is celebrating her 40th birthday. Being the first lady of Austria and wife of Emperor Franz-Joseph I, she has no right to express herself as a free-spirit, and must forever retain the renown of simply being a beautiful, youthful figure. To meet these expectations, she adheres to a rigorous daily regime of fasting, smoking lilac Sobranies, exercise, hair-styling and weight-measurement. However, stifled as much by regal convention as she is by the tight-fitting corset that gives her a diminutive waistline, Elisabeth grows increasingly rebellious whilst yearning for knowledge and adventure.

Written and directed by Kreutzer, with Vicky Krieps starring, Corsage premiered to great acclaim at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, and has gone on to scoop numerous awards around the world. Along with Krieps‘ nuanced performance, the film has been noted for the way it reaches back in time through the grandeur of its historic locations, whilst being distinctly modern in style, aided by the intentionally-anachronistic inclusion of modern lighting fixtures, telephones and mops, together with re-imaginings of classic rock tunes.

“The story of a woman who has to please in order to be loved is universal and timeless,” says Kaufmann, “but Corsage was a very different take on Empress Elisabeth, who has been the subject of many films and series. This was a film about her rebellion against the role she was supposed to play, which included staying young and beautiful forever.”

Filming on Corsage took place over a total of 36 shooting days, but split into two parts to exploit the seasons and to convey the passing of time – the first between March and April 2021, the second in June for another month. Production was entirely on-location at what Kaufmann describes as a “dizzying number of historic sites, that were highly-regulated, and it was often very difficult to obtain the necessary permits.”

These included the Hofburg and Schönbrunn Palaces in Vienna, the castle and town of Eckartsau in Lower Austria, additional castles in Luxembourg, a villa in France, plus other historic sites around Belgium and the city of Ancona, on the Adriatic coast of Italy, for the film’s denouement.

“Corsage was my first collaboration with Marie,” Kaufmann reveals, “and what I found interesting was the very different approach she took towards this mythical figure – for example, the opening scene of the film, in which Elisabeth holds her breath whilst submersing herself in a bath, as her servants time the performance. That is not the kind of thing you expect when you’re told you’re going to make a story about the Empress Elisabeth of Austria. Many scenes contained very little dialogue, and had something mysterious, unspoken and also sensual, but Marie is able to narrate very strongly with

images that come from the script together with Vicky’s incredible performance.

“When we first met, Marie had already done extensive research for two years. She showed me an impressive collection of moods and images during prep – not just general colours, fabrics, costume, make-up, room design and lighting moods, but she had also created her own world of images for

each of the characters.

I also read-up about this time period, searched and supplemented with additional images, moods and film excerpts.

“We didn’t have distinct film references. We mainly talked about what we wanted to avoid aesthetically. Many period productions are often overflowing with decorative opulence from the art,

costume and make-up departments, and that is exactly what we did not want – not a princess fairytale with beautiful scenery. We wanted Corsage to be in the era, but to also have a modern feeling and with a certain timelessness.”

Shooting on 35mm film was a given from the start, as Kaufmann reports it is Kreutzer‘s preferred format, and admits to feeling lucky to have come across a director who was ready to defend this decision.

“The choice of shooting on 35mm film was neither faddish nor a gesture of opposition against the prevalence of digital cinematography,” says the DP. “Rather it was because there are unique qualities to the celluloid image, especially the richness of skin tones and the depth of colours, which you cannot readily create with digital. Another beauty of film comes from the smoothing softness of the grain, and the greater latitude of exposure in highlights and shadows, and we both felt they were of the greatest importance to this production.”

Kaufmann shot Corsage in 3-perf on 35mm Kodak filmstocks, framing in 2.39:1 aspect ratio, using an ARRICAM LT camera with Leitz Summilux spherical lenses. The camera and lighting package was provided by ARRI in Vienna, Austria.

“Shooting in widescreen allowed us to isolate Elisabeth in the frame for emotional storytelling purposes, as well as covering a great many scenes where we had two or more people, sometimes staggered, in the same shot,” Kaufmann explains. “It also made a lot of sense to go 2.39:1 as we had multiple wide, moving scenes involving riding, swimming and fencing.

“I like the Leitz Summilux lenses as they are light for operating handheld. This was a fairly wide-angle film, where a lot of things were shot handheld using a 25mm or 29mm lens, close to the actors, in a sort of physical rapport with them. I had to be in-tune with the sometimes unpredictable behaviour of our protagonist to preserve the feeling of her movement that drives the film.

“Additionally, we had a limited budget for lighting our large locations and we shot a lot in the winter when the daylight was limited, so the T1.3 aperture of the Summilux lenses gave me the necessary stops. They also allowed me to bring a certain precision and sharpness to counterpoint the physicality and softness of analogue film.”

Working in collaboration with Kodak’s German sales representative, Mitch Boxrucker, Kaufmann selected Kodak Vision 3 500T (5219) and Kodak Vision 3 200T (5213) for the mainstay of the shoot. She also selected Kodak Double-X B&W (5222) for the scenes in which Elisabeth is filmed by her friend Louis Le Prince, who is considered to be the father of cinematography. Film processing was done at Studio L’Équipe in Brussels, with the 4K scan and DI grade completed at ARRI Munich with final colourist Traudl Nicholson.

“I decided to carry two colour 35mm filmstocks to keep things simple logistically,” Kaufmann say.

“I went with the 500T as I needed the highest-possible sensitivity for the many interior day and night scenes in the film. I love the texture of the grain and the latitude it has in capturing details in the

high and low-light situations. The 500T and 200T bring a beautiful warmth to the image, and the colour of the skin tones feel so real and natural, just as Marie and I originally intended.”

Speaking about energising and motivating the camera in empathy with Krieps‘ performance, Kaufmann remarks, “Observing and being observed is a central theme of the film. Elisabeth is the centre of our attention –she is always being watched, scrutinised and judged by those around her. Her perpetual movement throughout the film was a kind of narrative thread.

“So we decided to follow her with the camera, sometimes being close, sometimes distant to give her space. We were looking for a style of cinematography that retained the sharpness and openness of verité filmmaking, and not that of a traditional costume drama. Nothing too perfect, but not documentary-style either. It was about reduction, and not having a myriad of set-ups or a second camera throughout.

“In many shots, I operated handheld, but frequently had the camera on a mini-jib which allowed me to react to the actors’ movements. We also filmed a few scenes, such as the horse riding, either with Steadicam or from a Quad and an SRH-3 stabilised remote head.”

Kaufmann’s crew included 1st AC Camillo Foramitti, 2nd AC Fjodor Kelling and key grip Emmanuel Aubry. The DP was able to bring-in her gaffer, Florian Kronenberger, from Germany to oversee the lighting.

“On this film, I had to light the sets and the spaces before I could even think about the faces, because we didn’t know in advance where the actors, especially Vicky, were going to move, nor how the space was going to be occupied by them,” Kaufmann explains.

“I enjoy lighting the space without really knowing precisely what is going to happen on-camera. My kit on Corsage relied on Astera Tubes, LiteGear LiteMats and ARRI SkyPanels. The capability provided by these kind of LED fixtures is a blessing as they are lightweight, easyto-install, highly-versatile and multi-purpose sources. You can instantly adapt to a particular position and optimise every moment on-set, especially when you are working with an actress like Vicky who is used to offering different things with each take.”

Looking back on her experience of having shot Corsage on film with Kreutzer, Kaufmann remarks, “We like the process that comes with celluloid production, and the energy on-set is different. When you hear the film rolling, everyone’s attention becomes de facto much more concentrated, whether that be the technicians or

the actors. The pace is different too and this structure forces you to move and make decisions with intention.

“We had ten days for the final DI grade, but it was amazing how easy that process was because of shooting on film. It was unbelievable how much detail the highlights retained, how differentiated the skin tones were and how beautiful the colour-depth was. Working with film always has something that brings excitement and curiosity, challenge and surprise, in a way you can trust.”

Images: Corsage, directed by Marie Kreutzer. Images © Film AG.

There are unique qualities to the celluloid image

MULTI-VERSE MAYHEM

Ifyou want to know how DP Larkin Seiple made directing-duo, The Daniels’, mindbending, playfully-anarchic take on multiverse-building Everything Everywhere All At Once grounded and relatable, read on.

The Daniels (Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert) and Seiple have a solid track record of wildly-creative and outrageously-absurdist music videos/commercials, yet the best proof of their talents and proclivity for going off the beaten path was the directors’ feature debut, Swiss Army Man (2016). What was ostensibly a story of a man marooned on an island who uses a farting corpse to reach the mainland only to befriend the abruptly animated morbid fellow, turned out to be a poignant take on loneliness, friendship, societal norms, and the lies we tell ourselves to be what we think others want us to be.

A flatulent cadaver revealing inner-beauty and teaching a miserable man important life lessons in a dramedy that left some enchanted and many infuriated. How can you possibly top that?

Well, how about a bonkers action comedy about Evelyn, the most mundane and unfulfilled woman in the world, who discovers that she is living in a multiverse with infinite versions of herself and becomes a heroine fighting to save everyone from a nihilistic uber-villain who experiences all universes concurrently. Though Everything Everywhere All at Once is uproarious fun

By Darek Kuźma

“It was our Die Hard (1988, DP Jan De Bont) moment and we used it to the fullest,” laughs Seiple, “but our general rule for fight scenes was to have many close-ups, like in a Jackie Chan movie where you always see him figuring-out what to do next. It’s not about elaborate choreography, we’re rather more interested in how people adapt, react and see their personal struggles.”

They used a number of visual devices to help the audience follow the story, including varying aspect ratios.

“While testing how to have the faces stay centred in the frame, we realised that they tell their stories despite frantically shifting formats,” recalls Seiple. “All flashbacks from Evelyn’s childhood are in 4:3 looking like Super16mm. When her universe gets actionoriented, the bars start to drop and shift from spherical 16:9 to Anamorphic 2.35:1 – as a nod to Die Hard. For the slightly musical-ish hot-dog fingerverse we went for 2:1, referencing the Technicolor vibe of The Sound Of Music (1965, DP Ted McCord ASC). Some universes we shot in 1.85:1, others through specific homages, but it’s always a storytelling choice to help people track all of the insanity.”

They decided to shoot the film in a building in Simi Valley, CA, around 40 minutes outside of Los Angeles.

“It was a facility of a mortgage lender that went under during the recession. We built a lot of our sets and repurposed pre-existing ones from the Silicon Valley

“All places had to be logistically sound, and work for a number of different set-ups. A hotel lobby served as a movie theatre and a musical stage, etc. A lot of it was about being open to what suited the story.”

With the visual insanity and dozens of onscreen locations and universes, it is a marvel they managed to do it in less than 40 shooting days, whilst also being disrupted by the pandemic.

that takes the concept of a multiverse to a whole new level, it is ultimately a bittersweet film about finding a courage within oneself to be kind to others.

Despite the madcap premise, The Daniels and Seiple did everything in their power to make the story relatable. Even when they depict a parallel universe in which life has taken a creative license and people have wieners instead of fingers.

“With them, it’s always the case of taking a ridiculous idea, but with a big heart behind it, and making a connection to the audience,” claims Seiple. “My job was to make sure it didn’t look too goofy, that all the universes could potentially exist, so that you’re able to care for the characters. It was less about trying to make things fantastical and more about making the fantastical feel real.”

The fanny pack fight in an IRS building is a case in point. Waymond, Evelyn’s meek husband, has his body taken over by his action-oriented counterpart from another universe and battles security guards. With a fanny pack. In slo-mo.

TV series – all of our elevator scenes were from Silicon Valley !”, he chuckles. “We also shot on location and at the infamous DC Stages where they had dozens of pre-made sets, all working from only one angle. I wasn’t sure about this, but The Daniels loved the fact that we could do a number of scenes – a prison, a hospital, a martial arts training facility, a bus and others – all in one day. It was a fun challenge.”

Though Everything Everywhere All at Once often looks like a big-budget film, the reality was that they had to be quite creative with location scouting to make it work.

“We were scheduled for 38 but stopped at 36. It was March 2020, one day our producer said, ‘We’re not coming back on Monday.’ It was intense,” he says.

This obviously brought a number of unexpected challenges, like shooting pick-up scenes with Michelle Yeoh (Evelyn) over Zoom – she was in Paris in front of a greenscreen, they were in LA with a day’s work and a stand-in to know exactly how to direct the actress.

“It was tough, but all things considered, we tried to support one another and have some fun with the process,” reminisces Seiple. “The same happened during the grade that I did from my

I look forward to working with directors, people, who are basically good human beings

garage in LA while colourist Alex Bickel was sitting in his garage in upstate New York. We were, and I guess still are, like this bizarre family that you can’t get enough of!”

Seiple shot the film with his beloved ARRI Alexa 35, plus some GoPros for CCTV footage.

“I was happy to shoot Super 35 because it’s plenty shallow enough and feels intimate. You get to actually see the sets and keep both actors’ eyes in focus. You can also do action scenes at 200fps. Roger Deakins shot Skyfall (2012) on it and it looked great on IMAX screens, so I’m not sure why you’d need a better camera,” he explains. “We ended-up choosing Fuji stock because it worked better with the skin tones and had a bit more of cyan.”

The cinematographer used a wide range of lenses, especially for the more outlandish universes.

“I’ve never had so many lenses on a feature. I had Hawk Anamorphic, Scorpio FF Anamorphic, Zeiss Super Speed, Super Baltars and many others. For the universe where sapient beings never evolved and our characters are rocks, I used Master Primes because The Daniels wanted it to feel like a National Geographic programme. For the montage of Evelyn becoming a martial artist we used vintage 16mm zooms, and we obviously had this Stanley Kubrick 2001: Space Odyssey (1968, DP Geoffrey Unsworth BSC) homage shot with the Anamorphic Todd-AO lenses.”

Needless to say, the Kubrick reference has a clever twist and sees the monkeys trying to throw up the famous bone in a truly spectacular fashion. Amongst dozens of references Everything Everywhere All at Once has to offer, are a loony version of Pixar’s Ratatouille (2007) and a rendition of Wong Kar-Wai’s In The Mood For Love (2000, DPs Chris Doyle & Mark Lee Ping-Bing).

“Our film is an homage to the power of movies, but shooting-wise it was more about referencing the ‘memory’ of movies. In The Mood For Love universe is yellow and green, very colourful, but the original’s night exteriors were all Tungsten light exposed with Tungsten filmstock. It’s very clean, but what people remember about the film is its colours.”

Colour was another storytelling device to help the audience not to get lost in the verse-jumping.

“When you see green and yellow, you know you’re in the universe in which Evelyn is a movie star. For Ratatouille we actually referenced Magnolia (1999, DP Robert Eslwit ASC) for its strong rich American colours, and we had red, blue and white throughout,” tells Seiple. For the villain’s verse, which was white and sterile, we referenced Beyond The Black Rainbow (2010, Dp Norm Li CSC) for its inherent creepiness, and… The NeverEnding Story II: The Next Chapter (1990, DP Davod Connell ACS). This movie had a powerful effect on me when I watched it as a kid. I’m sure this tribute of ours doesn’t remotely look like the original, but, again, it’s a memory.”

Considering the colour palette, framing and lensing choices, Seiple’s lighting package was quite humble.

“We rigged a lot of LiteMats to ceilings and had lots of Astera Titan Tubes swapped for fluorescents. We would constantly create walls of LiteMats, like 20x2feet long, as well as using ARRI SkyPanels to create 4x20-feet walls of light. In general, we had to light fairly broadly because of how the story is told,” recalls the cinematographer. “I also had Astera AX3 LightDrops for eye lights and doubling for security lights constantly flashing in some scenes. Plus, a lot of DS 9s in either DS

3 mode or in the cube mode. The only time I used HMI was during the fanny pack fight because we were shooting in winter and lost sun at 4pm. We would then bounce 18K into the ceiling to kind of mimic the ambience that we had lost.”

When it came to the DI, they had everything they needed to enhance what was done on-set and maintain the continuity between the universes.

“We graded for two-and-half weeks. Because it was a crazy shoot and we were always trying to push for bigger and bolder choices, so we did lots of enhancing saturation, shifting colours, making the skin look good, so that we feel the different colours of the flesh, making the characters feel human and less washed-out, which is always the danger with digital cameras,” explains Seiple. “We also added some halation and grain to soften the image and make it a bit more timeless.”

Despite depicting badass IRS guards brawling with spiky objects up their butts (yes, this has a logical explanation), or weaponising rubber penises in a typical Daniels’ manner that might be considered offensive if it was not so damn funny, Everything Everywhere All At Once received numerous accolades since its theatrical release in March 2022. Including six Golden Globe nominations and possibly a few Oscar nods. Maybe because people seek original stuff that

pushes the envelope, or maybe because the film’s overlying message – to be kind to others – is so banal that these days it seems almost revolutionary. Seiple is proud of the work regardless of the film’s success. “I’ll say ‘yes’ sight unseen to any project The Daniels will do. They’re unique and that’s kind of what I look forward to – working directors like them, or Hiro Murai, people who are basically good human beings.”

Photo credits: Allyson Riggs.

Images courtesy of A24.

It was less about trying to make things fantastical and more about making the fantastical feel real

ISLAND OF LOST SOULS

By Ron Prince

Shooting his latest film Enys Men on 16mm colour filmstock, and unfolding its story in non-linear fashion – between the past, present and future, the real and the imagined – director Mark Jenkin has created an abstract, mind-bending, cinematic experience unlike most others.

As the follow-up to his BAFTA-winning, B&W breakthrough feature, Bait (2019), the action remains in Cornwall, but Enys Men is a completely different kettle of fish. Whereas Bait portrayed the displacement of locals and livelihoods, though the gentrification of a small Cornish community, Enys Men is set in 1973 on a remote island just off the coast, and offers surreal, enigmatic and unsettling meditations about the environment, life, love, loneliness and death.

Sensorial sound design, plus spartan dialogue – created by Jenkin himself, and added entirely in post-production, as they were with Bait – evoke a foreboding atmosphere, as a woman, known only as ‘The Volunteer’ (Mary Woodvine), leads a solitary existence.

I thought that was a good marriage of form and content for a genre film, that I could make under the radar in and around Cornwall.”

Giving more details about the origins of the story, Jenkin reveals, “When I was small and at an impressionable age, we would visit the Merry Maidens, a stone circle not far from my gran’s house in West Penwith. Legend had it that the stones were the petrified remains of a group of girls punished for dancing across the moorland on a Sunday to the tune of two pipers, who had also been set in stone.

“These images stayed with me and, years later, I found myself lying awake, wondering about those stones, what might they be up to, under cover of darkness, out there on their own, on the moor, with no-one watching. This was the starting point for Enys Men.”

Set in 1973, precisely five decades before its scheduled release, Jenkin adds, “I purposely wanted the film to feel and look of that era, as it were a lost rarity uncovered from the archives. But, it would have been difficult to create that ‘70’s aesthetic in B&W, and think it required colour as an essential aesthetic.”

In terms of visual references and other filmmaking inspirations, Jenkin says The Volunteer’s red coat was an accidental motif, rather than a conscious homage to Nicholas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now (1973, DP Anthony Richmond BSC ASC). The sinister, time-slipping editorial techniques were, however, influenced by other productions, such as Red Shift (1978), directed by John Mackenzie and Jerzy Skolimowski’s The Shout (1978, DP Mike Molloy).

Every day she undertakes the routine of clambering over weather-beaten cliffs to take temperature readings of the earth from which rare wildflowers are blossoming, before returning, by way of an ancient stone monolith, to her cottage.

As she goes about this quotidian ritual, spectral visions and voices from the past creep into the reckoning: tin miners toiling in dank caverns; the Bal Maidens employed overground to service those mines; local schoolchildren who once danced and sang folk songs; a sexual dalliance with a local man; and apparitions of a troubled young woman. Lichen that starts growing on the flowers she has been observing, also appears along a scar across her belly, whilst ghostly entreaties of distress at sea emit from the radio, deepening the mystery in this Cornish gothic tale.

Along with directing the film, Jenkin was also responsible for its script, cinematography editing, sound and score, working from the studio he has occupied for five years at the Newlyn School Of Art, formerly a primary school, now a popular artists’ colony.

“As a typical Cornish person, I hold superstitions, and have always been intrigued and haunted by standing stones, their history and mythologies, and

“I build the storytelling in the edit,” Jenkin says, “It’s where the magic of the images, sound, score, aural atmospheres and foley get reworked to fit the beats, rhythms and repetitions that make the final film.”

Production on Enys Men took place over 21 shooting days, during March and April, 2021, at locations around the West Penwith area of Cornwall, and Mullion Cove, just a short drive from his studio in Newlyn.

“The UK was in lockdown at the time, but the guidelines allowed us to work wearing masks and observing social distancing protocols,” he recalls. “I love the experience of the shooting schedule. The outside world doesn’t exist, and the collective energy is intense. Everyone is focussed and that’s the best time to make creative decisions together.”

Jenkin filmed Enys Men using his own Bolex H-16 SB camera and Bolex Prime lenses of varying lengths, including 10 15, 26, 50 and 75mm. Using an adaptor, specially-developed by camera engineer Les Bosher, Jenkin was also able to fit a vintage ARRI Carl Zeiss Vario-Sonnar 11-100mm T2 PL-mount zoom lens to the camera.

“I shot with the 15mm in tighter interior locations, and occasions when I needed to frame a bit wider. But I predominantly used the same Kern MacroSwitar 26mm f1.1 lens that I used for the vast majority of Bait. It has such warm colour. Although, I couldn’t detect it through the viewfinder, and despite

meticulous measurements, the image was a little soft through that lens. But then again, I’m not interested in perfection or consistency.

“I also incorporated a few zooms into the visual language of the film, as I like them aesthetically, and the paradox that although our eyes don’t zoom, our attention does sort of hone-in on things. There’s a real human element to those zooms in Enys Men, as it was quite an effort to manipulate those lens moves by hand with consistency, and this played into the slightly creaky, handmade and imperfect nature of the overall look.”

Jenkin chose to shoot the exterior day scenes on KODAK VISION 3 50D 7203, using available light for the most part, with KODAK VISION 3 250D 7207 on the day interiors, frequently underexposing both filmstocks for aesthetic purposes. He employed KODAK VISION 3 500T 7219 for all of the night exterior/interior scenes. The bedroom and tin-mine scenes were generally illuminated by the light emanating from double-wicked candles, supplemented by soft flickering keynotes from a minimal number of Kino Flo lighting fixtures.

