Vission arri 7

12/08 ISSUE 7

VisionARRI

The Biannual International Magazine from the ARRI RENTAL & POSTPRODUCTION ENTERPRISES

QUANTUM OF SOLACE Director Marc Forster and DoP Roberto Schaefer ASC discuss shooting the 22nd Bond film

KYLIEX2008 Super 16 captures Kylie Minogue’s latest concert tour

The Countess ARRI Film & TV create effects for Julie Delpy’s historical murder movie

The International DoP Frank Griebe on shooting and grading Tom Tykwer’s conspiracy thriller

ARRIFLEX D-21 Production round-up and shooting in Mscope

ARRI SERVICES GROUP NETWORK ARRI SUBSIDIARIES

ARRI PARTNERS & ASSOCIATES

AUSTRALIA ARRI Australia, Sydney Cameras, Digital Stefan Sedlmeier T +61 2 9855 4300 ssedlmeier@arri.com.au

LUXEMBOURG ARRI Rental Luxembourg Cameras, Digital Steffen Ditter T +352 2670 1270 sditter@arri.de

AUSTRIA ARRI Rental Vienna Cameras, Digital Gerhard Giesser T +43 664 120 7257 rental@arri.at

SWITZERLAND Schwarz Film AG, Ostermundigen, Zürich Film Lab, Digital Intermediate Philipp Tschäppät T +41 31 938 11 50 philipp@schwarzfilm.ch

CZECH REPUBLIC UNITED KINGDOM ARRI Rental Prague Cameras, Digital, Lighting, Grip ARRI Lighting Rental, London Lighting Robert Keil T +42 025 101 3575 Tommy Moran rkeil@arri.de T +44 1895 457 200 tmoran@arrirental.com GERMANY ARRI Focus, London ARRI Rental Berlin Cameras, Digital, Lighting, Grip Short term lighting hire for commercials & promos Ute Baron Martin Maund, George Martin Christoph Hoffsten T +44 1895 810 000 T +49 30 346 800 0 martin@arrifocus.com ubaron@arri.de george@arrifocus.com choffsten@arri.de ARRI Rental Cologne Cameras, Digital Stefan Martini T +49 221 170 6724 smartini@arri.de

ARRI Media, London Cameras, Digital, Grip Philip Cooper T +44 1895 457 100 pcooper@arrimedia.com

ARRI Crew, London ARRI Rental Munich Cameras, Digital, Lighting, Grip Diary Service Kate Collier Thomas Loher T +44 1895 457 180 T +49 89 3809 1440 arricrew@arrimedia.com tloher@arri.de USA ARRI Film & TV Services, Munich ARRI CSC, New York Film Lab, Digital Intermediate Cameras, Digital, Lighting, Grip Visual Effects, Sound, Studio, Cinema Simon Broad, Hardwrick Johnson International Sales T +1 212 757 0906 Angela Reedwisch sbroad@arricsc.com T +49 89 3809 1574 hjohnson@arricsc.com areedwisch@arri.de ARRI CSC, Florida National Sales Cameras, Digital, Lighting, Grip Walter Brus Ed Stamm T +49 89 3809 1772 T +1 954 322 4545 wbrus@arri.de estamm@arricsc.com ARRI Schwarzfilm Berlin GmbH Illumination Dynamics, LA Film Lab, Digital Intermediate Lighting, Grip Angela Reedwisch Carly Barber, Maria Carpenter T +49 30 408 17 8534 T +1 818 686 6400 areedwisch@arri.de carly@illuminationdynamics.com maria@illuminationdynamics.com Schwarz Film GmbH Ludwigsburg Illumination Dynamics, Film Lab, Digital Intermediate North Carolina, Christine Wagner, Lighting, Grip Philipp Tschäppät Jeff Pentek T +49 7141 125 590 T +1 704 679 9400 christine@schwarzfilm.de jeff@illuminationdynamics.com philipp@schwarzfilm.ch

AUSTRALIA Cameraquip, Melbourne, Brisbane Cameras Malcolm Richards T +61 3 9699 3922 T +61 7 3844 9577 rentals@cameraquip.com.au CYPRUS Seahorse Films, Nicosia, Paphos Cameras, Digital, Lighting, Grip, Studio Andros Achilleos T +357 9967 5013 andros@seahorsefilms.com GERMANY Maddel’s Cameras GmbH, Hamburg Cameras, Grip Matthias Neumann T +49 40 66 86 390 info@maddels.com HUNGARY VisionTeam, Budapest Cameras, Lighting, Grip Gabor Rajna T +36 1 433 3911 info@visionteam.hu ICELAND Pegasus Pictures, Reykjavik Cameras, Lighting, Grip Snorri Thorisson T +354 414 2000 snorri@pegasus.is IRELAND The Production Depot, Co Wicklow Cameras, Lighting, Grip John Leahy, Dave Leahy T +353 1 276 4840 john@production-depot.com dave@production-depot.com JAPAN NAC Image Technology Inc. Tokyo Cameras, Digital Tomofumi Masuda Hiromi Shindome T +81 3 5211 7960 masuda@camnac.co.jp NEW ZEALAND Camera Tech, Wellington Cameras Peter Fleming T +64 4562 8814 cameratech@xtra.co.nz Xytech Technologies, Auckland Lighting Stephen Pryor T +64 9 377 99 85 stephenp@xytech.co.nz