All of the exposed negative was processed by Kodak Film Lab, at Pinewood, before being scanned to 4K. The lab team were given express instructions about not performing any sort of ultrasonic cleaning, so as to remove dust or other particulates, and there was to be no imagestabilisation or elimination of gate weave either, as these are all key ingredients in Jenkin’s visual recipe.

Jenkin says he doesn’t regard himself as a cinematographer, rather that’s a role which combines the skills of Colin Holt, working as lighting camera. “I operated the camera in every instance, but collaborated closely with Colin on the lighting, and together we make the role of the DP. It’s unconventional, but that’s the way it is.

“We shot pretty much all of the exteriors in natural, available light, sometimes with a reflector to bounce illumination on to a face. We also used real daylight as the basis of the lighting for the interiors, as the cottage was small and we were never far from a window. But, depending on the weather, we had to supplement that with daylight-balanced bounced-light from outside on occasion. There are some inconsistencies between those scenes, and the direction of the shadows we threw-up on to the walls, as we shot some of the interior scenes at different locations. But we could not resist those temptations as they subtly add something of the

I just love shooting on film, that’s what gets me up in the morning

supernatural to the visual storytelling.”

“I just love shooting on film, that’s what gets me up in the morning,” Jenkin concludes. “What also blows me away is that wherever I go, to screenings and film festivals, there are so many young people who want to know about film. They want to shoot on Super8mm and 16mm. It isn’t for personal nostalgic reasons. It’s essentially because

they’ve grown-up in a digital age and film looks so different and visually-exciting to them by comparison. It’s also tactile and real when you get the chance to work with it.”

Enys Men was produced by Denzil Monk, and is a Bosena Production, presented by Film4 in association with Sound/Image Cinema Lab, distributed in the UK by BFI. It’s a remarkable odyssey.

Images: Enys Men, a Bosena Production.

Photos by Steve Tanner © 2021

FIGHTING CHANCE

By Iain Blair

The long and fruitful collaboration between cinematographer Matthew Libatique ASC and Darren Aronofsky goes back to the very beginning of both their careers. Libatique shot Aronofsky’s directorial debut Pi (1998) and went on to collaborate with him on Requiem For A Dream (2000) , The Fountain (2006) , Black Swan (2010) , Noah (2014) and Mother! (2017) . Libatique received his first Oscar nomination for Black Swan, before earning a second Academy nod for his work on Bradley Cooper’s directorial debut, A Star Is Born (2018) .

Libatique’s latest collaboration with Aronofsky is the harrowing and heartbreaking drama, The Whale, which stars Brendan Fraser as Charlie, a morbidly obese English teacher who attempts to reconnect with his estranged teenage daughter Ellie (played by Sadie Sink), for one last chance at redemption. It’s a haunting and sensitive performance, generating a lot of awards season buzz. Based on the play by Samuel D. Hunter, who also wrote the screenplay, the entire film takes place in Charlie’s small-town apartment, with most of the action happening in the living room. To complement this simple visual plan, Libatique shot the film with a spare but sympathetic eye, devoid of any unnecessary flourishes or histrionics.

I talked with Libatique, whose other credits include Phone Booth (2002), Iron Man (2008) and Iron Man 2 (2010), Straight Outta Compton (2015), Chi-Raq (2015), and Don’t Worry Darling (2022), plus Cooper’s upcoming Lenny Bernstein biopic Maestro, about the challenges of the shoot and his approaches to the cinematography and lighting. Films based on plays almost always try to ‘open up’ the action and make the material more cinematic, but this is happy to embrace confinement. How big a challenge was that?

It was big, and clearly a struggle, to position the camera in different places. The blocking really doesn’t change that much. We did things to try and get Charlie off the couch, like using the wheelchair. We only had one or two scenes in which he’s actually standing up and walking back to his bedroom, which showed the living space, but most of the time he’s just sitting on the couch. So where do we put the master? Where do we put the first shot of the scene? It took a lot of planning. And you also had to deal with the other characters…

Exactly. Where do we place these satellites? When you look at the general flow of the movie, you have the sun – Charlie on the couch – and then you have these other people who come into his orbit, like his best friend Liz, the young evangelist Thomas, and his daughter Ellie. So the placement of the couch more in the middle of the room instead of the usual against-the-wall spot was key.

You and Darren have developed a very kinetic, handheld camera look over the course of your collaboration. This has a far more classical feel to it in terms of composition than your last few films with Darren. Tell us about your visual approach.

Yes, it definitely has a far more classical feel. One of the first choices we made was to go with a 1:33 frame, as we realised that would help us deal with those other characters. It meant that we could hold Charlie in our overs as he’s sitting down,

while everyone else is standing-up around him. So it was more of a practical choice than an aesthetic one, and we spent a week blocking every scene to make sure we had a variety of movement, even though he’s stationary.

Darren and I talked a lot about camera movement, but also light movement. The film takes place over five days, and we mapped it out so it’s raining on Monday, overcast on Tuesday and Wednesday, raining heavily on Thursday for the climax, and then it’s sunny on Friday when he finally gets redemption. That gave a language to the light we used.

How long was the prep?

Just three weeks, as I came straight from wrapping Don’t Worry Darling , but I’d had meetings before then with production designers, Mark Friedberg and Robert Pyzocha, to go over the set build at Umbra Studios in Newburg, New York. The idea was to wild/float every wall so we could move the camera wherever we wanted, but without it seeming like that. It had to feel like a totally real place and existence.

How did you make all your camera and lens choices?

I was inspired by the play’s minimalism, and I didn’t want the light to be noticeable, and to be very subtle. I chose the Sony Venice as I wanted to work at 2500 ISO as a base, and to use that sensitivity so as not to employ too much theatrical lighting in the space. The Sony Venice is so good for shooting in low-light as I knew we often would be, and I didn’t want to be intrusive into the

emotional weight of what was happening in the story. For lenses I chose Ang é nieux Optima Primes which have a nice fall-off and give it a nice soft feel, which is exactly what I was looking for.

How did you approach the lighting, as it’s obviously crucial in bringing life to a single room?

Yes, as we were telling the story through the windows, which were minimal, we used a lot of ARRI Sky Panel 360s, as well as ARRI M40s, ARRI 20K Fresnels and ARRI Sky Panel 60s. Then we used a lot of Astera Titans and Astera Helios in the ceiling, some Luster lights for bounce, one Hudson

Spider, and Fiilex Q8 Box lights. My gaffer was John Velez, and my crew also included key grip Mitch Lillian, and 1st AC Aurelia Winborn. My DIT was Jeff Flohr, who I met him through the late, great Harris Savides ASC. He’s a great partner whenever I shoot in New York, and we created the LUT together.

Tell us about the shoot?

It was tough as it was only 25 days, which wasn’t long enough between moving walls and letting the performances happen. That sucked-up a lot of days, and then we had to deal with the constraints of shooting in a very small space and honouring the length of the film, around two hours. You’re shooting blocks and wides so it’s not static, and to set-up and light it and get all that coverage takes a lot of time. Luckily, Darren was able to do a fair amount of rehearsal before I got there, and without all that I don’t think it would have been possible.

What was hardest scene to shoot, and why?

It was the scene in which Charlie goes into the kitchen and just gorges himself. It was so emotional and raw. Brendan had been so amiable and relaxed up till then, and he has such a great spirit and is just so great to work with, but it was visibly so hard for him – with all of us watching – to do this scene. It was so awkward, almost akin to the

awkwardness of doing a sex scene. When an actor has to go somewhere that’s so raw and difficult, it’s always so hard to shoot it.

What about the DI?

We did it with our longtime final colourist Tim Stipan over at Company3 in New York, over the course of about three weeks, and we also spent a few days working on it at Company3 in LA. It was a shorter DI than Darren and I usually do, because of the budget. I’m very involved but typically I don’t try to change the whole look of a film. It’s more a case of making sure all the cuts match and that they work really well together. We tried to use any windows to honour the language that we created for the overall visual look and the language of the five days in the story – rain, overcast and sun. I just wanted all that to be conveyed.

Did it turn out way you hoped?

Absolutely. I’m one hundred percent happy with what we did, given all the budget and schedule constraints. It’s obviously a very emotionally-heavy film, but the relationship between Charlie and his daughter isn’t that uncommon and, despite his literal physical weight, I think most people can really relate to that. It’s such a human story, and we set out to capture the great words that Samuel Hunter wrote and make a film of the play, and I think we achieved that.

It was a struggle to position the camera in different places… and we spent a week blocking every scene to make sure we had a variety of movement

The Sony Venice is so good for shooting in low-light

INTO THE LIGHT

By Natasha Block Hicks

She Said (2020), from the pen of Rebecca Lenkiewicz, lead writer on Small Axe (2020), and directed by Maria Schrader gives us an account of the events leading up to the watershed moment in the #MeToo movement. Journalists Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey from the New York Times – helped by a brave group of women survivors – ousted a Hollywood autocrat and dragged his three-decade-long regime of rampant sexual predation, coercion and cover-ups in front of the public’s gaze.

Argentinian DP Natasha Braier ADF ASC, who studied at the National Film & Television School in London, and whose credits include The Neon Demon (2016) and Honey Boy (2019), joined us during a brief break between projects, to explain how she wanted her cinematography on the film to play a supportive rather than starring role in the telling of this significant and sensitive story.

“My previous projects have tended to get attention for the cinematography,” Braier states, “but it was very clear from the beginning that She Said was not going to be one of those films. If audiences do not notice the camera and lighting, because these are working in a humble, undercover way, then I will have been successful.”

Braier first became aware of the project when producer Dede Gardner, known for 12 Years A Slave (2013, DP Sean Bobbitt BSC) and Moonlight (2016, James Laxton ASC), approached her through her agent with a “top secret script”.

“That mysterious phone call made me very curious, because I think Dede produces really interesting movies,” Braier relates. Maria Schrader, who received a 2020 Primetime Emmy Award (Outstanding Directing for a Limited Series, Movie or Dramatic Special) for Unorthodox (2020, DP Wolfgang Thaler AAC) was already attached to direct. On receiving the script, Braier knew immediately that she wanted to be involved.

“It is such an important story,” she stresses, “I felt honoured to be asked to participate.”

Braier does not typically place too much emphasis on visual references in pre-production discussions with a director, and with She Said she particularly wanted to keep the truth of the story reflected in an understated shooting style.

“I like to build a conversation with the director on the concepts, themes and the emotional resonance that we have with the story,” she states, “and discover the visual language of the movie from there.

“Apart from the obvious themes, like the abuse of power in a patriarchal society, this film examines the process of investigative journalism; what reporters go through in order to be able to validate their story and publish it as truth.”

Comparison will inevitably be drawn to films like All The Presidents Men (1976, dir. Alan J. Pakula, DP Gordon Willis ASC), and Spotlight (2015, dir. Tom McCarthy, DP Masanobu Takayanagi ASC), that share the central premise of young, determined reporters ferreting-out the malefactions of the powerful and influential. However, the filmmakers of She Said wanted to distinguish their narrative with a deeper exploration of the humanity behind the headlines.

“There is an emotional connection that we wanted to honour,” says Braier. “We show the lives of these journalists as working women, mothers and girlfriends, and how the investigation affects them on a personal

level. The camera had to find a fine line between being this observational, documentary-like tool, whilst also supporting the emotional journeys in the script. There can be a lot of work behind the camera to make it feel imperceptible in this way.”

ARRI Alexa Mini was teamed-up with Cooke Speed Panchro S3 primes, Braier’s first time capturing digital imagery for a feature film through spherical lenses.

“I normally gravitate towards Anamorphic lenses when I shoot on digital,” Braier divulges, “but Maria and I both felt that the Anamorphic format would move the aesthetics on She Said unconsciously towards that of a ‘movie’. Spherical lenses, with their vérité aspect ratio, would allow us to be more faithful to the details.

“I chose the Cooke S3 Panchros because they have a beautiful fall off at the edges and are very gentle and feminine in the way they capture skin tones. My favorite Anamorphic lenses are the JDC Xtal Xpres, which are built with the Cooke Panchros inside the element, so I think the Cooke S3 primes were the right lenses to get the best of both worlds.”

The majority of She Said was captured with a single Alexa Mini, with the camera either static or with subtle movement motivated by the emotional content of a scene. Real survivors featured in many scenes, such as Ashley Judd, whilst others survivors lent their voices.

“Many scenes featured a lot of characters, but we did not have time to cover them with a lot of shots,” Braier relates, “so instead we created an internal choreography inside a static frame: one precise camera position to tell the story. It was carefully planned beforehand, with Maria, the 1st AD and myself playing-out the action and deciding how the people should be

positioned so that it felt natural.

“I had seen Maria using this technique in her previous feature films, in a very skilled and successful way. It was fascinating to work with a director that is experienced and confident in this approach.

“Occasionally a second camera would be employed to protect survivors from having to repeat their scenes too many times,” Braier explains. “The two cameras would hold the space, respectfully listening, so they could try and forget about us.”

The production was fortunate enough to be able to use the offices of The New York Times whilst it was

challenges needed particular attention.

“There’s no cinematographer in the world who is excited about shooting in an office with fluorescent lighting,” Braier laughs, “I have passed on many a movie previously that featured this kind of setting, but with this film I felt telling this story was totally worth the challenge.”

“The existing lighting at The New York Times was not good for filming,” she continues, “the ceiling lights were very yellow, and the spaces commonly had white walls. My challenge was to light it in a simple, elegant way that supported the story, but in a way that did not call attention to itself. We had to do a lot of work to make it look like we had just walked in there with available light and captured the scene.”

Swapping-out all the practical lighting in The New York Times building for film lighting units was not an option, so the crew replaced the fluorescents in the main areas with Astera tube lighting, then set the colour temperature of the units to incrementally blend with the existing fluorescents seen in the background. They also selected locations within the office complex that had more windows and natural light that could be supplemented with LED and HMI units, diffusion and bounce.

“It was satisfying to bring all my tools to the table, all my previous experience from the films I shot before, and somehow use it all but in a very invisible way,” she concludes.

The writer of this article instinctively did not use the name of the perpetrator at the centre of the scandal in this piece, and it was interesting to subsequently learn that the makers of She Said made an informed choice not to feature his face, or depictions of his crimes, in the film.

“If you think about what you want to be left with, after two hours of going through the process of unveiling this horrendous case,” says Braier, “it is that this is a story of women coming together to help women.

“There is a healing that happens when women come together and give those who were not able to speak the space to tell their story and get the trauma out of their bodies. Then other women will be inspired to come forward too, and together we are a voice that ensures something will be done.”

closed due to the pandemic. However, the uncertainty surrounding the lifting of lockdown restrictions put a certain time-pressure on the crew, which steered Schrader and Braier towards simplicity and efficiency in their choices for the camera and lighting. Some

“Having New York as a character through the windows was great,” says Braier, “and the combination of natural and artificial light helped make certain scenes, like those featuring people talking on the phone, or discussions round a table, look visual but without looking ‘lit’.

Images:

Cooke S3 Panchros have a beautiful fall -ff and are very gentle and feminine in the way they capture skin tones

It is such an important story… I felt honoured to be asked to participate

SHOWTIME AGAIN

A-C ENTERTAINMENT [141]

A.C. Entertainment Technologies Ltd. will feature some of the latest film and broadcast lighting solutions, including Chroma-Q’s LED studio range, Prolights’ popular EclPanel range, a selection of Luminex networking, LumenRadio wireless DMX, Manfrotto and Avenger lighting support and Tourflex Cabling.  www.ac-et.com

The BSC Expo 2023, taking place at Battersea Evolution, on 23 & 24 February, provides just the ticket to join with friends and colleagues once more. Here are some of the highlights on the showfloor…

CINEO LIGHTING [355]

Cineo Lighting’s production lighting innovation shines in their newest Quantum series lights – the Quantum Studio and Quantum Ladder! Both lights will be on display at BSC Expo and the booth will incorporate both in an interactive way along with the Reflex R15, Quantum II, and LB800 for an exciting and informative Cineo experience.

The Cineo innovation continues with the recent launch of the Cineo StageLynx App. Designed for lighting professionals, the App provides a seamless user experience for controlling Cineo lights. The easy-to-use app automatically detects Cineo fixtures on-set when activated, allowing the user to configure the network of Cineo lights. Cineo StageLynx is now available for free on the Apple and Google stores for mobile, tablet or desktop use. www.cineolighting.com

ARRI [323]

ARRI is showcasing its latest camera and lighting products. Included in this lineup will be the ARRI Orbiter with its accessories, such as the Orbiter Docking Ring and the new Orbiter Projection Optics 25° and 35°.

The new ARRI Alexa 35 and Alexa Mini LF cameras will be prominently positioned, along with the ARRI Signature Prime and Signature Zoom lenses which offer state-of-the-art precision with an organic and emotional quality. Visit the booth and discover how vintage filmmaking techniques, such as diopters, can help you customise the look of your ARRI Signature lenses.

ARRI’s Hi-5 ecosystem will also be on display, complete with new firmware update and features. In addition, the powerful radio performance of ARRI’s swapable radio modules can be experienced with the Radio Interface Adapter RIA-1. This well-received system provides reliable wireless camera and lens control in demanding situations on set. The most recent additions to ARRI’s Camera Stabiliser System range, Trinity 2 and Artemis 2, will be available for visitors to demo.

www.arri.com

ARRI RENTAL [418]

ARRI Rental is showing its latest exclusive products, including the new Heroes lens collection, comprising Look primes that feature a third lens ring for instant detuning, and T.One primes that retain sharpness and contrast at T1.0.

The new fleet of ARRI Rental Monochrome cameras will be represented. The Alexa 65 Monochrome, Mini LF Monochrome, and XT Monochrome cover the 65 mm, full frame, and S35 formats.

Other exclusive ARRI Rental lens offerings will be on display: the Moviecam series, Alfa Anamorphics, and DNA optics. Visitors can also try out the new Varicon 2, which uses RGB LEDs to facilitate targeted contrast control. www.arrirental.com

COOKE OPTICS [258]

Cooke will showcase the new Varotal/i FF 19-40mm wide zoom lens, which joins the 30-95mm medium and 85-215mm long zooms to complete the Varotal/i series, enabling Cooke to offer broad focal length coverage for the majority of production needs. All Varotal/i FF zooms deliver the famed ‘Cooke Look’, offering natural, flattering skin tone and character, enabling cinematographers to preserve their creative intent when switching between primes and zooms.

Cooke will also show the state-of-the-art S8/i FF, the flagship Cooke prime lens series designed from the ground-up for motion picture cameras. These lenses are capable of achieving the highest resolution yet, while their advanced, all-spherical design produces an evolution of the iconic Cooke Look and a beautiful bokeh. www.cookeoptics.com

CVP [Mezzanine 1]

CVP is back on the mezzanine, offering visitors an impressive display of the latest production solutions and technical expertise. Visitors can explore an interactive Virtual Production stage, with technology and creative solutions designed to appeal multiple applications and budgets. The Lens Bar is back with a more extensive collection of new and vintage glass, as is the Monitor Wall providing the best monitors the industry currently offers. Also on show are cine-style cameras including: Sony’s Venice 2 with Rialto 2, Sony HDC F5500, ARRI Alexa 35, Red’s V Raptor XL and V Raptor S35. With large sensor/large format cinematography and broadcast workflows more closely aligning, CVP will present fibre channel solutions enabling broadcast and studio production to integrate cine cameras into their workflow. CVP’s ProRepairs engineers will be on-site to demo and discuss how to keep your gear running smoothly. www.cvp.com

DESISTI [F20]

De Sisti will present its Muses Of Light, designed by De Sisti with Vittorio and Francesca Storaro, a full range of LED fixtures specifically designed for cinema and location. Vari-White + Color Range offers De Sisti’s white light quality with the infinite possibilities of colour. Offered in a full range of Fresnels and Softlights – including the new sizes S12 and S36.

Light Box VW+C is an innovative and versatile multifunction product made to allow existing lantern or old lamp houses to utilise an LED contained device.

Piccoletto Color Flex is a multi-optic fixture adapted to a VW+C Piccoletto Fresnel, Space Light; 300W fixtures with De Sisti LED engine and +/- Green correction functionality, and Super LED F20; a high efficiency Fresnel spotlight using the innovative 1000W internally designed LED array, will also be on display. www.desisti.it

FIILEX [237 ]

Fiilex specialises in designing and producing industry-leading colour-tunable LED hard lights for the motion picture and broadcast TV/video industries. Fiilex will present a new 90W G3 Color, an ellipsoidal spotlight constructed specifically for the motion picture industry. This new fixture features a rotating yoke barrel for easy aiming of the light, plus advanced optics that deliver uniform and clear projections, giving precise lighting control to users. www.fiilex.com

DEDOLIGHT [237 ]

Dedolight will introduce the next generation its Neo and Neo Color LED precision lighting instruments. The new DTN Dedolight Neo LED ballast will drive the latest Dedolight Neo light heads, from 20 to 90Watt – monocolor, bi-coloir, infrared and ultraviolet. The system can auto-sense the connected light head and automatically adjust the electronic settings and display.

Key features include deep, smooth manual dimming, high-speed flicker-free mode up to 50,000fps, a simple and intuitive menu, OLED display, DMX, and 8-bit or advanced DMX control (16-bit, smooth or linear).

Dedolight Neo Color is the result of the technological cooperation between Dedo Weigert Film and Prolycht. It combines the six-colour Prolycht Hyperlight Engine with renowned Dedolight optics. Features include accurate skin tone reproduction for variable CCTs, the magic of varying the gamut of a white point, colour wheels and pre-stored effects. www.dedolight.de

DoPchoice [133]

DoPchoice will exhibit the Fat-Rabbit mount combined for the 8-ft Double-Hex and matching Snapgrids, giving the ultimate in creative light control with large and multiple fixture arrays for ARRI Skypanel 360, Triple/Double DMG/Rosco MAXI Mix, Prolight XL Panels, 4X Litepanels Gemini 2x1, and more.

Fat-Rabbit easily mates many fixture combos, ready to help create big, soft, flattering lighting with a mega 8-ft DoubleHex Snapbag. To go almost that big with Prolights’ Ecl Panel TWCXL, the same Fat Rabbit with an adapter will also support the new 6’ x 5’ Snapbag®. Both set up easily, store compactly in their own carry bag, feature a reflective interior, removable Magic Cloth diffuser, and other Snapbag features.

www.dopchoice.com

FUJIFILM [121]

FujiFilm will showcase its range of Fujinon lenses and latest mirrorless digital cameras – including the brand new Fujinon HZK25-1000mm F2.8-5.0 PL Mount Box Lens which has unparalleled combination of magnification and telephoto reach for large cinema sensors. Also on the stand will be the full range of Premista series lenses, with their stunning optical performance when using a large format sensor. View the industry leading GFX100S which has 102 million pixels and the latest, fifth generation X Series cameras – the X-H2S with its open gate 6.2k shooting and ultra-low rolling shutter, and the 8K capable X-H2.  www.fujifilm.com

GFM [145]

GFM, leading manufacturer of dollies, cranes and camera support equipment, will be showcasing the brand new GF-Mod Jib with its all new connection system as well as the new GF-Turtle Base System which is truly a Grips Swiss Army knife. GFM industry standards such as Sliders and Dollies will also be shown. www.gripfactory.com

K5600 [132]

K5600 Lighting Europe is set to present the now complete range of Spacebeams for the whole Alpha range, as well as new generation of Boa flexible LED lights. There will also be the announcement of the new entity, called ‘One Stop’, which will be renting to rental companies all Alphas, Joker2’s and Kurves, as well as some specialty products developed for rental only. www.k5600.eu

LCA [133]

LCA Lights Camera Action is showing a selection of the recent products including the Auroris V from LiteGear.

Powered by LiteGear’s Spectrum technology, the LiteMat Spectrum 8 makes its debut with full-colour capabilities, 2,000-11,000K, large format pixel control amongst an array of other features.

Creamsource returns with the popular weatherproof Vortex8 and Vortex4 and some serious firmware upgrades, including updated CRMX functionality, plus the LNX Mounting System, versatile SpaceX and the small-but-mighty Micro range.

Don’t miss the DoPchoice 8’ Snapbag Hex with its super-large footprint for the larger LED panel lights, including the multiple mounted Maxi Mixes, Skypanel 360, Quad Litepanel Gemini 2x1 and Prolights EclPanel TWCXL. The Rabbit-Rounder for LED COB Fresnel fixtures returns with an array of Snapbags.

Betteries returns to the show with a new system addition, now able to directly power DC-LEDS. www.lcauk.com

KINOFLO [237 ]

Kino Flo will demonstrate the new Mimik and FreeStyle Air series. The Mimik is a patented, full-spectrum solution video lighting tile that mirrors video content and doubles as a light source on virtual sets. The three-colour RGB video signal is translated to full spectrum five colour Warm White 2700K, Cool White 6500K, Red, Green and Blue LEDs.

The FreeStyle Air is a lightweight fixture series compatible with Kino Flo’s existing FreeStyle systems, twist-on mounts, extension cables and LED-140 & LED-150 series controllers. This portable panel series offers the advantages of easy deployment and favourable cost of ownership to current FreeStyle owners and operators. www.kinoflo.com

LEITZ [419]

Lens manufacturer Ernst Leitz Wetzlar offers BSC Expo attendees the chance to play with its newest Leitz Cine Lenses.

The new Leitz Elsie primes combine a gentle field curvature and fall-off with modern lens design for a unique character. They will find a home on a large variety of productions due to their very mutable character.

The Leitz Hugo series, delivering in Q1, share their optical design with Leica’s iconic M photography lenses. Their compact, production-ready mechanics make a unique addition to the Leitz family of full frame lenses. Test them alongside the pair of Leitz Zooms for an excellent match.

These full frame zooms go from 25-75mm and 55-125mm with a consistent T2.8 aperture throughout the range. Try the Leitz LPL Mount for Sony Venice with PL Adapter, a metadata-enabled solution allowing crews to quickly change lenses between both formats. www.leitz-cine.com

KODAK [205]

Kodak Motion Picture film drives efficiency, reduces your shooting ratios and helps your cast and crew focus. If you are looking to work with film on your next project, or are interested in learning more about the budgeting, selection and purchasing of the film, Kodak can answer your queries.

The Kodak Film Lab based at Pinewood Studios offers comprehensive negative processing services. The team will be available to discuss all aspects of the film workflow from shooting, processing, transfer, printing and scanning to long-term archiving. It will be promoting 8mm, 16mm, 35mm and 65mm production, post and preservation in the UK. www.kodak.com

LICHT-TECHNIK [404]

For 40 years, Licht-Technik has designed and manufactured technical devices for lighting applications, such as motorised stirrups, mechanical dimmer shutters, colour changers, DMX desks and many other tools for lighting, alongside its popular lighting solutions. These fixtures include the rectangular SkyLight overhead lighting rig, and the Bag-O-Light light diffuser, based around a Par headlight shining into an inflatable tube, producing a soft shadow-free source/fill light – both popular items on commercials, movie and TV sets around the world, as well as theatre stages, opera houses and other big show events.

The rental side of Licht-Technik’s business supplies and supports hundreds of shoots every year making the company a firm favourite amongst gaffers, directors of photography and lighting designers worldwide. www.licht-technik.com

LITEGEAR [133]

The Auroris V – making its UK debut and sized to light any scene – brings the Auroris X into a compact, half-sized kit. It’s a great option for rigging at more locations, smaller sets, and tighter spaces. The unique design of the Auroris V allows you to rig horizontally, vertically, or as an overhead. Auroris V specifications include a beam angle of 120° HPA, input voltage of 48VDC, input current of 1.04A per module (contains 12 modules) and a colour temperature range of 2,000K to 11,000K.

MATTHEWS [237 ]

3iSpreader fundamentally improves support of Ronford-Baker and O’Connor tripods, maintaining portability, deterring slide & topple potential. The 3i system offers a safer, smoother, better-balanced and ultra-durable solution that eliminates bungees and spikes, ending floor scratches and location carpets. A new centre pivot bracket quickens teardown and eases transport.

Air Climber, the pneumatically-controlled, modular, grip and lighting stand safely raises lights or camera rigs 25 feet/7.62 meters. It features a large leveling platform with four telescoping legs and four heavy-duty jacks that keep it level and support a telescoping 8-section column with tension controls and a safe frictional locking system.

The company is also highlighting the Cross Dovetail Plate that adds orientation versatility to camera mounting, BM1-4 Bulb mounts for E26/27 bulbs, Location Baby Bracket mounting wonder, C-Stand Shoulder bags, and more.

www.msegrip.com

PANALUX [222]

Panalux will spotlight the company’s latest proprietary lighting and power innovations, including the new Panalux Allegra C range of full-colour LED heads. Available in 2:1, 2:2, 4:1 and 4:2 form factors, Panalux Allegra C fixtures incorporate a proprietary light engine that produces a broad-spectrum wide CCT range of 1,600-20,000K with extremely fine colour-rendering across a super-wide gamut.

The heads operate in conjunction with the Panalux Allegra C DMX LED Control, which features an onboard power supply, a fully featured user interface, and full connectivity options. The company will also showcase the Panalux Sonara family of variable-white LED fixtures, including the recently introduced 4:1 form factor.

Additionally, Panalux will have a selection of third-party equipment on display in the stand, including the lightweight Rodlight Spectron – for which Panalux is the exclusive UK rental provider – and Velvet’s Kosmos 400 Fresnel.  www.panalux.biz

RED [22]

Red will showcase its latest technology including the highly advanced V-Raptor 8K VV and V-Raptor XL systems, which are the first cameras in the new DSMC3 generation.

The Komodo 6K will also be displayed which features a global shutter sensor in a shockingly small and versatile form factor. Booth visitors will have a chance to learn about Red Workflow as well as discover how Red Control Pro, the app that gives users advanced control over V-Raptor XL, V-Raptor, Komodo, and multi-cam arrays, can bring their productions to the next level.

Additionally, attendees will have the opportunity to witness the brandnew Red Connect technology, learning how this technology can assist with live 8K Broadcast, or real-time remote offloading.  www.red.com

PANAVISION [222]

Panavision will highlight products and services from across its family of divisions. At the Panavision group’s stand, multiple cameras will be set up to showcase a selection of the company’s renowned proprietary lenses for both Super 35 and large-format image acquisition. This firsthand look and hands-on access will offer attendees keen insights into the optical attributes that distinguish one lens series from another.

Panavision’s wide range of proprietary optics cover the gamut from sharp to soft and high contrast to low contrast, offering filmmakers the creative freedom to select lenses whose optical characteristics match their vision for the project. www.panavision.com

ROSCO [138]

Rosco will show their new RDX Lab System. They partnered with VFX experts at FuseFX to engineer this exciting new virtual production technology that provides easy-to-use background imagery that can be manipulated by filmmakers inside LED volumes.

Rosco’s DMG Lighting solutions will be on display, including DMG Dash that will be available for filmmakers. They’ll also be previewing a new DMG Dash Octa Kit that holds eight fullyaccessorised DMG Dash fixtures inside a charging case that can fully recharge all eight lights in under three hours.

PIXIPIXEL [432]

Pixipixel will showcase its latest additions in lighting, grip and camera including the Mamiya Sekor 645 lenses and other new optical products.

It will premiere a brand new Optix lens which has been redesigned and reengineered in-house by its camera technical director, Renos Louka. The Optix Fisheye lens covers full frame and features modified and enhanced optics producing a unique wide-angle view with 17mm focal length, 2.8 T-stop and minimum focus of 11 inches.

The Mechanix range will be on display with the Rotating Magliner Moy Mount, Rotating Camera Mount, and Dual Monitor Trolley available for hands-on demos on stand 432. www.pixipixel.com

Filmmakers can also stop by the Rosco booth to experience the Triple DMG Maxi and see how three lightweight & powerful DMG Maxi lights can be combined onto one yoke to create an ultra-bright, easilycontrolled light source.

www.rosco.com

ROTOLIGHT [440]

As well as their award-winning Titan range that has been used by filmmakers including Stefan Lange, Denson Baker and Roy Wagner, Rotolight will be showcasing the new Aeos 2 and Neo 3 Pro, and the world’s first electronic SmartSoft Box.

The Rotolight Pros feature numerous upgraded features including a brightness boost of up to 25%, increased wireless flash trigger compatibility, Master of Light preset packs with up to 100+ built in exclusive special effects, GEL and HSI presets from world leading photographers and filmmakers as well as 4 new Special FX (SFX) for filmmakers. Delivering a genuine revolution in lighting control, the technology from the diffusion in the Titan range has been built into the Rotolight SmartSoft Box. Saving photographers and filmmakers time and money, users can electronically adjust diffusion, focus and spread without the need for gels and additional modifiers.  www.rotolight.com

TIFFEN [100]

BSC Expo marks the worldwide introduction of Tiffen Black Fog and Night Fog diffusion filters. Black Fog combines the attributes of Black Pro-Mist with Fog filters, resulting in a smooth, soft effect yielding wide, soft flare yet holding the blacks and maintaining shadow detail.

Night Fog combines Fog with proprietary new Dark Con, light control technology. Adding this dark contrast works in the opposite way as Low Cons and Ultra Cons which spread illumination from light areas to shadows. Instead Dark Con technology darkens light areas, leaving shadows alone. The resulting Night Fog provides a unique atmospheric look.

Tiffen will also highlight new Antique Black Pearlescent, Antique Pearlescent & Antique Satin Warm Diffusion filters.

www.tiffen.com

SONY [247 ]

Sony will be showcasing its range of filmmaking technology, from image & audio capture, on-set and post-production monitoring and Virtual Production Solutions. It will exhibit its full Cinema Line range catering for every filmmaker, whatever their budget or application including the new Venice 2 extension system allowing operators to position the camera head up to 12m away from the camera body, creating new angles of shooting.

Visitors will also be able to experience the Venice 2 camera working in harmony with Sony Crystal LED panels as part of a complete virtual production system. Specifically developed for virtual production, these Sony Crystal LED panels offer exceptional colours, resolution and HDR capability and a pixel density far superior to conventional LED array systems.

In addition, Sony will showcase the FR7, the world’s first full frame interchangeable lens PTZ Camera as well as the PXW-FX9 v3.0 in anamorphic mode, the popular FX6, the compact FX3 and FX30 plus a selection of Alpha lenses to try out. www.sonycine.com

ZEISS [319]

Zeiss will focus on its range of high-end cine lenses, including the highly-anticipated wide-angle 15mm T1.8 lens, which completes the 14-lens Supreme Prime set. Attendees will also be able to get hands-on with the Supreme Prime Radiance family, known for its stunning blue flare capability, as well as CZ.2 full-frame Cinema Zooms and CP.3 cinematography lenses.

Zeiss will also demonstrate its new solution for the compositing and matchmoving VFX workflows, the Zeiss CinCraft Mapper. Opening the door to a whole new workflow ecosystem, this ground-breaking digital service quickly and easily provides frame-accurate shading and distortion data at the click of a button, completely removing the need to shoot and analyse lens grids.

www.zeiss.com

SUMOLIGHT [353]

This year, in addition to the most versatile and powerful Sumomax, as well as the entirely new concept in professional lighting, the Sumolaser, Sumolight will be showing Sumosky, a portable and quickly expandable interactive backdrop, display and lighting system, ideal for smart VFX integration and mixed reality studio environments.

Sumolight will also be partnering up with Sony by utilising Sumosky as an overhead sky on their LED volume stage and will be presenting a panel of experts discussing image-based lighting, a new frontier in virtual production, and how to use tools to create additional reflections and interactive lighting effects. www.sumolight.com

EXTRAVAGANZA

By Ron Prince

With his latest film, Babylon, director Damien Chazelle has delivered a bold, intense and often brutallycomedic drama about the rise and fall of different characters during Hollywood’s transition from the silent era to the talkies during the late 1920s. Running at 183-minutes, the Paramount Pictures production was shot entirely on Kodak 35mm film, and saw its DP Linus Sandgren ASC FSF, push the extremes of exposure and processing for an impressively impressionistic visual result..

the filthy reality of poverty amongst locals and big-screen wannabees.

The production united Chazelle and Sandgren for a third time, the pair having previously collaborated together on the hit-musical La La Land (2016), which was nominated for 14 Academy Awards, winning six including Best Director and Best Cinematography, followed by the highly-acclaimed astronaut adventure First Man (2018) – both of which also harnessed Kodak film. Amongst Sandgren’s other distinguished credits are American Hustle (2013, dir. David O Russell), 007 James Bond No Time To Die (2021, dir. Cary Joji Fukunaga) and Don’t Look Up (2021, dir. Adam McKay), all of which he originated on celluloid film too.

“The script for Babylon was long, about 180 pages, and densely-packed with dialogue from margin-tomargin,” Sandgren recalls of his initial reaction to reading Chazelle’s screenplay. “Sometimes the actors’ lines were side-by-side on the page, rather than in sequential order, which automatically gave me a sense of the pace and intensity that Damien wanted in the tempo of the visual storytelling during different parts of the movie.

Damien wanted Babylon to be rebellous… a chaotic circus

included a variety of old-school epics – such as Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita (1961), Robert Altman’s Nashville (1975) and Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather (1972) – which each conveying the idea of society in flux. Sandgren also mentions Paul Thomas Anderson’s pornindustry feature, Boogie Nights (1997), for the intriguing, sensitive and romantic portrayal of human characters in depraved situations.

Written and directed by Chazelle, the star-studded ensemble cast features Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, Diego Calva, Jean Smart, Jean Smart, Jovan Adepo and Li Jun Li, in a fictional interpretation of Hollywood society during the Roaring Twenties – an epic sweep where the hedonism at glitzy, cocaine-fuelled gatherings in magnificent mansions is contrasted against the arid heat of barren desert surroundings and

“When we came to discuss the aesthetic look of the film together, Damien was quite clear that he did not want Babylon to feel like a typical period movie, or to be polished in any way. He wanted the opposite – for it to be quite rebellious, a chaotic circus, where we would explore the grit, the filth, the shitty backside of things that the characters experience, with a camera that would be alive and curious to explore their world, almost a persona in itself running around and observing the action, and connecting with the characters.”

Visual inspirations proffered to Sandgren by Chazelle

“With all of this in mind, I wanted to take an impressionistic approach to Babylon. I wanted it to be visually bold, with more grain, more colour in the sets and costumes, and more contrast in the image, than on any other production I have shot before. Damien agreed, and, we were also of the same mind that Babylon had to be shot 35mm celluloid. He and I both felt it was the most honest way to tell a story like this.”

Babylon was filmed over the course of 74 shooting days, during the summer and early autumnal months of 2021, chiefly at locations around Los Angeles. This included the interior and exterior of the mansion where decadent soirees take place. A number of sets were built on the stages and backlot at Paramount Studios.

For the mainstay of the production, Sandgren went

with ARRICAM LT 35mm cameras, fitted with Atlas Orion Anamorphic lenses. The shooting package, provided by Camtech in LA, also included an ARRIFLEX 435 35mm camera plus spherical lenses, framing in 1.33:1 aspect ratio, and capturing on Kodak Eastman Double-X Negative Film 5222 35mm, for the film’s B&W sequences.

“The Orion Anamorphics are robust, highperformance cinema lenses, that are technically great,” says Sandgren. “They’re sharp to the very edges, even on wide-angle primes when I wanted clear definition on large vistas, and they are not as dramatically bendy as other traditional Anamorphics, especially on close-ups. They have good close focus capabilities, and the benefit here was that we could shoot on a 32mm and we could push-in just a couple of feet from a face.

“However, I wanted to imbue the image with a more punky and impressionistic attitude overall. The company founders, Forrest Schultz and Dan Kanes, were willing collaborators and they customised the Orions for me to make the highlights really burn and the flares bloom in the different lighting conditions we were going to create or encounter.”

Sandgren’s 35mm filmstocks-of-choice were Kodak Vision3 50D 5203 for day exteriors, Kodak Vision3 250D 5207 for day interiors and Kodak Vision3 500T 5219 for low-light and night-time scenes. The exposed negative was processed at FotoKem Laboratory in Burbank, with 4K scans and dailies overseen by Matt Wallach, at Company3, who also performed the final grade.

Whilst this might sound like regular practice, Sandgren says, “To get to the bold, vivid and gritty looks Damien and I envisioned from the outset, I purposefully

broke all the rules as to how you would normally expose and develop celluloid film, and this is certainly something you would not be taught at filmschool.

“In practice, this meant that if it was bright on a day exterior, such as at the opening of the film, I wanted the final image to be super-bright and burnt-out, to really give the impression of the desert as a hot and hostile environment. So we over-exposed the 50D or 250D negatives consistently by four stops to begin to accomplish those looks. When we were shooting a dark scene, on 500T, we often times just used nothing but a few single practicals, which gave a key way below normal, to achieve a similar and appropriate emotional impact.

“But we didn’t stop there, I then push-processed all of the different exposed filmstocks at the lab. This technique involves the negative being in the bath for more time than is normal, which alters the visual characteristics of the film by heightening the colour saturation, increasing the contrast and the grain.

“Although this was pretty extreme practice, it worked incredibly well, and Damien and I were always excited to see the results. The dynamic range from dark to light

in some of the shots is right on the limit. You’d be hard pushed to be able to achieve that extreme level of contrast digitally for a satisfying visual result.

“The result was rich and sumptuous colour in the scenes at the crazy parties that looks appropriately decadent and in keeping with the moment. Our darkest and threatening scenes look incredibly gritty and enveloping. With its colour rendition and grain, each filmed frame was real and alive.”

As part of the overall aesthetic and emotional journey

Image: Photos by Scott Garfield.

Copyright © 2022 Paramount Pictures. All Rights Reserved.

through the film, Sandgren employed a range of ways to motivate the camera, including the handheld, veritéstyle he developed for First Man, in combination with super-wide frames, intimate close-ups and tracking shots following specific characters, plus a number of long takes,

story grand lobby of the theatre at Ace Hotel in Los Angeles, a delicately-restored, 1,600-seat movie palace from the 1920s, originated by Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin, near the Fashion District in Downtown LA.

“It was a great location, and Damien wanted one continuous shot, starting with a really high-angled view of the scene, before swooping over and directly into the wild party, and then finishing right inside the bell of a trumpet,” says Sandgren. “But, the idea of having a crane boom down and around, perhaps with a Steadicam operator riding on the crane for a takeover, was just not going to work, as the space was so tall, and not big enough for the footprint of the crane base anyway.

book, ‘Hollywood Lighting From The Silent Era To Film Noir’, Sandgren says he also took an impressionistic approach to lighting the sets.

often featuring complex camera moves.

One of the most ambitious and spectacular scenes in the film appears during the 32-minute pre-title opening sequence, where Sandgren’s task was to depict the outrageous and hedonistic goings-on at a Hollywood party taking place in the home of movie magnate Don Wallach, complete with a jazz band, hundreds of revellers, heaps of cocaine and an enormous elephant.

This notable scene was filmed in the massive, three-

“So, for the first part of the shot we rigged the film camera on to a straight-line cable cam suspended corner-to-corner above the lobby, so that it could plunge right down into the hundreds of extras we had, and then track along with some of them. Then, using a whip pan to disguise the takeover, we switched to Steadicam, operated by Brian Freesh, to move the camera through the party and up to the band on stage. We spent a long time blocking, choreographing and rehearsing the sequence because there were some very intricate timings to the action. We then filmed the overhead shot and descent into the party on one day, and shot with the Steadicam on following day.”

Sandgren operated A-camera during the production, with Jorge Sánchez working as first AC. Along with Freesh on Steadicam, Davon Slininger SOC operated B-camera and headed the second/splinter unit photography. Anthony Cady led the gripping team.

Working with gaffer Tony Bryan, and taking inspiration from film historian Patrick Keating’s remarkable

“I was curious to research how filmmakers worked back then and to remind myself how cinematographers thought about lighting in particular as the silent era moved into talkies. Our production designer, Florencia Martin, found film cameras to use as props along with period arclight housings that we fitted with HMIs so they actually looked as though they worked on-set. The stageconstructions were only lit with fixtures specifically built to look correct to the period, while real locations were lit more naturalistically, but still with the intention of depicting the sweaty, dirty textures.”

Sandgren concludes, “All-in-all, shooting with the customised Orion Anamorphics, over-exposing the film and push-processing everything at the lab, gave us something different in every shot in this movie. And when we came to do the final grade, it was amazing how much detail still remained in the filmed-image, in the brightest highlights and darkest areas of the image, which brought us even more satisfaction from an artistic standpoint. I doubt whether that would have been the case had this been digital.