ROMANIA Panalight Studio, Bucharest Cameras, Lighting, Grip Diana Apostol T +40 727 358 304 office@panalight.ro RUSSIA ACT Film Facilities Agency, St. Petersburg Cameras, Lighting, Grip Sergei Astakhov T +7 812 710 2080 act@actfilm.ru SCANDINAVIA BLIXT Camera Rental, Denmark, Norway & Sweden Cameras, Digital Björn Blixt T +45 70 20 59 50 blixt@blixt.dk SOUTH AFRICA Media Film Service, Cape Town, Johannesburg, Durban, Namibia Cameras, Digital, Lighting, Grip, Studio Jannie Van Wyk T +27 21 511 3300 jannie@mediafilmservice.com SPAIN Camara Rental Madrid, Barcelona, Malaga Cameras, Grip Andres Berenguer, Alvaro Berenguer, Sylvia Jacuinde T +34 91 651 3399 andres@camararental.com alvaro@camararental.com sylvia@camararental.com info@camararental.com UNITED ARAB EMIRATES Filmquip Media, Dubai Cameras, Lighting, Grip Anthony Smythe, Hugo Lang T +971 4 347 4909 ant@filmquipmedia.com hugo@filmquipmedia.com USA & CANADA Clairmont Camera Hollywood, LA, Toronto, Vancouver ARRIFLEX D-20 Representative Irving Correa T +1 818 761 4440 irvingc@clairmont.com Fletcher Chicago, Chicago ARRIFLEX D-20 Representative Stan Glapa T +1 312 932 2700 stan@fletch.com

VISIONARRI

4 QUANTUM OF SOLACE

Director Marc Forster and DoP Roberto Schaefer ASC reflect on shooting the latest Bond instalment

8 SUPER 16 CAPTURES KYLIE CONCERT

Fleet of ARRIFLEX 416 cameras film live concert action from Kylie Minogue’s latest tour

10 DER BAADER MEINHOF KOMPLEX

ARRI FILM & TV carry out extensive VFX work on Red Army Faction thriller

14 ARRIFLEX D-21 PRODUCTION ROUND-UP

An update of productions shooting with the D-21 around the world

18 THE YOUNG VICTORIA

DoP Hagen Bogdanski and Gaffer Jimmy Wilson discuss portraying the early years of Queen Victoria’s reign

22 THE COLOUR OF CONSCIENCE

Children’s story Die Perlmutterfarbe posts at ARRI Film & TV

30 ILLUMINATION DYNAMICS LIGHTS UP MTV VIDEO MUSIC AWARDS

Los Angeles-based Illumination Dynamics helps create the dazzling look of the 25th VMAs

31 NINJA ASSASSIN HITS BERLIN

Action movie Ninja Assassin uses ARRI’s new facilities in Berlin

32 WHEN ARRI MET KIA

Kia commercial shoots on location in Dubai

34 HOVIS PACKS 122 YEARS OF

HISTORY INTO NEW COMMERCIAL

Epic advert charts landmark moments in British history

36 THE INNER TRUTH OF BLOOD

The VFX specialists at ARRI Film & TV create crucial sequences for historical feature The Countess

26 LOVE HATE AND MSCOPE

41 THE COUNTESS

28 LIGHTING KNIGHTLY

44 THE INTERNATIONAL

Short film uses the ARRIFLEX D-21’s innovative new Mscope anamorphic output

Gaffer John Colley on lighting historic properties for period feature The Duchess

Interview with Writer, Director and Lead Actress Julie Delpy

DoP Frank Griebe discusses the filming and postproduction of The International

48 AL MAHED

ARRI Film & TV posts period film shot on location in Abu Dhabi

50 HI-MOTION A WINNER AT

CONTENTS

THE OLYMPICS

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ARRI Media’s high speed camera covers multiple sports at the 2008 Beijing Olympics

51 DOMINIK TRIMBORN: NEW HEAD OF VFX AT ARRI

Dominik Trimborn takes on a new role as Head of the Visual Effects Department

52 LIFE AT THE SHARPE END

Producer Paul Frift talks about filming drama Sharpe’s Peril on location in India

54 MOMENTS IN TIME

Louisiana Story – one of the first American films to make use of the revolutionary ARRIFLEX 35 II

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VisionARRI would like to thank the following contributors; Susanne Bieger, Katja Birkenbach, Raffael Burger, Lisa Buschek, Ute von Hohenzollern, Mark Hope-Jones, Ingo Klingspon, Luka Krsljanin, Milan Krsljanin, Judith Petty, Angela Reedwisch, Michelle Smith, An Tran, Sabine Welte, Andreas Wirwalski

56 PRODUCT UPDATE 57 NEWS FROM AROUND THE WORLD 61 SIX OF THE BEST 62 PRODUCTION UPDATE

Photos: Quantum Of Solace Š 2008 Danjaq, United Artists, CPII. 007 TM and related James Bond Trademarks, TM Danjaq

QUANTUM OF SO

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LACE

Shrouded in secrecy throughout production and referred to simply as B22 until shooting was well underway, Quantum of Solace is the 22nd official Bond film and the second to star Daniel Craig. In 2006, Casino Royale went back to the very beginnings of the 007 story and took the opportunity to streamline the franchise with a tougher Bond and a less gimmicky style. Unlike almost every one of the 20 preceding films it was shot on Super 35mm, so was able to benefit from the incomparable versatility of ARRICAM cameras and spherical lenses. Quantum of Solace continues this technical approach and is notable for being the first Bond film to be supplied its main camera package by ARRI Media, the UK subsidiary of the ARRI Rental Group.

Director Marc Forster and his regular cinematographer, Roberto Schaefer ASC, who most recently worked together on The Kite Runner (see VisionARRI 10/07), were determined to bring their own creative sensibilities to the project. “Marc said that if we were going to do it, we’d take it to a different level as much as we could,” recalls Schaefer. “He was worried about how much input and control he’d have, but actually the Bond people have been really receptive to ideas. Marc wanted to approach it as an art film, which was fine for me; we’ve really concentrated on the look – the framing, lens choices and lighting style.”

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QUANTUM OF SOLACE

Forster had in mind a look that combined elements of older films he loved with a more modern approach. “I wanted to pay homage to conspiracy thrillers of the 1970s like The Parallax View [1974] and even throw a bit of Hitchcock in there, like North by Northwest [1959],” he says. “So I had a mixture of all of that, but at the same time I needed to modernise it.” Production design played a vital part in this hybrid of old and new, with Dennis Gassner’s sets referencing some of the earliest Bond films while also prioritising realism. “Our sets were pretty epic and wonderful to shoot on,” says Schaefer. “They were very architectural, which I love, and we found the whole thing coming full circle – going back almost to a Dr No [1962] or From Russia with Love [1963] look; where it has a contemporary sensibility combined with a retro 1960s feel in the designs and colours.”

Schaefer and Forster have been in the habit of meticulously planning every shot of their films during preproduction since Monster’s Ball in 2001. Precise drawings illustrating where cameras should be positioned and how they will be moved are prepared and distributed to the crew each day on set. “Even before I went to art school I took a class in drawing and drafting at high school,” explains the cinematographer. “Then my first job after college was plotting maps from aerial photographs, so I’m pretty good at picturing drawings as threedimensional spaces.” The preplanning gives Forster a technical blueprint of the film and allows him to maximise time spent with the actors. “Having this discussion beforehand means Roberto and I don’t have to communicate that much on the set,” he says. “It’s just fantastic having a partner like that because we have similar tastes and feel the same way about things.”

The degree to which Forster likes to plan ahead, coupled with the exotic locations in the script and his preference for filming in real locations, made fastidious location scouting an absolute must. “We always do a pre-scout before the tech scout,” notes Schaefer. “Marc and I will walk through what we’re thinking; we’ll bounce ideas off each other and the production designer or first AD might 6

make suggestions. We did that through Europe twice before we went on our tech scout. For Panama and Chile Marc went out with the production designer and the producers, then I went with them and then we all went together for the tech scout. I take a lot of photographs; on the tech scout I try to go back and photograph from all the angles we’ve decided on so I have a reference to give to every department.”

In terms of deciding what cameras to use, there was little doubt in the cinematographer’s mind that ARRI cameras were the right choice. “I tend to like the best and these are the most dependable and user-friendly cameras,” he says. “They did everything we needed them to do and more. The ARRICAM Studio was the A-camera, then we had two Lites; we had a 435 for high speed stuff or when we needed a fifth or sixth camera. The third camera choice was a 235, which ended up being the handheld camera for some time.”

A-camera Operator George Richmond and his brother, Focus Puller Jonathan “Chunky” Richmond, set the 235 up for lightweight, handheld filming. The camera was equipped with handles and a strap, the viewfinder was replaced with a small monitor and video assist images were transmitted back to the big monitors wirelessly. “The 235 is the most genius camera ever,” enthuses George.

“We didn’t really use it on the Steadicam because it doesn’t sync sound and on this movie the Steadicam was used more in performance scenes. When we did action and fighting, we would use the

235; it’s a Bond film and there’s a lot of chasing, so we used it extensively. When you use that camera in that way, when you take it off your shoulder and hold it away from you, your arms act in the same way that a Steadicam does. Of course it’s by no means as smooth as Steadicam but you can run at full speed and have an image with clarity.”

One of the major sequences for which the Richmonds used the 235 in this pared-down configuration was a chase that takes place around a performance of Puccini’s Tosca in Bregenz, Austria.

“That setup was based on a real event, an outdoor opera in a big amphitheatre facing a lake,” says Schaefer. “We got there a month before they started their run and cast some of the real opera singers to perform selected scenes as a backdrop to the action. A lot of the chase takes place inside a beautiful, modern building before they go outside to the opera; they go all through the building, the restaurant, kitchen, stairs, down back alleys and eventually up onto the roof. We had lots of low ceilings and nowhere to hide lights, so we brought our own fluorescent tubes in and changed as many practical bulbs as we could to balance things up. We let different rooms go different colour temperatures, which helped with the story.”

George Richmond had the job of keeping up with Daniel Craig as he ran through all these different environments, while handholding the 235. “There would always be one camera moving with Bond,” he recalls. “The fact that

VISIONARRI DoP ROBERTO SCHAEFER ASC taking digital reference stills on set

DIRECTOR MARC FORSTER watching a take from the ‘video village’

Roberto was using practical lighting in these locations really gave us the freedom to go anywhere with the camera. Often we’d do a shot where we were running behind Daniel and then we’d turn around and do one running in front of him. That would always be enhanced with wide shots, top shots, long lenses panning through foregrounds – a mix of styles that were all put together to give it energy.