“You must always use the right tool for the feeling you want to express. Film feels personal and it taps well into emotions. I know through experience – on productions such as American Hustle and La La Land – that when careful production and costume design combine with the texture and dynamic colour capabilities of film, there is no better way to create that connection to the characters in your story. Film… it’s simply more expressive.”

LIGHTS. CAMERA. ACCESS. GRIP. POWER. INFRASTRUCTURE. ACTION!

As your go-to low carbon production equipment rental partner, we can provide everything needed on-set, on-location, on-time, and on-budget.

From prep through to wrap, including location support and powered access equipment through to cameras, lenses, lighting, grip, and power.

We have acquired five of the biggest names in Film and TV production.

Providing all the expertise, equipment and services you need to deliver your production smoothly and cost-effectively. Think of us as your extended partners in production. An expert crew to go above and beyond. Skilled technicians, in-house production experts and best-in-class maintenance teams who will do whatever it takes.

Movietech

Market-leading creative suppliers of camera, lens and grip equipment for the film, television and commercials production industry.

PKE Lighting

One of the largest film, television and photographic lighting rental companies in the UK.

William F. White International Inc

Founded in 1963, William F. White International Inc. is an iconic provider of production equipment and studios in the film and TV industry internationally.

Media Access Solutions

Experts in media powered access. From scissor lifts and boom lifts to forklifts and truck mounts.

Alpha Grip

Providing grip equipment which range from telescopic, modular camera cranes, to stabilised and non-stabilised remote heads and specialist vehicles, from multiple locations throughout the UK.

www.sunbeltrentals.co.uk/filmandtv/ 0330 433 1766

UNDER THE SEA

By Michael Goldman

Although James Cameron’s new blockbuster, Avatar: The Way Of Water, had been percolating on-and-off since the original Avatar film debuted back in 2009, cinematographer Russell Carpenter ASC, joined the project a little over five years ago.

RUSSELL CARPENTER ASC•AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER

Jim is willing to voyage into the unknown and challenge people to make it happen. I’m glad to have been part of that

Carpenter, a longtime Cameron collaborator who won an Academy Award for his work on Cameron’s Titanic in 1997, first dipped his toe into the world of Pandora with test footage for Cameron as he began develop the second movie in the franchise in 2017, with footage of the human (as opposed to animated) character Spider that could cleanly interact with digital characters.

Following that experience, Cameron asked Carpenter to serve as cinematographer on the movie, which largely meant he was tasked with shooting all of the live-action material and developing lighting schemes for the virtual cinematography and CG teams as they painstakingly wove together a photoreal digital universe where live-action and synthetic characters could interact.

Figuring-out how to shoot the movie to Cameron’s specifications, and surviving the time and technical obstacles the project posed, proved to be the biggest challenges of Carpenter’s long career. Indeed, by the time it was all over, he says “I was mentally exhausted. Every day was like climbing a mountain, because every day was different in terms of so many types of environments and scenes.

“I’m glad I did the movie and learned so much about the cutting-edge and complex technology that Jim Cameron and his team created for Avatar: The Way Of Water. I think other people will adapt a lot of the technology we used, if they are crazy enough to go down this path. Jim is willing to voyage into the unknown and to challenge people to make it happen. That’s his strong suit. He’ll envision something and will form a team to figure it

out. I’m glad to have been part of that.”

Carpenter recently sat down with Cinematography World to discuss his lengthy adventure diving, literally and figuratively, into Avatar: The Way Of Water, and what it all might mean for the filmmaking community moving forward.

With this project having gestated for so long, what was the status of things when you joined, and what were the big logistical challenges you faced?

I shot tests for Jim before I was officially on the project, around 2017, when they were finally ready to get going with photography. Before that, they were spending years creating the virtual worlds and getting him to sign-off on them. I think that process started in 2013. They weren’t ready to start

The look had to be based on realism, and the way light behaves in a natural world

prepping live action until 2018, and we didn’t start filming until 2019.

We started shooting for several months in 2019, and then Covid came and was a game-changer. Toward the end of 2019 we were going to take a break anyway and then come back in a few months. We hit that break time, but in late February or early March of 2020, Covid became the big problem. The production wasn’t sure when it could get back into New Zealand, where most aspects of production took place, because of the quarantine situation.

At the same time, we had a ticking clock in terms of our central human, liveaction, character Spider, played by actor Jack Champion. He has a central role in the movie, but he was a young teen, and was growing by leaps-and-bounds. He first came to the production in 2017, and was 13 at the time. When we finally ended filming, he was 18. When I first saw him, he was like a little tadpole. By our final shots, he was a young man. We wanted to shoot him out as fast as we could.

So, Jim and the producers wrote a letter to New Zealand authorities and asked them to let our production be a test case for how you can shoot during the pandemic and keep everybody safe. I think our production had some of the first tough Covid protocols for filmmaking that were developed – a very strict system for working on-set.

They said OK, but only one film crew from outside New Zealand would be allowed in, and if we screwed up, we would be out of there! They also said we had to all come back on one plane together, get tested before we boarded the plane, wear a mask the entire trip, and test before getting off the plane – all before being shipped-off to a hotel to quarantine. But we finally got back there and shot until Christmas of 2020.

What was the visual mission statement James Cameron gave you in terms of how to design, colour and light the fictional moon known as Pandora, where the movie takes place, especially given that he had already visualised the environment in the first Avatar film, well over a decade before?

When I came onto the project, in our first conversation, Jim noted that our audience was already familiar with Pandora, so we didn’t want to radically change things up, although we were showing new parts of Pandora and the underwater world, as well. He wanted people to feel like they were returning home.

However, in terms of lighting, since we had a bunch of different locations, he emphasised that this was a culture that was not estranged from the natural world. Therefore, he wanted that consistency to it, an almost spiritual quality to the way things looked – that the inhabitants were connected to the world in which they lived.

And then, the other thing he wanted was to make sure we didn’t use neutral light. In the natural world, light looks one way at the beginning of the day and

another way at the end of the day – it starts to break apart and you get cooler light in shadows, and maybe warm light from a setting sun on one side.

Therefore, similarly, he wanted to see light fracture into different spectrums. If we were in the forest on a sunny day, he wanted to show the hard sunlight filtering through a canopy of trees, with a taste of warmth to it, but the light under the canopy would be cooler.

The environments had several important colour aspects to them. So, the look had to be based on realism, and the way light behaves in a natural world, like the one we were depicting.

What tools and techniques were fundamentally different, improved or evolved, in terms of how this film was shot, compared to the era when they made the original movie?

They learned a lot from the first film, but on this one, there was much more photography with human beings integrated into the world of Pandora. The tools were much finer and new techniques were added, specifically in terms of being able to use sensors that could discern how far human beings were from the camera within the virtual world.

We had new software that allowed us to embed a human actor in the environment so that Na’vi – the Pandoranative CG-generated alien characters – could step in front of that person, interact with that person, and so on. It was a really amazing system, much finer in terms of telling us what our composites were going to look like than previous iterations of this technology.

In terms of the camera, this time we had the Sony Venice system available to us, but with specially-made 3D stereoscopic beam splitter rigs. The big breakthrough was that the rigs were smaller and lighter than anything they used before. Jim wanted to shoot 4K, but with a 4K Super 35 target area, far longer than what they had on the first film. His mandate was that the camera and rig should be smaller and weigh less. Jim had been talking to Sony over the years, and said he wanted to split the camera apart. He only wanted the lens block and the sensor to be on the rig. All the processing pieces that are usually on the back of the Sony Venice, he wanted that something like 20-feet away.

“And so, the camera was split using the Rialto system, and the lightweight rigs were developed. Engineer Patrick Campbell and others did all kinds of things to pare down the weight, methods which have now been patented – all things they didn’t have available when the first film was made.

But the main trick was finding lenses that were light enough and small enough to fit on the smaller stereo rig. Engineer John Brooks worked with Jim for years on this problem. He and I eventually tested scores of lenses and had many zoom lens candidates. But, in the end, we wound-up with what I originally thought was kind of a prosumer lens made by Fujinon – the Fujinon MK series. There

were two of them, small zooms – one went from 18-55mm and the other from 50-135mm. They were amazingly light, though you obviously have to double them, like everything on a stereo rig. But they weighed about two pounds and, for a zoom lens, they were short, about eight inches long. The production also used a small Premier Cabrio zoom on the crane and dolly rigs.

The miracle was that the Fujinon MK zoom lenses were really fast but remained as sharp as the higher-end Fujinon lenses I’ve seen, which are amazing lenses but cost a bundle compared to the ones we used. They gave us amazing visual quality and, on top of that, they were very consistent. Working with two lenses at a time for a stereo rig, if they get out of synch, that is a train wreck for a 3D production. These were consistent and tracked really well all the way through. That was a big breakthrough for us.

How did the Sony Venice’s enhanced ISO capabilities impact what you could do on this show, particularly in terms of lighting options?

The Venice’s dual ISO situation, where we could work at a more common 500ISO or an extremelysensitive 2500ISO, was unbelievably important. The 500ISO offered a beautiful, creamy image, but I actually liked the 2500 a lot, as it offered a little bit of what you would almost call a grain texture. We showed our tests with it to Jim, and he quickly signed-off on it, and then, WETA Digital, which might have had an easier time working only with 500ISO images, also signed-off on 2500. That was a huge game-changer, since you typically lose a stop as light passes through the camera’s half mirror.

Also, we were shooting at 48fps. Our tests led us to like a 270-degree shutter angle. The huge advantage of that was that we were able to shoot at light levels that are not normally associated with shooting stereo photography. That, in turn, allowed us to radically change our approach to lighting.

My gaffer, Len Levine, and I watched Jim work on the virtual stage with virtual environments, and he had a whole bank of computers and operators

there to make changes to light very quickly. He had a lot of fluidity that you don’t typically have on a normal live-action stage.

That influenced us, and Len came up with a system that – instead of using normal movie lights on the ground, and having to move things around during shooting of the scene, which would eat up a lot of time – would be more like lighting from a rock-and-roll grid. This let us use moving lights, all controlled from a lighting board and always capable of displaying huge amounts of colours. And that was really important, because the movie takes place on Pandora, a place where colours are always changing. So, we had that capability, along with a lot of softlight up above.

We used those lights in ways you wouldn’t normally think of using them in a movie. For example, we had huge softlight bounces, either bouncing material on the walls or moving it around in the studio. As key light, we could shoot our overhead lights into those large bounce sources. And then, if we wanted to change the colour temperature, it literally just took seconds. It was a quick and fluid way of working with lighting, a kind of Swiss Army Knife that we could use for lots of different scenes that were drastically different.

What was the key to the stunning underwater cinematography in this movie? There was performance capture done underwater, lots of new technology, and cameras were always in the water, as opposed to shooting dry for wet. What was the secret to that success?

All the underwater performance-capture work

was done in a specially-designed tank, that Jim and some other engineers designed, on a stage at Manhattan Beach Studios. It was enormous, about 118ft long by 59ft wide, and 29ft deep, with a carved-out section of the floor that went even deeper. It was a jack-of-all-trades type of thing, with huge turbines and powerful pumps. It could be configured for still water, rapids, shallow water, deep dives, and more. And they adapted their motioncapture systems for underwater work, with windows all around the tank so that reference cameras could participate to provide additional data.

It was kind of weird looking at the tank, because it looked like the top of the water was covered with floating white ping-pong balls. They had a large ARRI S60 SkyPanel-based lighting array over the entire tank. But when light hits the water like that, there are refractions there, which is not good for a motioncapture system. So, the solution was to kind of spread a layer of balls over the water that provided the diffusion they needed yet allowed those in the water to swim through them with no safety issues. They spent months shooting a variety of scenarios for both Way Of Water and Avatar 3 there.

We had a great underwater team led by a really excellent underwater cinematographer named Peter Zuccarini. The team used specially-housed versions of the Venice in rigs with 3D beam-splitter technology called DeepX 3D, invented by engineer/ cinematographer Pawel Achtel ACS, outfitted with unhoused, submersible Nikonos underwater lenses. It was an incredibly complex effort.

The Fujinon MK zoom lenses gave us amazing visual quality

TM

Large-Area Lighting. Ultra Slim and Lightweight. Full-Spectrum Color. Large-Format Pixels. This is Auroris.

Auroris, the all-new full-color overhead light source from LiteGear, combines high-quality color rendition and precision control in one sleek, easy-to-use package. Powered by LiteGear’s Spectrum technology, Auroris X can cover a 100-square-foot area with just one fixture. Designed to be light on weight and easy to rig, Auroris is one of the slimmest, most versatile soft lights, period. The game of large-area overhead lighting is forever changed.

THE VOICE

By Iain Blair

Cinematographer Barry Ackroyd BSC got his start in documentaries back in the ‘80s, and over the course of his long and prolific career (some 84 projects and counting) he’s developed a unique, highly-recognisable style and visual signature – a documentarystyle approach informed by his background in, and love for, social realism. With its ample use of handheld cameras, punchy zooms and naturalistic lighting, it’s a method Ackroyd has refined and fine-tuned over the course of some five decades and several key collaborations with such directors as Ken Loach, Paul Greengrass and Kathryn Bigelow.

Starting in the early ‘90s Ackroyd shot ten films for Loach, including Cannes Palme d’Or winner The Wind That Shakes The Barley (2006), before teaming with Greengrass on United 93 (2006), which won him a BAFTA nomination. He went on to shoot three more films with Greengrass, including Green Zone (2010), Captain Phillips (2013), which won him a second BAFTA nomination as well as an ASC nomination, and Jason Bourne (2016). His first film with Bigelow, The Hurt Locker (2008), won Ackroyd BAFTA, Oscar and a host of other award nominations, and the two reteamed on Detroit (2017). Along the way, the DP has also collaborated with such diverse directors as Adam McKay, Sean Penn, Jay Roach and Ralph Fiennes.

Now Ackroyd has brought his method and all his experience to bear on what might at first seem like an unlikely project for his particular skillset, I Wanna Dance With Somebody, the long-awaited biopic about the late superstar Whitney Houston, from TriStar Pictures. Starring Naomi Ackie as the powerful, soulful singer, and directed by Kasi Lemmons, whose last film, Harriet (2019, DP John Toll ASC), was nominated for two Academy Awards, the film is produced by the team behind the blockbuster Bohemian Rhapsody (2018, DP Newton Thomas Sigel ASC) including producer Denis O’Sullivan and screenwriter Anthony McCarten, who was Oscarnominated for his Bohemian Rhapsody script.

“Over my career I’ve shot a lot of small, intimate films with directors like Ken Loach, and some big action films, such as Jason Bourne and Captain Phillips with

Paul Greengrass, but I’d never done this sort of film, so it was a bit of a challenge,” admits Ackroyd. “When they approached me and I first read the script I thought, it’s got it all – small, intimate scenes, huge stadium concerts, and this incredible story of her life that’s both so full of joy and success and yet is also so tragic. And I knew it had the right team behind it to do it justice and do something special.”

But like so many indie projects, it took a while for all the pieces to fall into the right places, reports Ackroyd.

“I was on-board, but then the original director, Stella Meghie, ended-up leaving, and then Kasi came on, and she hadn’t hired me as her DP. So we had to start from scratch and I had to convince her about my approach. It was definitely an unusual way to start a film.”

Happily, the new team quickly clicked as they began tackling the project’s many challenges.

“A biopic has to have certain elements – the history and the character, the highs and lows – but it’s the way you put all that together to tell the story that makes it work or not,” he notes. “And it really helped that it was authorised by Whitney’s family and Clive Davis, the record executive who discovered her and then became her mentor and a father figure as he guided her career, as he was a major figure in the story and the film which he also co-produced.”

Another key part of the puzzle was already in place – English actress Naomie Ackie. “Casting her as Whitney Houston was brilliant, as she has a great musical talent,” notes Ackroyd. “So it was great that we kept the same lead actress when Kasi took over. To be honest, I didn’t really know that much about Whitney’s life before I did this, but when I read the script I immediately knew it was a fantastic story, really compelling. And then you add in all the great music, and I felt we could make it something more than the usual biopic. That was our goal.”

Because of the change in director, the film’s entire schedule was pushed back. “We ended-up having just over three months of prep, which isn’t that long for a complicated project like this,” Ackroyd reports, “and in terms of camera and lens tests I kind of know what I’ll be doing and I have a method.

“I test things, but, to be honest, I just mostly come out using the Angénieux Optimo 24-290 T2.8 Zoom. That’s my favourite lens by far, and I used it every day. I put it on and

it was there till we wrapped. It’s the most incredible tool, and for me, just gives me that lens and camera combination that I can shoot any kind of film. Yes, I can be stubborn at times about my method, but hopefully not in a negative way, and I know what I can achieve using the methods I’ve perfected over the years.”

Ackroyd says that the initial plan was to shoot it all Anamorphic, “but we shot a mixture of Anamorphic and spherical lenses, often using a trio of Alexa Mini LF cameras in Super 35 mode, with an aspect ratio of 2.39:1.”

The Anamorphic lens package included: Atlas Orion 2x Anamorphic primes; Angénieux Optimo 56-152mm 2X zoom T4; Angénieux Optimo 30-72mm 2x zoom T4; plus Cooke Anamophics. Spherical zooms included: Angénieux Optimo 24-290 T2.8 Zoom; Angénieux Optimo 15-40mm T2.6 Zoom; Angénieux Optimo 28-76mm T2.6 Zoom; Angénieux Optimo 45120mm T2.8 Zoom; plus Cook S4 Primes. The DP also used Tiffen Black Satin filters and Star filters.

“I like to set up all three cameras on a longish zoom lens and use them like there’s a human eye behind the lens and camera,” explains Ackroyd when asked about his approach to shooting. “It’s a human being watching and

listening and deciding where the eye should go, and there’s a certain plan to that. And, of course, there’s a definite relationship between us and the director in terms of how we’re going to capture the images. That’s how we approach the work on-set. Then you’re just trying to improve all that every time.

“I feel we made some huge leaps on this film. There’s some really interesting geometry in this, and we made sure we were making very interesting shots, even in tiny rooms. So you’re trying to give it all life – like her life, whether it’s full of greatness or beauty or ugliness. And to do that, having the right tools at hand is crucial, so you’re not constantly having to stop, change lenses and reposition the camera. I want the whole process to be as fluid as possible.”

To this end, Ackroyd explains, “I like to use fixed positions, but with sliders, so you can let the handheld shots lean left and right and use that beautiful Angenieux 24-290 lens balanced to float-in and zoom-in at the appropriate moments.”

And, appropriately for this film, he used the lenses “just like music. It has its high points and low ones, and rhythm, and it was a case of bringing-in the visuals to match the intensity of the story.”

The DP shot the film at 4K, “so we could keep the spherical lenses, and we shot Super 35 and Anamorphic, framing 2:25 spherical for the zooms,”

he reports. “As for choosing the ARRI Alexa Mini LF, I love the look, the feel of it, everything about it, really. And I always operate the camera – and always with my left hand on the zoom, which not many people do, and that comes from my documentary background. I bring the style, and then add that to the other operators.”

In terms of lighting, “it’s always a bit of a dog’s dinner in a way, as you have all these different lights for different things,” he notes. “But when you get down to it, when you’re doing intimate scenes, you’re using practical lights, available light, and units like Astera Titans which are the equivalent of the old Kino-Flos. I worked very closely with my regular gaffer, Kelly Clear, who’s a lovely guy, very skillful. “We discuss together where to place the lighting and he’ll get it all set-up very quickly. And that’s been my lighting method right since the beginning of my career, working with Ken Loach. You light the space and then give the space to the actors to work their magic.”

Ackroyd worked with famed Company3 colourist, Walter Volpatto, whose diverse credits include The Hateful Eight and Avatar: The Last Airbender, on the colour grade.

“I’ve worked with Walter before, on the last two or three films I’ve shot in America. I come from a background in social realism, and that’s what I’m looking for in any given project,” he explains. “That’s what appeals to me, and I wanted to capture that look and feeling in this film. It’s not some fantasy. It’s the life of this young, talented woman from New

Images: Tristar Pictures I Wanna Dance With Somebody. Phtos by Emily Aragones. © 2021 CTMG, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

You light the space and then give the space to the actors to work their magic

I know what I can achieve using the methods I’ve perfected over the years

Jersey, and we have to respect that.

“So capturing a natural, realistic look was absolutely essential to me. I didn’t want to go for heavy grades and a glossy, fashionable look. It’s really about bringing reality to every situation – whether it’s a simple scene at home or in a small New York blues club when she was just 19, or one of her huge concerts, like the amazing performance at the Superbowl. And those massive shows needed a huge amount of lighting to bring the right atmosphere and energy.”

The film was largely shot in Boston. “It’s not one of the big film cities like LA or London or Atlanta, but you go where the tax breaks are,” he notes. “And finding stage space isn’t that easy now with all the new streaming production. Everything’s booked-up. So we actually setup in a brand new empty building in Quincy, a Boston suburb. It was totally inappropriate for making a film in at the start, as it had no soundstages or even electricity. But it was big, and Kelly came in early during prep and got things sorted. We also used it to build sets and for the art department, so when we shot everyone was under one roof which was very convenient, although it was a little crowded. So, against the odds, it all worked out, largely thanks to our great camera crew and technical team bringing it all together.”

The three month shoot also needed “a lot of locations,” he adds, “and Boston doubled quite well for New Jersey where Whitney grew up. It also has some very big theatres, which we could shoot in, so pretty much the whole film was shot in Boston. Then right at the end, we went to LA, to the Beverly Hills Hilton where she died, as we couldn’t find anything at all like it in Boston, or like the style of mansion we needed for Whitney’s home with Bobby Brown.”

For director Kasi Lemmons, her close collaboration with Ackroyd, both in prep and on set “was so creative and intuitive,” she says. “He’s just a master at what he does, and he had a very interesting approach for a biopic, as he shot it handheld, almost like a documentary, which is how he began his career. Of course, I’d seen most of his films and I knew his work, and while we’d never worked together before, that unusual way of dealing with a biopic really interested me and appealed to me, especially with this film.”

Lemmons adds, “I really had a personal connection to the story as I’d actually written two screenplays for Whitney – one that she didn’t know I was writing, which I came in and pitched to her, and another that her father commissioned me to write for her. She made a real impression on me when we met, so I wanted to make a tribute to the person that I knew and had written for, and I also wanted to celebrate her.

“Barry got that right away. I also found his take on the material and narrative to be a very musical approach which really suited the story. There’s this immediacy to it too, and you feel the life in it. It’s like a living, breathing camera, and it’s why I love handheld and especially when it’s used for movies about music.

“But there’s also this quality where you feel like you’re peering in at something, and Barry gives it this intense sense of reality which is something I wanted. He also makes it look very beautiful, and he shot all the performance scenes and concerts with such energy and that sense of excitement. I absolutely loved working with him.”

When asked how hard the shoot was, Lemmons quickly admits that “it was pretty tough and stressful. I’ve done hard shoots before, like when we shot Harriet in the woods at night in the cold. That was hard, but in a different way. You’re shooting these huge musical numbers and guiding an actress who’s in almost every scene, and it was very intense. So it was great to have someone like Barry who’s so experienced and calm, someone that you can trust and lean on, especially when you’re dealing with the big set pieces.”

Ackroyd, who worked closely with his DIT Kyo Moon on-set, reports that “the big concert set-pieces were fairly challenging to shoot, as you’re on a tight schedule to prep, light and shoot in a theatre, so I always had five cameras running for those scenes to make sure we got all the coverage possible.

“You’re also dealing with a lot of visual effects for crowds, and a lot of extras – sometimes as many as 250 for background inside a stadium or concert hall. But despite having big stages with lots of people for many scenes, we had few Covid cases during the shoot thanks to everyone being masked.”

Summing up, Ackroyd notes that “recording vocals and all the sound correctly for those concert scenes was crucial, and we had the same great British sound team that won the Oscars for Bohemian Rhapsody.

“As for Naomie, she has a very powerful voice that’s so close to how Whitney sang, and when they blended both their vocals the result was amazing. Naomie also had all Whitney’s movements down, for every period of her life, as she really had studied all the documentaries and old footage for over a year. She never held us up for anything while shooting. It was an incredible performance, and I think audiences will be pretty impressed when they see the film. I’m very proud of what we all achieved.”

The Angénieux Optimo 24-290 T2.8

Zoom is my favourite lens by far… I used it every day and it was there till we wrapped

“NAB Show allows me to learn about gear that I might not see, or a rental house might not show me. And the great thing is I get to see everything in one place.”

—Eric Fletcher, SOC - Technical Chair

LIGHTS. CAMERA. ACTION. THE GEAR IS HERE

Experience the broadcast, media and entertainment industry’s unrivaled event for must-see tech, tools and gear. Connect with a global community of content creators, cinematographers, editors and crew. Get hands-on with products that enable the future of the art of storytelling.

You’ll find everything to master your craft in CREATE, the most massive of four distinct show floor destinations. Learn advanced cinematic techniques, engage with the leaders of Cine Live and hear from the best in Hollywood. NAB Show has it all. REGISTER NOW with code MP04.

INCREDIBLE, IMMERSIVE EDUCATION

Level up with ASC Cinematography Lighting Workshops, ACE Editorial Workshops, the NAB Show Conference CREATE Track and/or Post|Production World.

NABShow.com

BOY WONDER

By Ron Prince

I’ve shot a great many movies for Steven during our long collaboration – sci-fi blockbusters, entertaining crime capers and momentous historical dramas – but this was probably the most emotional experience of them all,” reveals cinematographer Janusz Kamiński about his time spent working on director Steven Spielberg’s semiautobiographical, coming-of age story, The Fabelmans.

Stylishly captured on Kodak 35mm, 16mm and 8mm film, The Fabelmans is loosely-based around the director’s childhood reminiscences, digging into family roots and the formative experiences that shaped him into one of the most beloved and successful filmmakers of all time.

Incorporating beautifully-rendered boyhood reminiscences, plus recreations of Spielberg’s own early home movies, the story is told through the fictional character of Sammy Fabelman, the youngest child in a middle-class Jewish family, who’s father’s career transports them from New Jersey to Arizona and then California.

alongside Michelle Williams, Paul Dano, Seth Rogen and Judd Hirsch in supporting roles. There’s also a cameo performance by David Lynch re-enacting a real-life encounter between Spielberg and legendary director John Ford.

The film represents Kamiński’s 19th consecutive feature film with Spielberg, and comes hot on the heels of their work together on West Side Story (2022)..

The film opens with young Sammy’s first trip to the cinema, and the traumatising impression he is left with after watching the catastrophic train crash sequence in The Greatest Show On Earth (1952, dir, Cecil B. DeMille, DP George Barnes ASC). Encouraged by his mother to recreate that scene on film using toys in his bedroom, the anxious Sammy regains a sense of control, and quickly aspires to become a filmmaker. After discovering a secret that shatters his parents’ marriage, he begins to explore how the power of films can help him see the truth about his dysfunctional family and navigate the troublesome world of school bullies and anti-Semitic abuse.

The Fabelmans stars Gabriel LaBelle as Sammy,

The $40million Universal Pictures production had its world premiere at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival, winning the People’s Choice Award. Along with five-star reviews praising its earnest direction, lead performances and Kamiński’s delicately wistful cinematography, The Fabelmans has since garnered awards at the 2023 Golden Globes, and looks set for many other prestigious accolades.

Spielberg initially conceived the concept for the film with his sister Anne as early as 1999, but reservations about upsetting his parents – Leah Adler and Arnold Spielberg, who died in 2017 and 2020, respectively – saw the project put on hold for two decades. Spielberg, who barely spoke to his father for 15 years after his parents separated, revisited the project with screenwriter and frequent collaborator, Tony Kushner, as they were making West Side Story, and completed the screenplay at end of 2020.

“The script was simply wonderful – warm, loving and deeply personal – and as soon as I read it I knew it would make a beautiful movie,” says Kamiński, who

earned Best Cinematography Oscars for Schindler’s List (1993), his first title with Spielberg, and Saving Private Ryan (1998), as well as six Academy nominations for his other films with the director.

“But I also thought how very brave Steven was to reveal and share certain things about himself and his background, without any sugar-coating, that most people would really not have known about him until this particular movie. That honesty – about depicting fractured relations, parental estrangement, bullying, racial prejudice, the ambition and consequences of dedicating yourself to an artform that can both heal and tear you apart – was courageous and special.”

Kamiński adds, “Steven has always been a very personal filmmaker, in the way he brings something

about himself and the human condition into his films. Divorce helped to drive the narrative within E.T. The Extra Terrestrial (1982, DP Allen Daviau ASC), and The War Of The Worlds (2005), involved a story about a father trying to connect with his son amid a terrifying alien invasion.

“But unlike the other movies we’ve made before, The Fabelmans was about Steven being more directly introspective, looking inwards and not framing his private anxieties inside a wider narrative. There were no UFOs or aliens. This was a simple story about a boy who grew-up as a child of divorce to become a legendary filmmaker, with a home-movie camera helping to give him identity, purpose and perspective.

“I’ve been around Steven and his family for close

to 30 years. It was touching to see the tearful reaction when his sisters visited the sets we had built, and it was very, very emotional to be involved in telling this story.”

Principal photography on The Fabelmans commenced in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, on July 17, 2021, before concluding some 59 shooting days later on September 27 of that year. Production took place at locations around Los Angeles, Sequoia National Park in the southern Sierra Nevada, California, and on the lot at Paramount Studios, where the sequence involving David Lynch as John Ford was filmed.

To recreate the three houses that Spielberg lived in during his childhood – in Haddon Township, New Jersey, Phoenix, Arizona, and Saratoga, California – the production designer, Rick Carter, referenced

Images: © Storyteller Distribution Co., LLC. All Rights Reserved.

As soon as I read the script I knew it would make a beautiful movie

floorplans and period details that Spielberg had sketched-out from memory, and then, at Kamiński’s behest, constructed sets that were marginally larger in size so as to make them more workable for the camera and lighting crew and equipment, including the execution of 360-degree shots that would elaborate on Sammy’s emotional mindset, such as the swirling depiction of Sammy as a teenager splicing pieces of film on an editing machine.

chance to romanticise the images, and this certainly was a movie that permitted me to do that.

“However, this was not as flashy a movie as, say, West Side Story was, where I purposely encouraged flaring in imagery to add lyricism to the dreamy romantic sequences. This gloss on this film was more gentle and conventional compared to other films we have made.”

Kamiński framed The Fabelmans in 1.85:1 aspect ratio, and went with Panavision Panaflex Millennium XL2 cameras, fitted with Panavision PVintage Lenses, for the mainstay of narrative storytelling.

ARRIFLEX 16ST and 416 16mm cameras with Panavision Primo Lenses, plus Super8mm cameras, were variously used to film Sammy’s re-enactment of the dreadful train crash from The Greatest Show On Earth, plus the recreations of Spielberg’s early home movies, including a war film that echoes the gravitas of Saving Private Ryan. The camera package was provided by Panavision in Woodland Hills.

“There was really no reason to research the different time periods for this production, because we have covered them many times before on other films, such as Catch Me If You Can (2002) and West Side Story,” says Kamiński. “I like big, glamorous Hollywood movies from that period, because it gives you the

As for filmstocks, Kamiński went with Kodak Vision3 500T 5219 for the day/night interior and night exterior scenes. Kodak Vision3 50D 5203 was used for most of the day exteriors, switching to Kodak Vision3 250D 5207 if shoots extended beyond normal daylight. Sammy’s films were shot on 16mm and Super 8mm Kodak Vision3 250D 7207 and Kodak Vision3 500T 7219 filmstocks. Film processing was done at FotoKem in Los Angeles, with dailies scanning and the final

DI grade done at Picture Shop in Burbank.

“Even now, after all of these years and so many movies, Steven still loves the elegance of film aesthetics,” declares Kamiński. “Whatever story you are telling, celluloid remains an incredible artistic choice, and I would love to keep on shooting it as long as it is manufactured and can be developed.

“We also both enjoy the filmmaking regime, where you actually cut, check-the-gate, reload the camera, reset and go again, rather than just rolling, rolling, rolling, which is often the case on a digital production, when you likely pile-up hours and hours of extra material, costing thousands and thousands of extra dollars.”

Kamiński assembled a formidable crew for the shoot, “many of whom I’ve had the pleasure to work with for 25-years or more,” he enthuses. Mitch Dubin wielded A-camera, assisted by Mark Spath on focus, with Colin Anderson on B-camera/Steadicam, assisted by Jeff Porter. The key grip was Ray Garcia, with John Mang working as dolly grip.

A relative newcomer to the fold was Magdalena Górka, working as second unit director of photography, who shot the majority of the home movie sequences on 16mm and 8mm film. Along with gaffer Chris Culliton, Kamiński also singles-out dailies colour timer John

I am more emotionallyinvolved when I see images that have been shot on film

Vladic, who supervised the neg scanning and delivery of colour-faithful rushes for editorial, plus final DI colourist Mike Hatzer, as vital members of his team.

The lighting package for the production was provided by Cinelease, and contained a combination of traditional Tungsten and HMI fixtures, along with modern LED illumination. The 500T film did the lion’s share of work on scenes set in the Fabelman’s various houses, and being rated at 400ISO with a typical target stop of T4, meant a lot of light was required.

The daylight interiors were lit mainly through window openings, using direct light from ARRI T24s in combination with muslin-bounced illumination from ARRI T12s. These were supplemented with large, trussmounted softboxes for ambience, powered with ARRI Sky Panel S360s or Cineo Quantum C80s. Practical lights were also the heart and soul of photographing the interiors, which saw Kamiński, Culliton and set decorator Karen O’Hara, working closely together to select and carefully-place desk, table and bedside lamps within the sets.

Lighting programmer Brian Fisher was on-hand to assist with tasks such as dimming the lighting set-up on the 360-degree move around Sammy at the editing desk. Lighting Sammy’s face in the scenes when he

projects his movies in the dark, involved Sourcemaker LED Tungsten ribbon taped to the projector for a shadowless source, Litecubes and small Tungsten fixtures being used on tighter shots, as well as the variable Tungsten light coming from the projectors themselves.

power the moving image and holds the world of moviemaking in his grasp.”

Whilst The Fabelmans delivers explicit autobiographical revelations about Spielberg’s life, Kamiński shares some confessions of his own.

“I am more emotionally-involved when I see images shot on film. Having made so many movies on 35mm celluloid, I know exactly what those filmstocks can do. But 16mm film… it’s mind-blowing, in terms of the grain structure, the colour reproduction, the softness and the emotions it can evoke.

“I know more and more people are shooting on 16mm now, as they try to get away from the digital stable and into new and alternative aesthetics. If there’s someone out there with a good story, good actors, a good budget and distribution, I would love the challenge of making an entire film on 16mm at some point.”

“There are many beautiful and touching moments in the film,” says Kamiński, “but my favourite is the one where young, wonderstruck Sammy cups his hands in front of the projector and catches the images as if they were the movie screen. I love the light being part of the storytelling, and this scene is such a beautiful metaphor of the whole movie – a kid who has discovered the

On a more personal level, Kamiński also admits that The Fabelmans connected to his own life experiences. “I am a moviemaker, and that’s a way of life that can be a great struggle and take its toll on you. But it has rewards too, in helping you find creative expression, friendships, family and happiness. We cried often whilst making this movie, but at the same time it was very inspirational.”

I would love the challenge of making an entire film on 16mm at some point

PERFORMING MIRACLES

By Darek Kuźma

DPAri Wegner ACS once again proved her visual storytelling skills and finesse in recreating bygone eras for director Sebastián Lelio’s period drama-with-a-twist The Wonder.

“You are only here to watch,” discovers Lib, an English nurse brought in 1862 to the Irish Midlands as an expert witness to an alleged miracle within a devout Catholic community. Supposedly, 11-year-old Anna has been fasting for four months, feeding off nothing but – as she calls it – ‘manna from heaven’. The nurse’s order comes from a hostile male committee, but as a self-sufficient woman and a veteran of The Crimean War where she witnessed what people are capable of in the name of their beliefs, Lib suspects mischief and wrongdoing. After she clashes with the community’s patriarchs, the girl’s pious family, and the zealous Anna herself, Lib realises that the objective truth she seeks to unearth is an amalgam of the subjective truths the local people hold to.

Storytelling is the most important aspect of The Wonder, to the point that Lelio decided to frame Lib and Anna’s story with a meta-device that reveals the artifice of filmmaking and encourages you to imagine your own version of the truth. It was fortunate, then, that the director found the perfect visual storyteller.

“We had almost worked together previously but our schedules didn’t align. Then, when I read this script and Emma Donoghue’s book, I was thrilled that it was going to work out,” says Wegner, a DP experienced in recreating bygone eras, from Lady Macbeth (2016) to The Power Of The Dog (2012). “We looked at a lot of reference photos but wanted to make our interpretation of the times. It’s a balance of reality and what we could achieve within the realms of plausibility.”

The Wonder is set shortly after the Great Famine had devastated Ireland and its people, yet the story, ambiguous as it is, is very much about hope.

“We didn’t want the film to be too visually bleak. There’s enough thematic darkness in the story already, as well as the landscape being quite muted,” she recalls. “Also, Lib is very much alive, she has a kind of inextinguishable drive and energy. We gave her a vivid blue dress to stand out in the muddy landscape and mark her as an outsider visually. In the sets we also took the opportunity to add vivid colours –rooms with shiny green walls that reflect glow of the fire and candlelight.”

The prep period was crucial in bringing The

Wonder to life. “Sebastian and I spent a lot of time alone together planning. We storyboarded the script and took photos of each board on-location with him playing all characters.”

But the biggest challenge was organising the whole project around Kíla Lord Cassidy who played Anna. “She was 11 at the time, so we could only have her on set for three hours a day. Our rule was to do only ten set-ups a day total. For the shots of Kíla, we generally used two cameras. The time restriction was a challenge logistically – we shot other actors in the morning, then did all the shots requiring Kíla for the three hours (usually spanning several scenes), and then, after she was gone, we would go back to complete what was owing.”

This informed everything, from choosing camera/ lenses to planning camera movement.

Another element to take into account was the digital-film-digital process. “I love the Alexa look, but at I’ve also got a bit of allergy to period films that look too digital. We agreed that we needed something different for The Wonder,” she explains. “We shot tests and put them through the process at CineLab in London. They had just gotten the camera negative module for their ARRILASER and we ultimately went to Kodak 250D with it. It doesn’t have the precision you might be used to from working purely digital and adding digital grain, but what you lose in precision you gain in surprises. It’s a look that I don’t think I could have achieved on just digital alone.”

Wegner admits that shooting two cameras presented challenges, too. “When you need this amount of B-camera, it does influence the visual language – the length of the lenses and the camera movement. The Cooke package consisted of 18mm, 25mm, 32mm, 40mm, 50mm, 75mm, 100mm, 135mm but we definitely erred on the side of the widest lenses possible without seeing the other camera.

“Almost all the digital work I have done has been with the ARRI Alexa, and the familiarity with a sensor is a big comfort when you’re in a time crunch. Plus, we needed The Wonder to be 4K so ARRI Alexa LF was a natural choice,” Wegner says.

“I considered a few lens kits and settled on the Cooke S7 FFs. I haven’t shot a feature on them before but from the tests they felt reliable and beautiful, and there’s nothing whacky about them. It’s tempting on a period film to have unique vintage lenses, but we were going to shoot low-light on a fast schedule with a young actor, so I didn’t want to add unnecessary pressure with an eccentric lens kit. Or to tell Sebastian that we can’t do something in the ten minutes left with Kíla because of the funky lenses I’d chosen.”

“There’s an emotionally-draining scene towards the end that’s nearly six minutes of dialogue between Lib and Anna. We wanted to cross-shoot, but we didn’t want to shoot long lens from over the shoulders, we had to feel close to them, be in the middle of the conversation. We made the decision to have cameras locked-off in shot, and paint them out in post which allowed us to be inside the conversation while shooting both actors simultaneously.”

Wegner recalls that there was only one zoom shot, her favourite shot in the entire film, which comes following the scene just mentioned, when Lib finally understands the big picture and walks towards the camera from far away. Wegner used 80-250 Premista Zoom with doubler, zooming-in slowly to emphasise Lib’s emotion and put the viewers in a sort of a contemplative state.

“I really love this shot. We had a particularly wild weather that day, and it was perfect for the moment in the film. Lib feels very strong and very alone – as a viewer you have a moment to process what you’ve

Almost all the digital work I have done has been with ARRI Alexa, and familiarity with a sensor is a big comfort

just learnt, and hopefully you’re feeling similar to what she does. I really love when an emotionallyintense scene is followed by a shot that allows you to think for a moment, rather than moving directly on to the next plot point.”

The film was shot August to September 2021 onlocation in and around Dublin, and in the picturesque countryside of County Wicklow, and the infamous Irish weather was yet another obstacle.

“I’ve worked and lived in New Zealand which is similar, but this was still quite an experience – different extremes of weather in one day, often right next to each other. As soon as it stopped raining you can have full sun, a nightmare for continuity and because direct sun on a wet landscape is incredibly glary,” she notes.

“But no amount of being disgruntled about it is going to change anything! You really had to smile about how predictably unpredictable the weather is. And luckily our Irish crew were at home in these conditions. We shot in the summer, where full darkness could be 11pm, which enabled us to work during the incredible long Irish dusks, so I have no complaints! It’s a magical place to shoot.”

The Wonder also required some stage work. “We shot at Westin Airport’s hangar on the outskirts of Dublin. We had the interior of Anna’s house there and its exterior was built in Featherbeds, Wicklow” explains Wegner. “Going into stage work, I’m always nervous it will look like studio, so I focus a lot of my

attention there during prep – the first decision for me is windows, and how much to see out of them.

“The film takes place in rural Ireland in the 1800s, so small windows, thick walls, lit by fire and candlelight, and we chose to emphasise the darkness inside by having the windows go to bright white. Our workhorses were ARRI SkyPanels S30 and S60 and Astera Titan Tubes. Our gaffer Garret Baldwin is amazing on iPad and able to make those tiny adjustments quickly and without disrupting the set if we were in a delicate moment.”

Another important scene is when Lib gets high with opium, giving the audience the opportunity to go inside her head.

“Garret made a flicker-box with 60W and 100W bulbs. I’m pretty meticulous in prep with testing how much ‘flicker’ a fire or candlelight should have for that particular film or for a particular scene, realism might not always be the right choice.

“For most scenes with a fireplace we used the bare minimum of flicker, definitely less than a real fire would have – but we increased it beyond reality for the opium scene to intensify the high.”

On day exteriors Wegner used predominantly natural light and had quite a limited package for night exteriors. “We had a few bigger sources, like ARRI M40s and M90s, and supplemented them with some Maxi Brutes for the biggest night exterior scene where a house burns.”

Meticulous planning and taking risky decisions paid off in various ways, including the fact that they wrapped up just ahead of schedule, getting everything

they wanted on camera.

“Our plan worked, which is the best you could hope for. We were sprinting through the days because of Kíla’s working hours, but I’m so happy with the result. Especially when it comes to the film’s overall look. I think you sense it’s not digital and not entirely celluloid, it’s something in between,” explains Wegner. It makes the audience – pun intended – wonder what is really happening inside the heads of the people who fight to defend their versions of truth, of reality.

Wegner put the final touches to this look during the grade with colourist Vanessa Taylor, whom she met on Lady Macbeth, at London-based Dirty Looks facility.

“It was quite extensive work because of the digital-film-digital process. We started by doing a basic grade with a Kodak 250D emulation LUT underneath – getting to an approximation of the look we wanted. Then, when we had the scanned film back, we did another ten days of grading that,” claims Wegner.

“When you’re dealing with a process none of us had done before, it requires a special person, and Vanessa was amazing. Overall, I’m super happy with the result and I’m especially excited about possibilities of the digital-film-digital process in the future.”

Images: The Wonder. Cr. Aidan Monaghan/Netflix Inc © 2022

ThewonderfulteamatPanavisionduringtheirhappyhour,

We entered the crucible of cinematography for the 18th time. We saw some great films – including Elvis, Tár, EO, Living, White Noise and War Sailor. We met-up with old friends, made a whole lot of new ones too… and generally had a ball at the 30th edition of the veritable festival. Thank you to everyone, especially the organisers, for making it such a great trip.

Need we say more?

Mandy Walker AM ACS ASC on-stage prior to the screening of Elvis

Our wonderful friend DP Oona Menges

Stijn Van der Veken SBC ASC outside the CKK Jordanki

The talented Kate McCullough ISC whose work on

Robert & Robert … they love Cinematography World. We Love them too!