“When we were in very emotional dialogue scenes where story was being conveyed, we used one camera quite a lot,” continues Richmond. “When space and lighting would allow then we’d have a second camera in there; Marc liked cross-shooting because it’s very good for the editors. Roberto would pull out the third camera and operate himself once in a while; he’d just try to bring a different element into the scene. As the A-camera operator I was always covering story, but then Roberto would have the B or C-cameras going for more abstract images.”

The ARRI Film Lab in Munich was called upon to develop the negatives and create HD rushes of footage shot over the course of nine days in Bregenz and in Italy. The assignment involved generating several HD versions at 23.98 fps, putting down original sound, digitising the footage and sound, as well as storing the data on a hard drive for later use in the cutting room. “ARRI was incredibly efficient and the turnaround was amazing,” says the cinematographer.

Schaefer selected ARRI Master Primes for Quantum of Solace and generally tried to keep to a stop of around T2.8,

though he did occasionally take advantage of the full T1.3 speed of the lenses when he was short of light. “The Master Primes are just gorgeous,” he says. “They’re very even as well; we had about five different sets and they all performed pretty much the same; they also cut well with the Optimos. I wanted the film to be fairly crisp – I didn’t want to use a lot of diffusion. I chose the Masters above the Ultra Primes because there’s a different geometry to the focal plane on the Ultras; they’re more clinical whereas the Master Primes are more like how the eyes see.”

The DI on the film was completed mainly at Company 3 in Los Angeles, where ARRISCAN film scanners and ARRILASER film recorders book-ended the postproduction workflow. Knowing he had a DI, and that the ARRISCAN could scan both formats, Schaefer shot 3-perforation Super 35 with the main unit but had the second unit film in

4-perforation to give him as much room for adjustment in post as possible. He also tended not to use many filters on set. “In the DI we can use windows around faces, which is much more controlled and you don’t have to soften the entire frame,” he explains. “I know I don’t have to worry about using grads on moving shots, because unless it’s completely blown out I’m going to be able to pull it back in the grade and I can move the grad within the shot.”

Quantum of Solace is a significant departure for Forster and Schaefer, though their working relationship has always thrived on variety. “The dynamic between us is always kept fresh because I choose very different projects and jump from genre to genre,” says the director.

“Every time we do a film we have to pretty much start from scratch. It’s a great collaboration and it’s just very satisfying.” I Mark Hope-Jones

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KYLIE Photo: William Baker © Darenote Ltd 2008. All Rights Reserved.

Super 16 Captures

On 15 August 2008, Channel 4 launched new music channel 4Music.

As part of its opening night line-up, exclusive concert coverage from Kylie Minogue’s latest tour, KYLIEX2008, was broadcast.

With pioneering graphic staging and theatrical lighting, dancers and acrobats, and stunning costumes from designer Jean Paul Gaultier, the tour was Kylie’s biggest and most lavish to date. After 53 shows in 21 countries the tour reached its European climax at London’s The O2 arena, where it was captured on film by a fleet of Super 16 cameras.

Perhaps one of the hardest subjects to shoot, live concert productions have the artistic duty of not only capturing the music, but also the visual effects and atmosphere of the subject. The responsibility of filming KYLIEX2008 fell to Blink TV, a production company that specialises in producing concerts for TV and DVD.

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Their decision to use Super 16 was partly driven by the nature of the set. “The centre stage was made up of a huge LED backdrop and raked video floor,” recalls Producer Tom Colbourne. “Kylie and her Creative Director, Will Baker, wanted to ensure that this visual spectacle was filmed sympathetically, which led to us moving away from the usual HD live music TV formula.”

With bright 10 metre high visuals completely transforming each section of the concert, the set was so integral to the show that it was almost as important to Blink TV as the action on stage. “The wide exposure latitude of film meant that rather than the LED background ‘burning out’ – as is often the case with HD,” says Colbourne, “it was possible to beautifully expose Kylie and retain the definition of the set framing her.”

VISIONARRI

Concert Another deciding factor for choosing 16mm was the look: “We wanted to set KYLIEX2008 apart from other concerts on TV and DVD,” he says. “16mm seemed like the best format for capturing the edgy energy of the show itself.”

Filming took place over two days with nine ARRIFLEX 416 cameras supplied by ARRI Media. Heading the camera team, which consisted of more than 40 people, was Cinematographer John Mathieson BSC, who opted for Kodak VISION3 7219 500T.

from above to showcase its content,” says Colbourne. “The Director, Marcus Viner, added an extra crane, more handheld cameras for capturing the energy of the crowd, and a huge 80foot track across almost the entire width of the venue. We also moved a couple of follow spots and added a lot of audience lighting.”

With the finished edit required for the launch of 4Music just two weeks after filming, the postproduction schedule was hectic. Processing was carried out at

Technicolor, where two telecine suites were run day and night, and editing was done at Preditors, where four edit suites had to be run simultaneously to ensure the final cut was finished on time.

“Shooting on film has obvious creative advantages,” concludes Colbourne.

“Kylie’s fans are very passionate and when a show is as spectacular as hers, we at Blink TV feel a responsibility to document it with the care it deserves.” I Michelle Smith

The complexity of the shoot meant that preparation was crucial. “We embarked on an extensive test shoot to balance the follow spots, lights and video displays at a concert performed in Glasgow the month before,” explains the producer.