DP Claudio Miranda ASC, Kazik Suwała and director Joseph Kosinski before the Top Gun: Maverick screening

DP Mandy Walker AM ACS ASC and Elvis director Baz Luhrmann, with a twinkle in his eye

Lifetime laureate Stephen Burum ASC (l) and Alan Lowne enjoying a shandy at the ARRI bash

A ‘Boulevardier’ at the Leitz party… lives up to its name!

DP Autumn Durald ASC with Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, and Oscar-winner Erik Messerschmidt ASC, here with Devotion… both amazing!

Operator Kat Spencer (l) and DP Rachel Clark (r) getting framed again!

Our great friend DP Santonio Terzio (l) with the legendary DP Ravi K. Chandran ISC (r)

Toruń by night

Netflix’s very own Michael Keegan at the ACES seminar

EnergaCAMERIMAGE

What a delight to meet DP Javier Julia ADF, here with Argentina 1985

ACES guru Steve Tobenkin with DP Franz Pagot AIC

Camera operator extraordinaire… Ilana Garrard ACO

Brothers-in-arms… DP James Friend BSC ASC (l), here with All Quiet On The Western Front, and DP Ben Smithard BSC (r), here with The Son

One to watch… Ukranian DP Sofiya Muzychenko with a camera gifted by Seamus McGarvey BSC ASC

Happy 82nd birthday… Stephen Lighthill ASC and his delicious cake

MAIN COMPETITION

Golden Frog: Tár, DP Florian Hoffmeister BSC, dir. Todd Field

Silver Frog: Bardo: False Chronicle Of A Handful Of Truths, DP Darius Khondji AFC ASC, dir. Alejandro G. Iñárritu

Bronze Frog: Living, DP Jamie D. Ramsay, dir. Oliver Hermanus

FIPRESCI CRITICS AWARD

Bardo: False Chronicle Of A Handful Of Truths, DP Darius Khondji AFC ASC, dir. Alejandro G. Iñárritu

AUDIENCE AWARD

Elvis, DP Mandy Walker AM ACS ASC, dir. Baz Luhrmann

POLISH FILMS COMPETITION

Woman On The Roof, DP Ita Zbroniec-Zajt, dir. Anna Jadowska

FILM & ART SCHOOL ETUDES COMPETITION

Laszlo Kovacs Student Award – Golden Tadpole: Magdalena, DP Enrico Silva, dir. Michael Lazovsky, from AFI Conservatory

Silver Tadpole: The Creature, DP Ignacy Ciszewski, dir. Damian Kosowski, from Łódź Film School

Bronze Tadpole: Entreterrestres, DP Dani Benejam, dir. Lucas Parra, from ESCAC

DOCUMENTARY FEATURES COMPETITION

Golden Frog: Kash Kash, DP Jonas Schneider, dir. Lea Najjar

The final word… festival founder Marek Żydowicz at a press conference, talking about exciting things to come…!

Srcumdiddlyumptious!

Music video legends…

DOCUMENTARY SHORTS COMPETITION

Golden Frog: A Mouthful of Petrol, Adric Watson, dir. Jess Kohl

DIRECTORS’ DEBUTS COMPETITION

Love According To Dalva, DP Caroline Guimbal, dir. Emmanuelle Nicot

CINEMATOGRAPHERS’ DEBUTS COMPETITION

Love According to Dalva, DP Caroline Guimbal, dir. Emmanuelle Nicot

MUSIC VIDEOS COMPETITION

Emmit Fenn “Light That Shines Through”, DP David Okolo, dir. Conner Bell

TV SERIES COMPETITION Landscapers, Erik Wilson BSC, dir. Will Sharpe

1st AC Tamia Diaz sporting our lovely tote bag

Marc Cattrall of RED

Grand masters… Ed Lachman ASC and lifetime laureate Stephen Burum ASC at breakfast

Christmas is coming to Toruń

Carey Duffey at Cooke Optics’ special set-up in downtown Toruń

Sporting a pink felt hat… the sensational Charlotte Bruss Christensen DFF ASC

DP David Procter BSC and DP Brendan Harvey

Pau Verdalet (l) and Ian B Morales (r) from ENAC film school Mexico

Paulina Zdebik (l) and Michal Wylezek (r) from Lodz Film School with their favourite magazine!

GRIN & BEAR IT

By Natasha Block Hicks

At 5’11” tall, with dark hair and a dense beard framing amiable brown eyes, one could be forgiven for thinking that it is Davon Slininger’s appearance that is behind his nickname Black Bear’. But that is only half the story, as the camera operator – known for his long-running collaboration with DP Linus Sandgren FSF ASC – relates from his home in Los Angeles.

“I shared an apartment in Atlanta with the key grip Tony Cady, on First Man (2018, dir. Damien Chazelle, DP Linus Sandgren FSF ASC),” Slininger describes. “The shoot was incredibly taxing. When the weekends came around Tony wanted to go out and explore but I was always snoring away in what he called ‘full hibernation mode!’, and the name Black Bear caught-on quickly.”

Slininger considers himself to have “always had a creative inkling”. He was a keen drawer throughout childhood and turned his attention to movies in High School. “But,” he interjects, “I didn’t think at that time that I would be a filmmaker. It seemed like an untouchable world to me.”

opportunity to spend a year as ‘artist-in-residence’ at the Malmö Art Academy in Sweden.

“The Swedish winter was tough and, with the language barrier, it was a little lonely out there,” admits Slininger. “I would roam the streets after dark capturing night landscapes, and ended-up stumbling into some interesting double exposure work which I continued in my masters at UCLA.”

Own Private Idaho (1991, DPs John Campbell and Eric Edwards), were amongst a handful of films that Slininger had seen in late high school which had revealed to him cinema’s potential for beauty and artistry.

“Getting to work with Gus brought it full circle,” marvels Slininger, “it was super-fulfilling. And I actually felt more comfortable operating on Promised Land than I had in any other position working up into that.”

The longterm collaboration with Sandgren – now numbering over ten features and shorts to date, plus numerous commercials – has been the most significant influence on Slininger’s career thus far.

“Linus has been an incredibly generous mentor,” states Slininger, “I can ask him endless questions and he never seems to get frustrated. He puts a lot of trust in me.”

During his studies, Slininger was mentored by several iconic American and German photographers, such as Uta Barth, Jeff Wall and Wolfgang Tillmans. The conceptual artist James Welling ran the UCLA graduate programme.

“He was really supportive and influential for me during that time,” Slininger remembers. “I wanted to be an artist after I graduated, but in practise I struggled to translate my work into income. I had a friend who was an intern at a production company, and she got me on-set as a production assistant. As soon as I saw the camera, I knew everything I had done so far had been leading to this point.”

Over the course of some years, Slininger worked his way over to, and then up through, the camera department. In 2012 he returned to Sweden as 1st AC on Lycka Till Och Ta Hand Om Varandra (2012, dir. Jens Sjögren, DP Linus Sandgren FSF ASC), the first of many features he would go on to shoot with the Oscar-winning Swedish DP.

Sandgren and Slininger have completed three feature projects with director Damien Chazelle, Slininger’s first multi-picture partnership with a director: La La Land (2016), which won both Chazelle and Sandgren an Oscar apiece, First Man (2018) and Babylon (2022).

During his teenage years, Slininger’s father owned – and protectively guarded – a Minolta SLR stills camera.

“He was really into toys, so he had several motors for it, multiple flashes, tons of filters…” Slininger relates. “When he eventually let me use it, I fell in love with taking pictures.”

During his undergraduate degree in photography at University Of California Riverside, Slininger won the

“My experience as a student in Malmö made for some easy rapport with Linus in the beginning,” says Slininger, “I had some basic conversational Swedish and was able to joke around with him.”

Sandgren gave Slininger his first taste of operating, beginning with commercials, then as B-camera on Promised Land (2012, dir. Gus Van Sant). Van Sant‘s early features, such as Drugstore Cowboy (1989, DP Robert Yeoman ASC) and My

“Damien’s an impressive cinephile with a strong vision; it’s really satisfying to be able to work with someone like that,” says Slininger. “By the time we shot Babylon, I think he considered me a second shooter; he would send me off with several abstract references to capture reactions or inserts. Fortunately, I have enough of a cinematographic vocabulary that I could understand him. An important part of being a good operator is learning how to speak the director

I didn’t think that I would be a filmmaker… it seemed like an untouchable world to me

and DP’s language.

“Our camera PA on First Man asked me what I thought the hardest part about operating was,” jokes Slininger lightly, “I told her it was reading people’s minds.”

First Man was both a career highlight and a shoot of immense physical and mental endeavour for Slininger. The movie depicts Neil Armstrong’s personal experiences before and during the 1969 mission to the moon.

“90% of the movie was shot handheld,” details Slininger. “We shot both 16mm and 35mm 2-perf, which meant that our 400ft magazines ran for almost nine minutes before rolling out. Damien rarely cut mid-roll.”

Chazelle, wanting his cast to experience the claustrophobia of space travel, had built the Apollo 11 shuttle set-pieces to scale. Slininger would be handheld inside the astronauts’ quarters, with Sandgren outside on a crane.

“Jamming myself into the spacecraft was always an insanely awkward and physical contortion,” remarks Slininger. “I frequently had my camera in Ryan Gosling’s face. There were

moments where he knew I was struggling in the middle of the scene and he would shift his weight to help my framing, and vice versa.”

After wrap, Gosling implored Chazelle to acknowledge Slininger’s operating, in the event of the director winning a second Oscar for First Man

“Hearing that, my heart melted,” relates Slininger emotionally, “I felt so proud of all the work that I was able to do there.”

Slininger’s operating on the apocalyptic black comedy Don’t Look Up (2021, dir. Adam McKay, DP Linus Sandgren FSF ASC) was, by contrast, often based on dolly movement, but this had its own unique challenges. Certain scenes would be blocked in such a way that the two cameras would start at opposite ends of the room on separate members of the cast, then move, following their subjects, through several distinct compositions before converging in a single shared conversation from two angles.

“Linus and I had to choreograph our dollies,” says Slininger, “it was very tricky to hit all the beats.”

The crew had been shooting for several weeks before Meryl Streep, who plays fictional US President

Pre-2018, Slininger was pursuing a move towards DP, and had picked-up several credits such as the feature film Justine (2019, dir. Stephanie Turner), 2nd unit work on La La Land and numerous commercials. But the last five years have seen him ease off the accelerator in this regard.

“For now, I want to appreciate the position I am in,” Slininger reasons. “I am very happy as an operator, and I’m very fortunate to be able to contribute to some fantastic projects. If I approach my role with integrity and do the best I can, eventually the right opportunity will come. You get back what you put out.”

In the summer of 2022, Slininger operated on bodybuilding drama Magazine Dreams (2023 dir. Elijah Bynum, his first movie with Australian cinematographer DP Adam Arkapaw ACS, known for Top Of The Lake (2013) and True Detective (2014).

“Adam is very nice, mildmannered and reserved at times,” divulges Slininger. “Tapping into what he wanted definitely tested my intuition skills. The scenes have a very deliberate composition with as little camera movement as possible. I had to predict the edges of frame so that the actors could move into those edges without me having to pan with them. It was a wonderful challenge that sharpened my attention.”

Janie Orlean, joined the production for her first scenes.

“I don’t often get star-struck, but I was excited to see her,” admits Slininger. “My camera was set-up on the dolly and she walked right by me towards her first position. I gave a small nod. When she was about ten feet away, she turned and gave me a little bow.

“That was such a special moment,” he continues. “I feel like it was an acknowledgement that we were in it together. It was very encouraging from someone like her.”

Slininger still enjoys photography and says be shoots with a 4x5 or 8x10 large format camera “once in a while”. In between projects he prioritises spending time with his siblings, nieces, and nephews, relishing the opportunity to be a favourite uncle. What little downtime left to him after that is mopped-up with the pursuit of ursine pleasures, such as rambling in the wilderness and, well, sleeping of course!

Davon Slininger pictured at work on Babylon.

An important part of being a good operator is learning how to speak the director and DP’s language

INSPIRING EXCELLENCE

PERG manager Harry Box looks forward to an active and inspirational agenda for the association and its members in 2023.

Subscribers of Cinematography World may or may not know about the trade groups that work behind-the-scenes to support the motion picture/television/commercial markets, nor the organisations that work behind the behindthe-scenes groups, such as the Production Equipment Rental Group (PERG), which represents professional camera and lighting rental companies in the Americas and beyond. PERG is part of the international entertainment trade association ESTA. So, for just a moment, let me bring to the forefront what’s going on way, way behind-the-scenes.

Zeiss, Innerspace Cases and My Case Builder

– provide demonstrations and presentations and the day closes out with a barbecue of brisket and ribs, beer and wine. All of this provides an extraordinary opportunity to network with other lens professionals, manufacturers, experts and lens technicians from local camera rental companies in Los Angeles. PERG has also launched new dedicated channels on Slack for lens technicians to share technical information, stay in touch, and get guidance when needed.

The second educational event is for lighting service technicians. It takes place in conjunction with Filmscape Chicago, a regional tradeshow in Chicago that has specialised in high quality training events. The three-day training event precedes the tradeshow. Grip/electric courses include a two-day advanced ARRI service class, as well as part-day classes by Kino Flo, Astera, Creamsource, LiteGear, Ratpac, American Grip, Hubbell, Chimera and Rag Time. In combination with the Filmscape Chicago tradeshow that features its own slate of educational events, it is a great opportunity for lighting and grip service technicians and staff.

our section of the industry. The companies that are participating in PERG’s EWI have each volunteered to present a topic. In addition, PERG is reaching out to business leaders, industry experts, production managers, DPs, people in

A theme has emerged for PERG’s events and initiatives in 2023 – training and education. The pandemic is mostly behind us (we hope), the motion picture television production business is busy, and the welcome challenge for employers is now to keep up with demand and to hire and train enough staff. PERG is helping to facilitate three kinds of training events.

Firstly, PERG has partnered-up with the amazing team at Duclos Lenses to provide entrylevel, professional, optics training specifically for rental company lens technicians. The two-weeks of training include level 1 and level 2 lens technician training courses taking place in February 2023 in Burbank, CA. The training is part of PERG’s effort to address the shortage of qualified lens service technicians throughout the industry. The training will be attended by 39 lens technicians from 31 different companies from all over the US, and beyond, with some trainees coming from as far as Europe and South America. Each of the Wednesdays are public lens showcases to which local rental company staff are invited. The sponsors – Ang é nieux (Band Pro), Atlas Lenses, Chrosziel, Cooke, Duclos Lenses, Fujifilm/Fujinon,

The third form of educational event is truly unique. PERG is gearing-up for a new series of virtual educational presentations available to all PERG member companies, specifically targeting employees in the early stages of their careers. PERG aims to provide 60-minute virtual sessions every two to three weeks throughout the spring and into the summer of 2023. In each session, industry experts and veteran rental staff will discuss the rental business, production technology, or a related topic essential to running a successful business and supporting the motion picture/ television/commercial production markets. The object of the series is to educate and inspire, to pull back the curtain and allow entry-level employees get perspective on the crucial role played by professional rental companies. Mentorship, education, and inspiration can help seed the next generation of leadership in our industry.

The series is presented in association with PERG’s Equitable Workforce Initiative (EWI) (https://esta.org/PERG/Initiatives/ewi.html). The initiative, which is sponsored by Netflix, places workers from historically underrepresented groups into full-time entry level positions at PERG rental companies, supported by grants, and provides a structure for providing those employees with unique training opportunities that could spark a long-term commitment and advancement in

crew leadership positions, and professionals in insurance and law, to contribute to the series. All sessions will be recorded, and PERG hopes to create the foundation for a library of resources that can be used for many years to come.

Professional rental companies serve such an essential role in supporting production, characterised by technical expertise, depth of inventory, and an intense level of customer service. Education and training are an essential part of preserving the expected level of excellence and preparing the next generation of leadership in the rental industry.

Harry Box PERG Manager Production Equipment Rental Group (part of ESTA)

Mentorship, education and inspiration can help seed the next generation of leadership in our industry

The welcome challenge for employers is now to keep up with demand and to hire and train enough staff

ORCHESTRAL MANOEUVRES

By Oliver Webb

Táris director Todd Field’s first feature in 15 years, brilliantly captured by DP Florian Hoffmeister BSC, which follows the fall from grace of maestro Lydia Tár.

The film opens with an in-depth interview between the formidable orchestra conductor, played by Cate Blanchett, and the American writer and essayist Adam Gopnik. She’s at the height of her career, one of the few people to be in the category of EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony) winners, and is also the first female conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic. The release of her upcoming autobiography Tár On Tár is also announced. After such an extensive introduction, and on viewing the movie, it is easy to believe that Lydia Tár is a real person in this extraordinary cinematic achievement.

Tár premiered at the 2022 Venice Film Festival, where Blanchett won the Volpi Cup for Best Actress, and has since received critical acclaim for the lead performance, Field’s direction and Hoffmeister’s cinematography. Indeed, Hoffmeister won the prestigious Golden Frog at the 2022 Camerimage Festival for his work on the film.

“I first met Todd in Berlin in July 2021,” says Hoffmeister. “Until that point we’d only spoken over the phone and he then sent me the script. I met him in Berlin and we started prep immediately. It was a very fluid process. He is a true auteur and it was his original screenplay. When you read a script by a writer/director, it’s a very strong voice.”

Discussing his initial conversations with Field about the look of Tár, Hoffmeister says, “I don’t really have a strong need to go immediately into conversation about the meaning of the script, because the meaning of the script is in essence voiced by the person who is going to direct it,” he says.“ Todd had amassed a really intimate knowledge about the world of classical music, which was very foreign to me. It was very detailed. There was also a form of detachment in the script that really struck me. The style of writing slowly revealed different layers of reality that I think make the film such a rich experience to watch.”

Field and Hoffmeister had to work quickly during the pre-production stages. “90% of the film was shot on-location,” recounts Hoffmeister. “We jumped in the car on day one and do a lot of scouting. It is like a puzzle before things come together. I would observe how Todd reacted emotionally to a particular place and how it resonated with my reception of the script. There was a lot of subconscious communication happening all of the time.

“Todd was adamant from the start that beautifying

the images would not be the right way. He had this phrase when we shot tests, where he would say that it looked like ‘a movie with a capital M, and that’s not what we are about to do.’

“Those expressions and comments really fell into place with that feeling of detachment when I read the script. Holding back was a very big theme. I have this saying, about not putting a hat on a hat when it comes to cinematography, because often times cinematographers, in our excitement, might want to add a comment by what we do with the camera. Tár was not the film to do any of that. It was all about standing back to observe and let those different levels of reality surface by themselves in the minds of the audience.”

looked at, we went back to the drawing board, refined the search and shot again.

“I tested practical things. For example, in the film we had what we called ‘The March of Tár’, as she always marches through the different stages and steps of her journey,” Hoffmeister explains. “At this early stage, Todd already knew specifically the beats per second as he was working on the score with Hildur Guðnadóttir. I found a long hallway in the production office, where I set-up tracks with the camera, trying out lenses and shooting at a certain speed, sync-ing ourselves to the beats per second, just to find out the right lens for that feeling – the closeness and intimacy, or whether it should be more observational, etc. During the second test, Todd came down to the office and looked at the footage, and that was the breeding ground for where we developed the shared vision of the film.”

Hoffmeister captured Tár using ARRI cameras. “There was a bit of Alexa 65, and we also shot large format Alexa LF and also regular Super 35mm, but we changed the formats quite a bit. We based ourselves on the Signature Primes, but we were actually chasing a look from a particular lens which Todd had used to shoot plates and other stuff in New York before he came over to Berlin, which he really liked. This proved to be really an obscure Zeiss lens. I watched that footage remotely and it really resonated with me.

Due to time constraints, Hoffmeister didn’t look at any creative references during prep. “We never even watched a film together,” he admits. “The time we had, plus the creative and practical challenges ahead of us, were so demanding that we just didn’t have time for that. Exchanging references is an easy way to find a common language, but because we were working hands-on from day one, our own truthful, genuine common language started to build.”

A crucial part of the process for Hoffmeister was testing cameras and lenses. “I would try to go to a space that already resonated with the film, maybe a location that we already had access to. Then I would shoot different camera and lens comparisons. Ideally, I would do this by myself. When I presented them to Todd, it opened the space of resonance, where I was actually showing him what I thought to this point I understood of his script and of the shared conversations we had had. Then you start making choices. If ‘Movie with a capital M’ was a reaction to a lens that we

“Of course, that lens was very old and would have never survived even the first week of shooting, because of the demands we had. So when we had narrowed down the choice of glass to the Signature Primes, we then went on quite an extensive journey to handtune those lenses to the look of that old Zeiss glass, with Christoph Hoffsten, the local lens technician at ARRI Berlin, who then built us hand-crafted versions.”

The film was shot over a period of 56 days. Discussing the jogging sequence in which Tár hears a scream from nearby woodland, Hoffmeister explains that they didn’t have long to capture the shot.

“We worked with camera operators, including the very talented Danny Bishop ACO, but that was one of the very few shots that I operated myself. First, we started on track and then we evolved to Steadicam and in the end, there is this long lens shot through the bushes. The light was fading away and I knew exactly what Todd wanted. So I grabbed the camera, went into the bushes and sat down and put it on my shoulder. It was very stressful sequence to shoot because we were losing the light so heavily, but it really has a different energy because of that.”

Discussing the impressive, ultra-long take of the

Tár was all about standing back to observe and let different levels of reality surface in the minds of the audience

The lighting was all about authenticity of space… it could never feel evident as film light

sequence set in the auditorium of The Juilliard School in New York, Hoffmeister notes, “One of the things Danny contributed was his experience from having shot All Quiet On The Western Front (DP James Friend BSC ASC) using Stabileye, a camera-moving device designed in Britain. It’s a stabilised head that can be hand-carried and it’s remarkably stable. Initially, Danny wanted to shoot that sequence with Stabileye, but there we couldn’t readily access one. So, we built our own rig with a more common gimbal head. Danny was crucial in terms of instructing the grips who had to carry it, as he has a lot of experience as a Steadicam operator and the physicality required in relation to carrying it. When we did the rehearsal day, he worked with the grips and taught them how to move their bodies whilst carrying this rig, without making steps too visible for example. There was a real technique to that and the result is remarkable.”