Under the guidance of Mathieson, the look and exposure of Kylie and the set worked as hoped, but some of the camera and lighting positions had to be rethought after reviewing the results. “As the video floor was actually on a slight incline, we decided to get some shots

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Theatrical and television versions scanned for DI workflow

Der Baader Meinhof Komplex, the latest collaboration between Director Uli Edel and Producer Bernd Eichinger, is a multifaceted and incredibly detailed German film about the Red Army Faction (RAF) terrorists of the seventies. Postproduction of the visual effects-laden project was extensive; it took the VFX artists a total of three months to complete their work, which consisted of 130 setups. This included the lab work and the DI workflow from scan to print, as well as generation of a DCP. ARRICAM Studio and Lite cameras were supplied by ARRI Rental Germany and postproduction was carried out at ARRI Film & TV in Munich.

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“Authenticity, not genre cinema, was what I was going for,” explains Edel. The film is based on a meticulously researched non-fiction book of the same title by Stefan Aust, the former editor-in-chief of Der Spiegel. Edel and producer/writer Bernd Eichinger created two versions of this magnum opus: one for the large screen and one for the small screen, the latter having an additional running time of 45 minutes. Footage from the shoot was digitised at 2K over a period of 10 days on an ARRISCAN at ARRI Film & TV; this workflow made it possible to generate theatrical and television versions with an identical look. The controversial film opened in German theatres in September 2008, drawing a total of 400,000 viewers over its opening weekend. A few weeks earlier the film had received its first accolade when the organisation German Films chose it to represent Germany in the Best Foreign Film category at the 2009 Academy Awards.

Der Baader Meinhof Komplex portrays a troubled period of German history, starting in 1967 with the visit of the Shah of Iran to Berlin and the tragic death of student Benno Ohnesorg, and ending with the tumultuous events of 1977: the unexplained demise of RAF members Andreas Baader, Ulrike Meinhof, Gudrun Ensslin and Jan-Carl Raspe, and the murder of kidnapping victim Hanns Martin Schleyer.

Constantin Film, the co-producer and distributor of the production, claims it incorporates 123 speaking and 52 smaller parts; the film’s stellar ensemble cast includes Moritz Bleibtreu, Martina Gedeck and Johanna Wokalek.

Photos: © 2008 Constantin Film Verleih GmbH

VISIONARRI

IN ORDER TO ‘FILL’ THE AUDITORIUM, THE FILM’S RENOWNED DOP RAINER KLAUSMANN FILMED THE EXTRAS FIRST ON THE FLOOR AND THEN ON THE BALCONY, SO THE SHOTS COULD BE COMPOSITED LATER.

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DER BAADER MEINHOF KOMPLEX

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Worthy of particular mention is the film’s visual authenticity. Hair and make-up artists created an almost frighteningly close resemblance between the actors and the people they were portraying. Finding enough extras with the long hairstyles of the sixties and seventies was a bit difficult, however, especially for a key scene set in Berlin’s Universitäts-Audimax that required 1,200 extras. In order to ‘fill’ the auditorium, the film’s renowned DoP Rainer Klausmann (German Film Award and German Camera Award-winner in 2004 for Head-On) filmed the extras first on the floor and then on the balcony, so the shots could be composited later. Klausmann’s images were cut together in a crowd-replication shot to recreate a student gathering, for which distracting elements such as overlapping flags or people in the foreground were removed ‘by hand’. In addition, there were over 200 segments of original radio broadcasts and television footage from the seventies available, the latter on video, which was at the time considered state-of-the-art technology. These images were adjusted during grading so that they could be used as cutaways or inserted into individual frames, for example as images on a television screen in-shot.

A great number of historical corrections were made; satellite dishes, billboards and other elements that were not a part of the seventies cityscape had to be removed during retouching. Costlier, however, were the set extensions needed to make entire sequences look more authentic, for example in a scene depicting riots in front of the Springer building close to the Berlin wall. The whole area looks completely different today, so Set Designer Bernd Lepel had to rebuild a section of the wall for this scene. With the help of matte paintings, the rebuilt segment of wall was then extended and a historically accurate image of the Springer building was inserted into the frame, ensuring that the perspective was correct. In another case, a building that had to double as Klaus Rainer Röhl’s mansion on the island of Sylt didn’t have the traditional Frisian thatched roof. This architectural detail was added later, just as rocks were inserted into a scene at a beach on the Baltic Sea to create the illusion that it was, in fact, the Mediterranean coastline of Sicily.

Digital manipulation on the minutest level was required to integrate particle effects when layers of smoke or the muzzle flash coming out of various guns were created. Also, gunshot wound entry holes in the

skin and clothes of protagonists had to be carefully varied in size to achieve the desired effects.

Explosions in buildings and cars were shot on set, but for safety reasons the ‘victims’ had to be inserted into these scenes later. Timing had to be precise during the shootouts, which were always filmed from various angles, for example when Schleyer is kidnapped from his car. The cadence of this sequence, the bursting glass and the reactions of victims, could only be cut together because the timing was so precise.

Another challenge was the VFX setups that were not shot in Germany. The exteriors and interiors set in Baghdad, where the second generation terrorists flee to, were shot in Kenitra, Morocco. The view of the city of Kenitra (an accumulation of forlorn houses close to the Atlantic coast), was enhanced by digitally inserting a lavish mosque and the river Tigris, so that it would pass for Baghdad. The only ‘authentic’ building was the JVA in the city of Stammheim, where the crew were able to film interiors as well as exteriors, thanks to good local contacts. Even from the air, Stammheim looks very much the same today as it did in the seventies, the only difference being that the housing developments did not reach as close to the prison walls back then – a problem that was easily solved by the VFX artists. I Andreas Wirwalski

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ARRIFLEX D-21 PRODUCTION ROUND-UP

SALAMI ALEIKUM: Father Bergheim (Wolfgang Stumph) in front of the D-21

A summary of cinematographers and productions that have been shooting with the D-21 around the world Over the six months since the last issue of VisionARRI, the ARRIFLEX D-21 film style digital camera has been gaining steadily in popularity with cinematographers and producers the world over. Building on the reputation established by its predecessor, the D-21 offers a wealth of important new features. These include raw data image capture in Data Mode as well as both HD and data-based workflows for anamorphic productions, which are able to make full use of the camera’s unique 4 x 3 sensor. The D-21 goes to work on every type of production, from commercials for high level clients including Nike and Honda to major feature films such as Guy Ritchie’s RocknRolla. The following round-up touches on some of the film and television productions that have recently been supplied with D-21 camera kits by the ARRI Rental Group.

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In the UK, Alan Almond BSC, Owen McPolin and Lukas Strebel have been sharing D-21 cinematography duties on Little Dorrit, a major new period drama series from the BBC. Adapted by Andrew Davies from Charles Dickens’s novel, it began broadcasting in October this year. The second season of Lark Rise to Candleford, another major BBC period drama, will air from December and was shot by Mark Partridge.

David Luther is shooting Law & Order: London, the UK-based version of the long-running US television show, for production company Kudos Film and Television. Previous to this D-21 project, Luther shot an ITV drama series titled The Children on the D-20 for Tightrope Pictures.

VISIONARRI

CRUSOE: shot in log HD mode by DoP Jon Joffin

LITTLE DORRIT: the Steadicam operator gets a shot

LARK RISE TO CANDLEFORD: Operator Martin Stephens at the eyepiece of a D-21

The Butcher’s Shop, a short film directed by Philip Haas and the first complete production to capture raw data using the D-21’s Data Mode, has won the Open Award at the 65th Venice International Film Festival. Cinematographer Sean Bobbitt BSC chose to use the camera again for his latest television project, Unforgiven, from Red Productions, opting this time to record on HDCAM SR tape with the camera in log HD mode.

Another member of the British Society of Cinematographers, Mike Southon BSC, recently shot the TV series U Be Dead for Darlow Smithson.

Directed by Jamie Payne, it will be aired by ITV in November. Anthony Radcliffe, meanwhile, shot Dead Set for Zeppotron and Damian Bromley

took advantage of FlashMag recording with the D-21 while shooting Barclay for the BBC. Tim Palmer has been at work on the first block of another high profile BBC series: Silent Witness. This hugely popular drama has made use of the ARRIFLEX digital camera system for the last three of its 13 successful seasons – two with the D-20 and the latest with the D-21.

Steve Lawes shot Skellig, an adaptation of the classic children’s novel by David Almond, in September and October. Produced by Feel Films, the television movie will be broadcast by Sky 1 and Sky HD as part of its investment in new high definition drama. Lawes chose to shoot in log mode with the D-21 and created his own lookup tables (LUTs) to use on set.

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Photo: Gordon A. Timpen

ARRIFLEX D-21

TOD AUS DER

TIEFE: DoP Bernhard Jaspar

SALAMI

ALEIKUM: Mohsen (Navid Ahkavan), Anna (Ana Böger) and DoP Bernhard Jaspar

SALAMI

ALEIKUM: DoP Bernhard Jaspar at the D-21 and inside the circular tracks Mohsen, Anna and lamb Woytila

HENRY IV: DoP

Gernot Roll on set with lead actor Julien Boisselier

The ARRIFLEX digital camera system has also been used on a number of UK feature films. Guy Ritchie’s RocknRolla, shot by David Higgs, wrapped last year but was released recently by Warner Bros.

Pictures around the world. Higgs also shot in log mode and worked with Soho Images (part of the Ascent Media Group) to create LUTs that allowed monitors on set to approximate the final look of the film. Leon Narbey shot Dean Spanley in the latter part of last year; the film was screened in October at the London Film Festival. Ghost Machine, shot by George Richmond, recently wrapped in Ireland and is due for release in February 2009.

In the USA, DoP John Bartley ASC has been shooting the Disney/ABC pilot Prince of Motor City in and around Detroit, Michigan with the D-21; Bartley’s working relationship with Director Jack Bender is well established, since they have worked together on many episodes of the hit TV series Lost. Two other Disney/ABC pilot shows have made use of the camera: Never Better, shot by Sherone Meir, and Bad Mother’s Handbook, shot by Vajna Cernjul.

Producer Raymond Massey is currently working on an as yet untitled independent feature that is being shot with the D-21 by Peter Woeste in Vancouver, where Serge La Douceur also used the camera for the latest season of Warner TV’s long-running horror series Supernatural. Staying in Canada, Jerome Sabourin recently shot Vision 4 Films’ skydiving adventure Les Pieds dans le Vide in Montreal with director Mariloup Wolfe.

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Jon Joffin, who used the D-20 on The Andromeda Strain (2007) and Flirting with 40 (2008) – both with Director Mikael Salomon – has been working on the TV series Crusoe for UK independent production company Power, shooting in log HD mode. The series, which was shot in England and South Africa with the D-21, is being broadcast by NBC in the USA. Another NBC series, Reaper, will be shooting until the end of the year; DoP Attila Szalay is bringing his considerable experience in the science fiction/horror genre to the project, which is being produced by Reaper Productions.