Hoffmeister’s gaffer was Florian Kronenberger. “We kind of went from extreme to extreme with the lighting. Tar’s apartment, where she lives, needed 360-degree source lighting, for night as well as day. Florian came up with amazing rigs to enable the production to pull that off without having to use cherry pickers which would have cost a fortune. On the other hand, when we shot at The Julliard, he came up with the idea of putting IKEA China Balls onto the existing LED fixtures. He’s very capable as a gaffer to go from full-on, to almost no impact at all. He understands that very well and was instrumental in helping me achieve this look.”

In terms of Hoffmeister’s approach to lighting, he explains, “It is all about authenticity of space. The light could never feel evident as film light. Obviously, all lighting is film lighting, but it was crucial to find the absolute sweet spot where it became an immersive experience, without any form of artificiality. Todd had real musicians from the orchestra acting opposite Cate Blanchett, and that decision informed my approach to the lighting. When you work with non-professionals, you have to give them space, a space they feel safe in that you have created for them, and I thought there were some amazing performances from them.”

Hoffmeister worked with on-set DIT Lorenzo Zama. “I have worked with Lorenzo now for the last three years,” says Hoffmeister. “We live-grade on-set and actually skip rushes grading as a step. I try as much as possible to light to print. Lorenzo will match the shots live while we are shooting.

“On - we worked with ARRI Media in Berlin. During

testing we rediscovered this old digital print emulsion from the days when they first developed the Alexa camera. They would do these side-by-side tests to prove the point that you could capture digitally and film-out onto celluloid print for distribution and to give the grader an idea of how it would look when it got filmed out through the ARRILASER. There is a whole tradition of grading, of analogue printing, a whole way of thinking that was put into these tests, and which led to the introduction of the DI (digital intermediate). That knowledge was something that we tried to access. The film was graded by Tim Masick of Company3, who has been a collaborator with Todd for over 15 years. We talked to him about this idea and he really embraced it.

We graded the film around what we referred to as the ‘ARRI Digital Print Emulsion, and Tim did a fantastic job.”

“When you work with Cate Blanchett,” Hoffmeister concludes, “it’s almost taken for granted that it’s going to be glorious, because she is just as good as her reputation and is a fantastic actress. She is a filmmaker in her own craft, she knows about the technicalities and acknowledges the necessities of those technicalities. She would go again, or repeat things if it didn’t work out technically. I feel really privileged having had the opportunity contribute to this film, and having had a chance to work with Todd and Cate as well as my amazing crew.”

Images:

Tár was all about standing back to observe and let different levels of reality surface in the minds of the audience

BEAST OF BURDEN

By Darek Kuźma

Polish cinematographer Michał Dymek PSC shares his thoughts on shooting EO, Jerzy Skolimowski’s madly-ambitious, Cannesawarded donkey-driven drama, and Poland’s official for Best International Feature at the 2023 Oscars. It’s a movie that will live with you, long after you have seen it.

We reckoned that 4:3 is slightly overused these days, so we shot the entire film in 3:2 still photography ratio

Images: © Skopia Film. BTS photo by Aneta Gębska/Filip Gębski.

I love working instinctively and operating on-the-fly

Eo is a donkey, named after the ‘eee-ooo’ sound donkeys make, whom we accompany on a taxing journey, which the eponymous beast of burden is forced to go on after the circus he was working for gets repossessed by a bailiff. Transported in various vehicles, regularly captured and liberated, bought and sold, by people with different agendas, as well as being beaten by football hooligans, Eo bears silent witness to his owners’ internal and external struggles and their corrupted humanity. There is not much of a plot to Skolimowski’s film, EO is rather a series of episodes that are connected through an ambiguous donkey upon whom everyone, including you the viewer, projects their attitudes, expectations, fears, personalities and worldviews.

An impressive experiment from the director with over half a century worth of bold endeavours, EO was obviously not an easy project to make, especially during the onset of the Covid pandemic. As the shooting was pushed back several times, the original cinematographer, Michał Englert PSC, had to pull out, suggesting Michał Dymek PSC as his successor.

“It was surreal. There I was, sitting in front of one of the most daring directors, discussing a donkey film which was – as Jerzy often repeated – all about the visual side of

things,” marvels Dymek. “It took us a while to get in tune with each other, but we were both very clear we didn’t want it to be safe, and that we had to do everything in our power to make it alive, dynamic and unpredictable.”

Though EO is in many ways a tribute to Robert Bresson’s revered Au Hasard Balthazar (1966, DP Ghislain Cloquet), what differs Skolimowski’s film from that B&A classic is precisely how it is presented.

“It combines realistic scenes with music video shots, abstract poetic framing with naturalistic light, offbeat donkey POVs with heavily stylised sequences,” shares Dymek. “I mostly shot handheld. As a camera operator I believe it’s the best tool to convey emotions via images, but we also had Steadicam, dollies, drones, gimbals, cranes, tracks, or quads. Even a sort of DIY remote control car made from aluminium pipes that helped us to enhance the dynamic of a football match scene. We mounted the camera on a donkey, a car, a shredder. It all creates this beautiful energy that powers the film.”

This approach was dictated both by their aspirations and the fact that working with animals on a set is never easy.

“The donkey quickly verified a lot of our ideas and assumptions about how we should, or could, shoot it. It was a huge lesson of humility,” he explains. “Nothing was certain. There were times our lead donkey wasn’t even up for walking from A-to-B. Luckily, we had a few tricks up our sleeves to encourage him to cooperate. We had a female donkey whose scent was often enough to bring him to where we wanted. If this didn’t work, there were carrots, apples or snacks he liked. As a last resort, his trainer had a special leash that had to be erased in post. Still, there was a line we didn’t want

to cross, and oftentimes we couldn’t do anything but wait.”

Naturally, the filmmakers went out of their way to make EO animal-friendly, working with six donkeys throughout the production period that lasted 40 shooting days, stretching from March 2021 to March 2022.

“Eo’s journey spans different seasons and even though we couldn’t shoot chronologically and had to shoot autumn in spring, we wanted to capture the nature across several months. There’s no way we’d strain donkeys that much,” says Dymek. “Still, there were times when we had them physically on-set, yet they didn’t respond to what we wanted. We then shot Eo’s POVs, like in a scene in which he escapes from a farm enclosure he is being kept in.” They wrapped in Poland in December, yet the Italian part was pushed back a couple of months.

Anticipating some of the challenges, Dymek decided to put his trust in ARRI Alexa Mini LF equipped with Canon K35 Lens kit. “I wanted to utilise a Large Format sensor,

but also to be flexible with where and when I could go with the camera. I love working instinctively and operating on-the-fly. Oftentimes we stripped the Mini LF to its barebones version, which enabled me to get closer to the animals without alarming them,” he reveals.

“Matched with K35s, which are rehoused, full frame stills lenses that have an interesting little blur on the edges of the frame, it provided us with parameters that drew the images closer to what a donkey perspective might look like. The film anthropomorphises Eo to an extent, but the truth is, we’ve no idea how a donkey perceives the world. He just is, and he lets each viewer fill in the blanks.”

The protagonist also inspired the film’s aspect ratio.

“Michał Englert planned to shoot in 2.39:1 but during camera tests I realised that donkey proportions, especially their heads, would lend beautifully to 4:3 format. I proposed this to Jerzy, who not only liked the idea but pushed it even further. We reckoned that 4:3 is slightly overused these days, so we shot EO entirely in 3:2 stills photography ratio, with most of POVs shot 90% on 35mm lens.”

The remaining 10% were shot using Leica Elmarit-R 19mm and Leica Macro-Elmarit-R 60mm lenses, plus a Panavision Primo Zoom 135-420mm, which supported Dymek’s efforts to make the images an extension of Eo. However, the Italian part was shot on ARRI Signature Primes with Signature Zoom lenses as they were not able to find a K35 kit in Italy and could not afford transporting their Polish one. Dymek chuckles that lighting was akin to every other aspect of the project: he had to be ready and prepared to get creative.

“It was an art of adapting to what the day gave us. Oftentimes we had no space to hide lamps and had to use natural light. Then there were scenes, like the one in a dark forest, when, together

with my brilliant gaffer Przemek Sosnowski, we lit approximately 100sq/m with three 18Ks. Some intimate scenes were an exercise in restraint, but there were also big night exteriors with hours of pre-light!” Still, the general idea was to light spaces, not characters or situations. “I had a basic set of ARRI SkyPanels and Astera Titan Tubes along with 9Ks and 4Ks, but because we had scenes in a circus tent or other specific interiors, I also used quite a lot of incandescent stage lights as well as LED Moving Heads.”

Dymek admits that Skolimowski’s risk-taking attitude emboldened him to experiment with colours. “Jerzy imagined EO as an impressionistic film and, whenever he could, he followed his director’s hunch, based on decades of experience. If you had a good idea on how to vamp-up the visuals, he was more than up for it,” offers Dymek.

“There’s this sequence when Eo escapes from an onotherapy farm at night and reaches a hilltop at sunrise. We shot a beautiful reddish sunrise, but when I worked on it with my long-term colourist, Wiktor Sasim, we just weren’t happy with the colours. Suddenly, it crossed my mind to erase all channels except red. We liked this bloody red result enough to show it to Jerzy. He loved it and asked to spill more red to other scenes!”

Needless to say, EO’s look evolved in post. And then there was the fact they wrapped the Italian part in March and had to rush to meet the Cannes Film Festival entry deadline.

“The DI grade was probably the most difficult aspect of the project. Wiktor and I were working on the grade whilst the editor, Agnieszka Glińska, was still putting the final touches to a number of scenes,” claims Dymek.

“We had to match some interior and exterior shots in terms of light and colours of the season they’re set in. Some sequences demanded a lot of work, like the one on a football field, which we shot during a day with the weather conditions changing at least four or five times, while others required fine-tuning of various donkeys so they look the same throughout the film.”

Though Dymek admits the stress of this situation took a toll on him, he is very proud of EO’s visual eclecticism.

“Sure, it’s often outright bizarre but every decision we made is imbued with what we wanted the film to be about. For me, the greatest lesson of this project is that we were able to make the story work through images despite all the compromises we had to endure. Pure film magic if you ask me.”

What is EO, then? A visually eccentric donkeydriven drama reflecting humanity in all its ugly glory? A noble attempt to make people aware these beasts of burden are more than just free labour or food? A celebration of one animal’s impenetrable nature? It is each of those and all of those, and whatever each and every viewer is ready to project onto it.

MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH

By Ron Prince

Death, and how to avoid thinking about it in an uncertain world, is a central theme of director Noah Baumbach’s playfullyabsurd, existential satire White Noise – whether that distraction comes through idol worship, popping pills or simply going shopping at a huge supermarket.

The film was adapted by Baumbach from author Don DeLillo’s 1985 cult novel of the same name, a tome that was considered unfilmable for decades, and marks the first time he has directed an adaptation rather than an original story of his own. Laid out in a three-act structure – part domestic/campus drama, part action/adventure/ disaster movie, part noir horror – and frequently featuring whimsical cross-dialogue between characters, the script was brought to the screen with considerable panache by British DP Lol Crawley BSC, now based in Los Angeles, using Kodak 35mm filmstocks.

Set during the 1980s, in the fictional midwestern university town of Blacksmith, the action follows Jack Gladney (Adam Driver), a professor at the College-OnThe-Hill and a pioneer in the field of Hitler studies. Jack has been married multiple times, and has a brood of children from those different unions, including a two-year old with his current spouse, Babette (Greta Gerwig). Jack and Babette worry about the inevitability of death, and frequently wonder who will be the first to shuffle off

this mortal coil, while Jack endures disturbing nightmares.

One day a calamitous train crash on the outskirts of the town unleashes an ‘Airborne Toxic Event,’ of poisonous black smoke, and the family are forced to confront their own mortalities amid the chaos of station-wagons on the rainy freeway during a mass evacuation. When Jack discovers Babette has been cheating on him with a man named ‘Mr. Gray’, in order to gain access to Dylar, an experimental drug designed to treat the terror of death, he grabs a gun and tracks down the peddler in a dingy motel room.

The $100million production had its world premiere at the 2022 Venice Film Festival, followed by a limited theatrical release in cinemas, before streaming on

enterprising and prismatic cinematography.

Filming took place over 60 shooting days, between June and November 2021, at a variety of rural and urban locations around Cleveland, Ohio. The catastrophic rail crash was filmed on-location in Georgia, by the second unit crew over a two-week period.

“I love shooting on celluloid, and have been fortunate that the increasingly-hard won decision to shoot on film has often been made by the director and producers before I come on-board, and this was the case with White Noise,” says Crawley, whose previous celluloid credits include Ballast (2008), Childhood Of A Leader (2015). Vox Lux (2018) and Devil All The Time (2020).

“I’ve been a fan of Noah’s work for many years, and was delighted to become acquainted with him via editor Matt Hannam, who also cut Vox Lux, and producer David Heyman, with whom I worked on The Secret Garden (2020).

“The original novel encompasses different styles and genres, and Noah felt it was important to capture those essences in this production. We shared the aesthetic idea that this film could reference movies from the 1970s and ‘80s, including the sense of them having been originated on film with Anamorphic lenses. My photography in the past has been very naturalistic, so it was fun to consider bold choices, to explore a sense of the surreal with stylised visuals and lighting to underpin the absurdity of the story.”

Crawley continues, “It’s fair to say that the way in which we tethered the visuals around Jack and his interactions in the first act, was a nod to filmmakers such as Woody Allen, whose films have a lot of interior scenes with lots of dialogue, and also to Robert Altman’s technique of using a highly-mobile camera to shoot overlapping dialogue from multiple actors, all for a naturalistic and dynamic experience for the viewer.

Netflix. It has enjoyed positive reviews for Baumbach’s direction, central performances, and Crawley’s

“But, this was also a highly-technically and visuallyambitious film, and we were referencing big Hollywood entertainment, like Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters Of The Third Kind (1977, DP Vilmos Zsigmond ASC

This was a highlytechnically and visuallyambitious film

HSC), in the way the camera sweeps and observes the toxic train crash and the mass evacuation of families in station-wagons in the rain the second act of the movie, as well as stylistic lighting choices for our night sequences that you will find in films such as Manhunter (1986, DP Dante Spinotti AIC ASC).

“Additionally, debating things with Noah, we had this idea for a noir aesthetic at the end of the movie, and we leant into references such as Paris, Texas (1984, DP Robby Müller), to create a heightened, slightly woozy look, containing strong, rich and contrasting colours, for the seedy motel scene.”

by Jess Gonchor, the set decoration and Ann Roth’s costumes, to conjure-up that time period without needing to push this further in the grade,” he says.

“The Cooke Anamorphics have a beautiful look. They don’t distort so much at the edges of frame as other Anamorphics, and that was another big appeal when it came to shooting on in tight spaces.”

Crawley’s go-to emulsions were Kodak Vision3 250D 5207 for day interiors/exteriors and Kodak Vision3 500T 5219 for low-light and night sequences. “I know both stocks very well – they match beautifully together, and proved great all-rounders for the variety of situations faced. I also knew both stocks would have enough grain in the picture to convey that this film was shot on film.”

The exposed negative was processed at FotoKem in Los Angeles, under the supervision of Mark Van Horne and dailies colourist Scott Cross, with rushes scanned to 4K for the DI by final colourist Peter Doyle.

Cleveland suburbs, Sam Nicholson and his team at LA-based Stargate Studios custom-built an LED wall, around 100ft long and 25ft tall, on to which footage of rural roadsides, captured using multi-camera arrays, was displayed as a background plate. The hero car, with the actors inside, was placed around 30 to 40ft from the LED wall, and remained static whilst other real cars in the picture, were pulled backwards and forwards on a silent electric pulley system.

“When we filmed theses sequences, with the background footage, our hero and picture cars, camera moves, lighting changes and rain, all choreographed together, the illusion looked perfect,” he says. “It also gave Noah the environment he wanted to direct the actors, and met the constraints of shooting with the younger members of the cast.”

In further pursuit of creative looks for White Noise, Crawley says he was inspired by two notable modern stills photographers: Gregory Crewdson, whose dramatic and cinematic images of homes and neighbourhoods in small-town America frequently involve disturbing and surreal events; and Todd Hido, whose long-exposure photographs of urban and suburban housing at night-time have an ethereal, ghostly aesthetic.

Crawley shot White Noise using ARRICAM LT and ARRIFLEX 235 35mm cameras, fitted with Cooke Anamorphic/i SF Lenses. For a dramatic widescreen experience, VistaVision cameras, shooting 35mm film in horizontal 8-perf format, were used to capture the train crash and the deadly chemical explosion. The camera package was provided by ARRI in New Jersey.

“In recreating an ‘80’s aesthetic, we felt there was enough saturated colour in the production design

“I worked very closely with the team at FotoKem during the shoot, and this collaboration was especially helpful on our night interior sequences,” Crawley reveals. “They would process and assess a roll with printer lights, and then call to give me advice about the overall exposure of a scene or how the skin tones were looking. This might include the suggestion that they push-process by half or a full stop to keep things looking their absolute best.”

Crawley says that of all the technical challenges the movie presented, the most difficult proved to be the sequence in which Jack evacuates his family in the station-wagon along the freeway at night. Crawley initially considered the classic approach of filming the vehicle and its occupants on a process trailer from a tracking camera car, but quickly realised this was not conducive to the proximity Baumbach prefers when interacting with the performers, and was restricted by the hours the younger actors were allowed to work.

The only way to do this was via what the DP calls “an optical illusion” on a soundstage. Working inside a cavernous, former warehouse/distribution centre in the

A further headscratcher came with Baumbach’s desire to film a 360-degree shot of the family in the car. The answer turned out to be a specialist hero car, driven using a remote steering system on top of the vehicle, with a hole in its roof enabling the camera and lens to be positioned vertically downwards, to which a 45-degree mirror was then attached so as to view the interior of the car. The camera was mounted on two sliders, allowing two axes of movement – side-to-side and up-and-down – and could revolve and be manoeuvered for the desired result. Lighting around the vehicle was adjusted to give the impression of movement.

“Shooting this movie on film was something that Noah had established with Netflix before I was attached to the project,” says Crawley. “Other than the 4K deliverable, I don’t recall any stipulations about such things as filmstocks, labs and processing. I felt very respected and that we had the mandate to shoot the movie the way we wanted using celluloid.

“It’s a tribute to Netflix that they support filmmakers, auteur storytellers, wanting to use celluloid as their format of choice, and I think it helps make for a distinctive and visually-engaging final product.”

Images: White Noise. Cr. Wilson Webb/Netflix Inc © 2022

It’s a tribute to Netflix that they support filmmakers wanting to use celluloid as their format of choice

When reminiscing about the most expansive and complex project she has worked on to date, namely Black Panther:WakandaForever, cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw ASC brings up one of the film’s most emotional sequences as an example of how the visuals she crafted for the film tracked with the poignant themes its director, Ryan Coogler, strategically wove into the story.

ADVENTUROUS ADAPTATION

By Michael Goldman

That scene takes place in the Wakanda Tribal Council room, when Queen Ramonda, played by Angela Bassett, dresses down and fires her subordinate, Okoye (Danai Gurira), for failing to complete a dangerous mission, as she tries to save her homeland from disaster in the wake of the loss of her son, the original Black Panther (the late Chadwick Boseman). Boseman’s death in real life and his character’s death in the story serve as the driving force for the movie’s creative aesthetic. During the scene, Ramonda emotes about the loss and sacrifice she has had to deal with as the kingdom’s matriarch.

“That is definitely my favourite scene that we shot,” Durald Arkapaw recalls. “In a movie like this, we had lots of insane sets, big action sequences and underwater work, but I really appreciated the character-driven dramatic work. What’s great about working with Ryan is that he’s able to infuse all of those types of filmmaking into one piece, and the movie still feels intimate and character driven.

“When we filmed that scene in the Tribal Council room, I remember watching Angela’s performance with my own two eyes, and felt it was groundbreaking. I almost felt like a spectator watching the movie. But the way we framed and lit the scene, going a bit moodier, really helped. We framed Okoye a little bit lower than usual on her close-up as a tear comes down her face. We used one of Ryan’s and my favourite lenses, a Panavision 35mm B-series Anamorphic. We ended-up doing a lot more of our close-up coverage with that wide lens, and Ryan really loved it.”

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is actually Durald Arkapaw’s second foray into the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) after her recent work on the Disney+ series, Loki, but visually and otherwise, it’s a far different creature. She was recommended to Coogler by Rachel Morrison ASC, who shot the first Black Panther (2018) film for Coogler, but had a schedule conflict this time around. According to

Durald Arkapaw, the tragic death of Chadwick Boseman in 2020 radically altered Coogler’s script and plan for making the movie, translating it into an homage to the acclaimed actor and the iconic character he portrayed, and also an illustration of the torch being passed as part of the film’s essence, including the visuals.

“When we first met, Ryan was very clear he wanted his audience to intimately feel a sense of grief and then rebirth and redemption,” she elaborates. “He also wanted the female characters, who largely carry the movie, to be highlighted, along with relationships between mothers and daughters. I’m a mother, and I have experienced loss and grief, so this was very personal to all of us, and we grounded the movie in those themes.”

Among other things that she brought to the project, Durald Arkapaw strengthened Coogler’s choice to shoot the movie in the Anamorphic format using the Sony Venice 6K camera system in full-frame, outfitted with Panavision expanded T-series Anamorphic lenses for a 2.39:1 extraction, and in some sequences, Panavision 1.3 Ultra Panatar lenses for a 1.90:1 extraction for the film’s IMAX deliverable, since particular scenes in the movie “cut in-and-out between aspect ratios,” as the cinematographer puts it. Those IMAX pieces included, among others, the opening scene in which an American cargo ship is raided by the Talakon underwater people commanded by the film’s antagonist, Namor (Tenoch Huerta); and

a climactic battle near the end of the film on a giant Wakandan military ship in the middle of the ocean.

“Ryan had never shot Anamorphic before, but he was open to it, which was not an easy decision considering you are changing the whole field-of-view from how the first movie was shot,” Durald Arkapaw adds. “The lenses we selected were modified and de-tuned by Dan Sasaki, Panavision’s VP of optical engineering, and they have so much character in them – they are very dreamy and have intricate aberrations. That helped tell the story Ryan was trying to tell, with grief sometimes feeling like a fog that comes over you.