Michael Trim chose the D-21 for his work on the Universal Media/CBS TV series Worst Week in LA, as did Nigel Bluck for his new feature Handsome Harry, which wrapped in October and is the first anamorphic feature film shot using ARRIRAW. In Spain, the camera has been used for a number of projects, including Xtrems, a television production directed by Abel Folk and Joan Riedweg, and shot by Pol Turrents. DoP Juan Antonio Castaño has also been using the D-21 for his latest feature film, La Isla Interior, as has Mario Montero for La Vida Empieza Hoy. Both of these features are due for release in 2009.

German Director/DoP Gernot Roll, who used the D-21 when he directed Männersache (due for release in March 2009), has chosen the camera again for his latest film as DoP, Henry IV, which is currently shooting in Germany, France and the Czech Republic. Produced by Ziegler Film of Berlin, it is a German-French-Spanish-Austrian co-production and,

Photo: Michael Ratgeber

Salami Aleikum © Dreamer Joint Venture Filmproduktion GmbH. Photos: Maria Krummwiede

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with a budget of 18 million Euros, something of a mega-production by European standards. The large number of visual effects shots it will contain was one of the reasons Roll decided that the D-21 would be his best option.

Another DoP who is using the ARRIFLEX digital camera system for a second big project is Frank Küpper, who shot Afrika, mon amour (2007) with the D-20 and is now using the D-21 for Krupp: A German Family. This three-part television miniseries is directed by Carlo Rola and is due to air in March 2009.

The D-21 endured cold conditions in Lower Saxony, Bavaria and Austria for the underwater TV movie Tod aus der Tiefe, produced by Munich’s Crazy Film for the commercial station ProSieben. Director Hans

Horn was working once again with DoP Bernhard Jasper, who also shot the German comedy Salami Aleikum (2008) for Director Ali Samadi Ahadi on the D-21. Ahadi’s latest project is a comedy with the working title Ein Perser im Schafspelz; this exploration of the cultural experiences of Germany’s Iranian-German population is being shot with the D-21 and will be broadcast by ZDF. In Japan the D-21 is extremely popular for commercials and music videos, as well as live music events. DoP Koki Hifumi has used the camera on a number of recent shoots, including a commercial for the Kao Corporation and a music project for EMI Music Japan. Tohuku Shinsa also chose the D-21 for a Zebra Co. Ltd. commercial. I Andreas Wirwalski/Mark Hope-Jones

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The Young

Victoria The Young Victoria, which tells the story of Queen Victoria’s accession to the English throne in 1837 at the tender age of 18, had its genesis in a casual suggestion made by Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, to producer Graham King that Victoria’s early years would make a good film. King, who produced Martin Scorsese’s The Departed (2006), told her to pitch the idea to Scorsese, which she duly did. Scorsese was sufficiently impressed to commission a script from Julian Fellowes, the Oscar-winning writer of Gosford Park (2001), and the film went into production with Ferguson, King and Scorsese each taking a producing credit. Directed by Jean-Marc Vallée and shot by Hagen Bogdanski, it stars Emily Blunt and is due for release in early 2009. Camera equipment was supplied by ARRI Media, while the lighting kit came from ARRI Lighting Rental.

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Set between the years 1836 and 1840, the film focuses on Victoria’s rise to power and her romance with Prince Albert. It seeks to show audiences a different side of the Queen who is generally remembered as a humourless, elderly widow, clad in mourning attire and hidden away in self-imposed isolation. As a young woman, Victoria was in fact a passionate, fun-loving character; she did not stand on tradition for its own sake and was a firm believer in true love. Vallée and Bogdanski, however, decided that the Queen’s youthful vigour should not be reflected by overly energetic camerawork.

“Marc and I didn’t want to express her youthfulness with MTV techniques, but rather with the acting,” explains Bogdanski. “We had a very realistic approach to doing a period drama, which meant no Hollywood lighting and no camerawork that draws attention to itself. If it looks natural, rather than having a slick, backlit look, then I think it is easier for audiences to believe in this fresh and young Victoria.”

A key reference for the visual approach to The Young Victoria was the photography of Annie Leibovitz. “She had a session with Queen Elizabeth a few weeks before we started shooting and she took some great photos that were published in Vanity Fair,” continues Bogdanski. “We especially liked the use of natural light, with the Queen positioned by large open windows; it looked very believable in terms of colour, contrast and mood, so that was something I tried to emulate.”

Window light was therefore key to Bogdanski’s lighting strategy, but this approach was complicated by the fact that the Royal Family tended to be wary of standing in front of unobstructed windows. “Before Victoria was Queen she lived in Kensington and she was always avoiding the light because the

“…WE OFTEN HAD EMILY STAY IN THE SHADOWS, WHICH WAS A CHALLENGE BECAUSE THEN WE COULDN’T SEE OUR LEAD ACTRESS!” family were worried about her being attacked,” explains the cinematographer.

“So in the studio and on the locations we used for Kensington we often had Emily stay in the shadows, which was a challenge because then we couldn’t see our lead actress! Normally you try to get the lead actress into the light but we were always telling her to step back into shadow!”