“We had to give a lot of thought in prep to what sequences would be presented in IMAX format, and what lenses would be appropriate. What was nice about being able to use the 1.3 squeeze Anamorphic lenses is that we were able to keep that special Anamorphic texture throughout, so that when we went to IMAX, it didn’t bump too much. The aspect ratio jumps, but you still have similar lens quality and feeling to make it seem like it is of the same world, and that was really important.”

As far as lighting was concerned, Durald Arkapaw notes that she and her longtime gaffer Brian Bartolini “liked to use ARRI SkyPanels in soft boxes or space lights for overhead top soft light looks. It was important for us to create contrast and colour contrast in our scenes, even though we were shooting on very large sets. I am not a fan of broad and flat lighting. But when we wanted something punchier and harder, we had a really amazing rig that used CreamSource Vortex 8’s.

What is so nice about those units is you can pixel-map them. Our lighting control programmer, Scottie Barnes, handled that. He has worked on something like 14 Marvel movies and is amazing.”

“We also had our wonderful fixtures foreman, Phil Abeyta, make us Cine 5 Light Pads to use when we needed something soft, but more local for close-ups. Those panels would be 4x4ft or 2x4ft and we put diffusion on them, like Depron sheets or snow Diffusion. We top-lit the actors by hanging those light panels on a Matthews Menace Arm above the actor’s head.”

The movie also includes extensive underwater sequences since an underwater kingdom lies at the centre of the story.

Durald Arkapaw says those scenes were discussed in great detail during prep as a methodology was formed. A key goal for the underwater material was to paint “the same look” onto photography captured underwater, on a stage, and CG elements by immediately applying lens characteristics to raw CG renders to create what she calls “a much more photographic result.”

The production also shot every underwater scene twice, wet-for-wet, in a tank and then dry-for-wet on a stage.

“We lit the same set we had underwater on a stage based on the underwater footage, and then, later in post, a third test was added, and the visual effects’ team recreated the same shots again, feeding Weta Digital’s spectral water rendered with the turbidity and absorption parameters that we captured during the wet-for-wet shoot,” she elaborates.

“We filmed as much as possible underwater, but dialogue scenes had to be captured traditionally on a sound stage. We had 23 underwater unit days, with main unit shooting about five of those underwater days. It

was a huge undertaking.”

She adds that her key grip, Guy Micheletti, used a 73ft Chapman Hydroscope and a 45ft Scorpio telescoping crane with an amphibious underwater head on it for certain underwater work, and to film action on huge exterior sets that were flooded as Talakon forces attempt to invade Wakanda. “Guy was fantastic in helping to execute some of our pivotal exterior action water sequences with the 73-ft Hydroscope,” she adds.

“We had a lot of sets where we would shoot above ground and then built tanks on them to go from dry land into water,” Durald Arkapaw continues. “One of our biggest exterior tanks was built on one of our biggest sets, and as the crane booms down, it telescopes into the water, giving us really great transitions.”

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever contains many other huge set pieces along the way that Durald Arkapaw says helped evolve her understanding of how best a cinematographer can collaborate with other departments, such as VFX. The movie features, for example, a huge car and helicopter chase scene over a bridge in Boston as Wakandan operatives attempt to get away from Talakon agents hot on their trail. Durald Arkapaw says the production both shot on the actual bridge location in Boston and re-created a 500-ft. portion of the bridge on a backlot in Atlanta, where much of the film was shot.

“That was a huge set-up for our rigging team,” she says. “We had asphalt and fixtures that are identical from the bridge on the backlot set. Production design did a great job spacing them to look exactly like the bridge. Everything around that was a greenscreen environment. And then, our second-unit VFX team did some array work on the actual bridge, where we used a Sony Venice

three-camera rig – designed for this show by Team5 Aerial Systems of Burbank – that allowed us to capture the Boston night exterior skyline. Those plates were then composited into the final image. With the lighting and the grade work done in post, by colourist Tom Poole of Company 3, who also designed the primary filmic show LUT used on the project, we were able to get high-speed shots of a tumbling car and shoot a key fight sequence. The combination of real photography and VFX work on that sequence was amazing.”

The need to be so collaborative with the other departments on the film – what Durald Arkapaw calls “The Panther Family” – made the long hours and gruelling challenge of making an epic film like Black Panther: Wakanda Forever more than worth it, she says.

“There were so many amazing people involved, talented craftspeople in so many areas, plus we had an amazing leader in Ryan,” she says. “You spend a lot of time with those people – I think we shot around 130 days of principal photography – so, you want to feel like you are doing it for the greater good, creating something people will appreciate. Working with VFX and production design was therefore a great experience for me, a real collaboration to make sure everyone’s separate work joined together to sing. I mean, it really takes a village to make these kinds of movies, and that’s no joke.”

Images: Marvel Studios’ Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. © 2022 Marvel. (BTS shot of Autum Durald from Loki)

We had lots of insane sets, big action sequences and underwater work… but the movie still feels intimate and character driven

FRAME OF MIND

Harnessing Kodak 16mm film to capture the creepy atmosphere at a hotel, where things go bump in the night, The Eternal Daughter, written, produced and directed by British filmmaker Joanna Hogg, explores themes about mother and daughter relationships, the preservation of memories and the personal reconciliation of parental loss. Hogg called on the talents of cinematographer Ed Rutherford, who had previously shot Archipelago (2010) and Exhibition (2013) for her, to bring the supernatural story to the big screen.

Filmed in secret, during the Covid-19 pandemic, the film opens with Julie, a filmmaker, and Rosalind, her recently-widowed mother, riding together in the back of a taxi cab to a secluded hotel, deep in the foggy countryside. Bedecked with Gothic spires and chiselled gargoyles, the place was once a private hall, owned by Rosalind’s aunt, and is where Rosalind lived for a while during her youth, including time spent as an evacuee during The Blitz. Julia is trying to write a film about Rosalind, and is taking her off for a birthday-weekend treat, hoping that being with her elderly parent in familiar surroundings will help her learn a little more about her mother’s past.

Once inside the hotel, where they seem to be the only guests, Julie surreptitiously records their conversations at dinner and before bedtime. Rosalind’s recounts various reminiscences – fond recollections of how things used to be, as well as some unpleasant reminders of long-buried regrets, including a miscarriage.

Unsettled by what she hears, Julie is equally unnerved by the hotel itself – the grounds are persistently foggy, windows rattle in wind, the place shudders and groans of its own accord, and Rosalind’s dog, Louie, takes to whining and scratching at the bedroom door. It sometimes sounds as though children are running along the shadowy corridors, and a woman might be weeping somewhere nearby. Julie finds she can neither write her script nor sleep in a place that holds positive and negative emotions for her mother, and begins to question herself and her motives.

Produced through A24, BBC Films and Element Pictures, with Martin Scorsese an executive producer,

the film premiered at the 2022 Venice and London film festivals. Critics applauded Hogg’s storytelling and the performance of Tilda Swinton in the dual roles of both Julie and Rosalind. Apart from one scene in which mother and daughter appear on-screen together, the pair are never in the same shot, and the technique of cutting back-and-forth between shot/ reverse during their conversations serves to heighten the sense of the paranormal.

The Eternal Daughter was filmed at Soughton Hall, a Grade II listed country house hotel in Sychdyn, Flintshire, Wales, where principal photography took place over the course of 35 shooting days during November and December 2020.

“Immediately in prep, Joanna insisted that I visit the location she had found, but didn’t want to share anything about it in advance, not even a photograph,” Rutherford reveals. “She wanted me to experience it without prior knowledge. However, she did encourage me to read Rudyard Kipling’s tragic poem ‘The Children’, which speaks for parents bereaved by war, and his griefstricken short story ‘They’, which contains the echoes of ghostly voices in a fantastic house, to put me into certain a frame-of-mind.”

Hogg also presented Rutherford with what he describes as, “a tone poem – a statement to set the scene containing broad outlines of the stage direction. Joanna has a unique and unconventional screenwriting process, in that there isn’t a traditional script with dialogue per se, rather it’s a statement of intent. I recall her document for Archipelago being nine pages, and Exhibition was something like 14. But this one was just three pages.”

Explaining Hogg’s approach to filmmaking in more detail, Rutherford says, “Joanna’s process is to workshop the film in chronological order, variously with the actors and the camera team. The spoken words and the rhythm of those words get refined, as do the ideas about framing the picture. That workshopping process is an ongoing thing throughout the production cycle. You might think that this approach would have ramifications to the schedule, but Joanna is incredibly well-organised. She always allows time to rethink and revisit scenes if they are not quite singing when the film starts rolling through the camera.”

By Ron Prince

He adds, “Whilst it’s an unusual approach to making a film, the key thing for me is the atmosphere it creates around the cast and crew. Joanna is a hugelyencouraging presence. She listens, makes people feel comfortable, and her process gets everyone in-tune about intention of a scene and the emotional beats. That’s always a great place to be, and thrilling to be a part of.”

Whilst shooting on film was a given from the start, the choice of whether to capture on 35mm or S16mm was still to be decided. Rutherford shot comparative hair and make-up tests with Swinton on both formats, and took counsel from Sam Clark, Kodak UK’s director of sales, colourist Jodie Davidson at Technicolor, and the

scanning/dailies team at Digital Orchard, to consider the technical workflow and the quality of the final results.

“My chief concern during prep was about quality control – making sure that the dailies would retain the same look throughout the entire production pipeline, from set to post, and to the screen,” Rutherford explains.

“Employing LUTs that I created with Jodie, we reviewed the 2K and 4K scans of the S16mm and 35mm tests, and I have to say the 4K 16-bit DPX scans of the S16mm footage looked fantastic. You could feel the grain structure in the filmed image, and the higherresolution was such that I knew I would be able to dig into shadow details in the lower-light scenes if need-be during the final grade. The nature of the arrangement between the different parties involved, meant it was both logistically and financially-viable to get all of the rushes scanned to 4K.

“Also, it was agreed early-on to adopt ACES (Academy Color Encoding System) in the post production workflow. The colour conformity it provides between different departments assured there would always be clarity when it came to aesthetic discussions throughout the process. As we were going to be working in North Wales, all of this gave me a great deal of confidence and reassurance during the shoot.”

With the workflow in place, Rutherford went with ARRIFLEX 416 16mm cameras and rehoused Zeiss 16mm Superspeed lenses for the shoot, provided by Panavision, London.

“The Superspeeds are sharp, with great contrast, but are slightly softer than the Ultra Prime alternatives and the colours they render are a bit cooler too. AT T1.3, they are high speed, which was a big consideration with so much of the film playing at night.”

Tilda was incredibly committed to both of her characters and the task in-hand to make it all happen

Rutherford went with Kodak S16mm Tungsten stocks for the mainstay of the shoot – Kodak Vision3 500T 7219 for night and low-light scenes, and Kodak Vision3 200T 7213 for the interior/exterior days. He also used Kodak Vision3 50D 7203 for the film’s denouement.

“The 500T and 200T work very well together in terms of the consistency of grain, colour and contrast in the image,” says Rutherford. “On a practical level, they are also incredibly versatile. We were shooting during the pandemic, and if push came to shove on stock levels, due to any transport delivery issues to our remote location, I knew I could throw them both ways exposurewise and that we could continue shooting.

“For the ending of the film, I wanted a distinct change in colour and luminosity, and experimented with pushing the 200T and even tested Kodak Ektachrome. Whilst these certainly delivered different and interesting looks, they didn’t feel quite right for the context, so I ended-up

going with the 50D 7203 as that gave us a strong and most appropriate aesthetic motif for that scene.”

Rutherford says Hogg’s decision to depict Julie and Rosalind separately was a masterstroke in creating a sense of otherworldliness, and he enjoyed the process that entailed on-set.

“Tilda was incredibly committed to both of her characters and the task in-hand to make it all happen,” Rutherford recounts. “This typically involved her performing Julie’s part in a scene during the morning, getting fitted with prosthetics and made-up as Rosalind during lunch, and then shooting Rosalind’s part in the afternoon.

“We recorded the morning takes using a videotap on the film camera, and over lunch Joanna worked with the script supervisor, Sara Doughty, to review, identify and replay the hero takes she wanted Tilda to respond to as Rosalind. For me this process was all about making sure the eyelines were correct, whilst also keeping

consistency to the light, between performances that might be several hours apart.

“Although we investigated and budgeted for using artist doubles, modern VFX trickery and CGI face replacement to put both of our characters in-shot simultaneously, Joanna’s brave decision to depict Julie and Rosalind separately created a visual language that really played to the sense of things being off-kilter.”

In conclusion, Rutherford confides, “I was nervous about seeing the film when it was projected at the Royal Festival Hall during the London Film Festival. But I needn’t have worried. It held up incredibly-well visually, and proved to be a fantastic movie-going experience. It was a lovely feeling to know that the looks and qualities of the imagery we had captured on S16mm film at our remote location in Wales had tracked all the way through the workflow and on to the big screen. That was impressive!”

Images: Photos by Sandro Kopp. Courtesy of A24. Copyright: © Eternal Daughter Productions Limited/ British Broadcasting Corporation.

It was lovely to know the looks and qualities of the S16mm imagery tracked all the way through the workflow and on to the big screen

SHINING A LIGHT ON...

By David Wood

Selected Filmography

(as gaffer unless otherwise stated)

The Bastard (2023)

Tár (2022)

Corsage (2022)

The Conference (2022)

The Black Square (2021)

Our Wonderful Years (2020) (TV mini series)

Die Känguru-Chroniken (2020)

My Zoe (2019)

Rate Your Date (2019)

The Aftermath (2019)

Dau (2019)

Ever After (2018)

Never Look Away (2018)

Forwards Ever! (2017)

Point Break (2015) (rigging gaffer)

Remainder (2015)

Hitman: Agent 47 (2015) (gaffer 2nd unit - reshoot)

A Most Wanted Man (2014)

Early years:

In 1998, I became a trainee on the lighting crew of a student movie. The gaffer, Timm Brückner, and I got along quite well, so he offered me a job as trainee on his next film. I ended up working with and learning from him for ten years, as an electrician and then best boy. He pushed me to start gaffing, which I did in 2008.

Working with DPs:

Two factors are most important to decide whether to work on a movie or not. The script and, even more important, the DP. I love to work with DPs on a collaborative level. In a perfect world you understand each other after a while without much talking.

In pre-production we have many conversations about what the look of the movie is meant to be. We talk about films we like and lighting styles. We go on recces and mix all the ideas together. It’s that combination of creativity and logistics which I love, plus fitting it all into the available budget. Through my career I found it the greatest gift to learn from all the DPs I was allowed to co-operate with, as a gaffer but also before, being an electrician and best boy.

Age// Born// School// Lives in//

48 Munich, Germany

Garching, near Munich

Flensburg, Northern Germany

Lighting in Germany:

In Germany, there are fewer big studio productions. Most of our projects take place on-location. So a big part of what I do is to find solutions to lighting problems that stand between the DP’s vision and the existing situation there. But if it comes to a studio shoot, facilities, expertise, manpower and equipment don’t differ from anywhere else.

Key crew:

The most important collaborator in my crew is my best boy Sascha Görlich. He’s my backbone and has been my logistic mastermind for the last 15 years.

Appointing a crew can be quite political. If the movie is funded from different places you might have to spend time shooting there and source a crew locally. I have to be flexible and work with different people all over. But I see this as an opportunity for meeting new sparks and getting different input.

My main, regular crew from Berlin would always be my first choice, but even shooting in Berlin, I have to vary things since the amount of work has grown massively in last few years and I don’t work 12 months a year.

In terms of controlling my lamps, I mostly do everything myself on the iPad using Blackout, but I do use a desk op for studio shoots. The bigger the movie the more I need a dimmer operator, but on a medium budget film with a lighting crew of five I tend not have one… yet!

Lighting for 35mm film on Corsage:

Corsage was shot by DP Judith Kaufmann BVK on 35mm film which was fantastic. After working with digital for so many years, we did extensive tests to relearn how to deal with filmstock. Surprisingly it only took a couple of days to adapt one’s eyes and mind.

Although they didn’t have electricity in the 1880s, when Corsage is set, our director Marie Kreutzer decided to use electrified practicals in-shot. On a creative level, that actually came in handy, because we were not forced to use only candles or fire, besides daylight as a source. We decided to extend that light with modern, fully colour-controllable LEDs to perfectly match them. That was of big value, since shooting on film requires a very precise colour handling.

Another advantage of the latest LED technology is the possibility not only of adapting the lights in terms of colour, but also creating movement in shot, mimicking candle light or fire. You can do this much more easily and precisely than with Tungsten.

LED lighting and speed:

Every gaffer would argue that LED has completely changed film lighting over the last few years with all the new fixtures you can control wirelessly. It’s a gamechanger to be able to control colour and output with just the stroke of a finger. Some of these lights

include their own power sources, which makes the whole process even faster.

On a recent film we had 42 days in three different countries to do 210 scenes and we shot an average of 25 set-ups a day. With the look we wanted to achieve, I would say that would have been impossible with the equipment we had ten years ago.

top light like that wasn’t what we wanted. So we had to shape the light by using white diffusion wrapped around, and Black Molton Skirts to create contrast for the whole room. In addition, we rigged a butterfly with attached ROD lights for the conductor’s stand to soften the light even further and create a lower source to light the eyes of our main actress, Cate Blanchett.

Another important location was a huge flat in Berlin. We added HMIs on cherry pickers outside, lighting the day/interior apartment scenes using various 20x20 diffusion to create different atmospheres for different shots. For the night shoots, we surrounded the place from outside with ROD Lights for the feel of city/ night light and added various smaller LED sources in the interior. We also fell back on using the good oldfashioned 100W Tungsten China Balloon, because it suited our actors and the situation perfectly.

Along with fixtures by Creamsource, LiteGear and Astera, an important tool I used a lot on Tár was the ARRI Orbiter. The possibility to use it like a SkyPanel through, or bounced-off fabric, or bouncing it into certain areas of ceilings to create a basic light level, especially in rooms with darker or papered walls, was ideal.

International Cinema Lighting Society

motivation, warmth and humour, shooting Tár would not have been the same.”

Cinematographer Judith Kaufmann

BVK says:

“One thing is Florian’s huge experience. He can co-ordinate very well and is always present on-set. But, most of all, I appreciate his enthusiasm and his search to find a solution for every challenge. And he always encourages me as the DP to be courageous.”

Cinematographer Caleb Deschanel ASC says:

“When we first talked about Never Look Away, I got the distinct feeling we would get along, that Florian had a deep understanding of the story, could visualise ideas, turn them into images, and he had the determination to pull it off.

Since our working hours are more and more limited, the development of these new lamps and techniques help us to create beautiful shots in a very short time. But the greatest advantage of all for me is the possibility to play with the lights once set up, watching a monitor and not having to communicate with anybody except my DP. Now it is really like painting with light.

Lighting on Tár:

I loved lighting the different sets of this film for DP Florian Hoffmeister BSC. We shot eight days at the Dresden Philharmonic Orchestra in its newly-renovated building where we were not able to install a lot of lights as the place was very sensitive about rigging.

There was existing overhead lighting over the orchestra, mounted in acoustic elements, but hard

I’m a full member of the ICLS and I’ve found taking part is one of the greatest gifts. I’m a constant visitor to its server because of the amazing level of sharing from experts in lighting around the world, who let you into the secrets of how they create and plan lighting for their projects.

The other great thing is the ability to get into contact quickly with all the big lighting manufacturers to answer technical questions – for me it’s a huge treasure chest.

Cinematographer Florian Hoffmeister BSC says:

“For the lighting concept of Tár authenticity of space was paramount. As we shot mostly on-location this required a high degree of ingenuity – from gluing China balls onto existing ceiling lights, to lighting an entire penthouse apartment for 360-degrees at night. Not only was Florian able to adapt to any given challenge, he also completely understood what we were trying to achieve. Without his creative support, fantastic

As a cinematographer you need someone who is not only excellent at the mechanics of lighting, but also who is in tune with you, who can develop a working shorthand, find solutions to problems, expand on good ideas and not be afraid to express their opinion. Florian proved himself in all those areas. We had a great time working together, and I would do it again anytime.”

Cinematographer Rasmus Videbæk says:

“Flo is a genuine creative companion. His creative ideas and great eye contribute hugely to painting the canvas. Like no one I have worked with before, he has fully embraced LED technology and is able to harness its full creative potential. Methodical and organised we were able to quickly get to the fun part on The Bastard – doing the little tweaks that really make a difference. We had great fun doing this movie together.”

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 which 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.

I have to be flexible and work with different people from all over

Opposite & this page: Florian on location and lighting set-ups on Tár; and pictured with Rasmus Videbaek on The Bastard.

SHOOTING GALLERY•STAY SAFE

During the well-attended event at Camerimage 2022 to raise money and awareness about the Mark Milsome Foundation (MMF), Andra Milsome gave a deeply-moving speech remembering her husband, camera operator Mark, whose life was cut short after a tragic accident on-set. She kindly allowed Cinematography World to reprint her words, in the hope that safety on-set remains a top-priority for everyone, everywhere…

“They broke the mould when they created Mark… you will not find one friend or colleague who will say any different.

Mark was a special man, he brought so much joy with him, he was an inspiration to so many.

He was my best friend and soul mate. He was an amazing husband and a wonderful father.

Not only was Mark immensely talented, humble and always made you smile with his infectious laugh, he was also one of the kindest, funniest and most generous-hearted souls.

The world is a poorer place without him and we are all at a loss.

Thank you all for coming tonight. What can I say…? Tomorrow will be five years since Mark was killed. He would be so honoured, humbled and truly touched to receive all this attention; something he forever shied away from!

Mark will never be able to show his full creative potential to the world. He started, but had his life cut-off in his prime by such an avoidable tragedy.

It’s vital that more accountability and better health and safety practices are put into place, and that these become not only standardised, but mandatory.

No more cost cutting! No more cutting corners! Every single person should be able to come home safely at the end of each working day.

Production needs to make sure that this is possible. No one should ever die for the sake of a shot.

A huge thank you to Mark Purvis, and everyone from Mission Digital here tonight, for all the support they’ve shown to me and our daughter, Alice.

Also, to all of you in the wider film and TV community, who have supported us in creating a legacy in his memory that is the MMF – Mark Milsome Foundation.

Mark… we all miss you.

Andra and Alice Milsome in Toruń.

Photo by Oona Menges.