Gaffer Jimmy Wilson, with years of experience on period productions behind him, helped Bogdanski find enough light for interior scenes without abandoning historical accuracy. “The Royal Family had their curtains drawn all the time so we tried to use bigger heads outside the set and force our way in with the light,” says Wilson. “We used 20Ks, both bounced and direct; we also used 5kW SkyPans, which could bounce in from outside the set with the 20Ks for daylight scenes. For night scenes we used 2.5kW Zaps from below the window level with brass coloured gels to simulate the gas streetlights of the time. Above the sets we used soft boxes, with 4.8kW space lights on dimmers in them; we could adjust the black [curtains surrounding the soft box] to go up and down and

graduate the light on the walls so it looked more real.”

Though soft boxes allowed minute control of the light on set, the vast majority of the film was shot on location at historic properties across England.

“We were at one location after another and our approach was to light from the outside,” notes Bogdanski. “If that wasn’t possible I would depend on available light, which I’ve never done before. It’s a risk for the director and for the schedule, but with the help of the 1st AD we were able to make it work.

Restrictions at the National Trust buildings were some of our biggest problems – representatives were there to help us but the rules are very rigid; it’s nearly impossible to shoot in some of these places. Just laying dolly track can be a huge problem; we agreed not to do Steadicam work because we wanted to go for a more classical way of blocking, but if you can’t lay track that becomes difficult. We were very lucky to have the locations, but it was challenging for Jimmy and Ian Franklin, the Rigging Gaffer; it just takes more time than usual and you have to be very careful.”

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DoP HAGEN BOGDANSKI at the viewfinder of an ARRICAM Studio (above & right)

“You’re really restricted when it comes to touching the fabric of the building – the walls and ceilings,” says Wilson. “When you put scaffolding up everything has to be double protected; we couldn’t put a stand down on the floor without putting tennis balls on the feet so it all takes twice as long, but we’ve got used to it over the years and we know what to expect.

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I think Hagen’s main priority is that he likes very low, soft, nondirectional light. The space lights were good for that, and on interiors at a location we would double diffuse – bounce the light and then diffuse it. I introduced him to HiLite, which is like a shower curtain that diffuses the light and makes it really soft; we used that through windows and also inside.”

Photos: Liam Daniel © 2008 GK Films. All Rights Reserved.

THE YOUNG VICTORIA

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Some of the more complicated and demanding locations included Ham House in Richmond-uponThames, the Novello Theatre on the Strand and Arundel Castle, where seven Genie Booms served as platforms for 18Ks and 8K helium balloons. “Lincoln cathedral was quite a big one for us because we had to rig in the triforium,” says Wilson. “We had about 16 6Ks rigged up there, with diffused frames in front of them; it was quite a demanding rig because the church had to stay open for services. Lancaster House was another awkward one. It’s next to Prince Charles’s residence – St. James’s Palace – and we couldn’t put towers up along the side of the building to light through the windows because it wasn’t allowed. The only way to do it was to light from inside, with 8K balloons, but we were fortunate because there’s a balcony down one side of the interior and we lit from that.”

“WE WERE IN CASTLES WITH HUGE ROOMS, SO Aside from the problems presented by each individual location, the logistical challenges of travelling between THE LOGISTICS OF THE them on a tight schedule were immense. “I’m used to PRE-LIGHTING WAS THE moving from location to location, but not on such a big MAIN ISSUE…” scale,” says Bogdanski. “We were in castles with huge rooms, so the logistics of the pre-lighting was the main issue and I was very lucky to have Jimmy and Ian, who are very experienced with bigger productions like this.

I understand now how useful it is to be in a studio for a period film because of all the restrictions that go with shooting on location. It’s a huge undertaking to move a big unit every day or second day to another location and to pre-light and pre-rig it.”

Bogdanski shot with 3-perforation ARRICAM Studio and Lite cameras, and Ultra Prime lenses. “This is the first time I have shot 3-perforation and we’re going to have a 2K DI,” says the cinematographer. “I put it in my contract that I had to be there for the grade because it’s very important to me. I’ve always been an advocate of anamorphic but 3-perforation was a good experience; it has a lot of advantages. I will only be able to pass a full judgement after the grade, but it’s certainly a great method of shooting. Another interesting point is that we never shot very wide, no wider than about a 20mm, because we felt that if we went too wide it would be unnatural and the audience would see the distortion. If you shoot spherical you have a lot more choice with lenses and the equipment is smaller so the camera department can work a bit faster.”

Having selected Kodak Vision2 film stock for the shoot, Bogdanski limited himself to three different emulsions. “I tried to keep it simple,” he continues.

“I shot with 5218 (500T) for night scenes and for almost everything else I shot on 5205 (250D). I tried to separate those parts of the story set in Germany by shooting on a slower stock, the 5201 (50D); it’s much cleaner and more colourful, and made the German scenes look a bit different, because we never actually went there!”

When it came to night scenes the cinematographer was influenced by Stanley Kubrick’s seminal period film Barry Lyndon (1975), which was shot by John Alcott BSC. “The whole thing that Kubrick did, using real candles and real firelight with as little enhancement as possible, was something I worked very hard on,” explains Bogdanski. “The light levels were very low, even in the studio, which of course meant the lens was wide open, so I was lucky to have [Focus Puller] Dave Cozens, who did unbelievable work with the focus.”

“A lot of DoPs use blue for moonlight but Hagen doesn’t do that,” notes Wilson. “He puts the tungsten to the full colour temperature – 3200K – and then he’ll try and match all the candlelight by bringing the inside light down on the dimmers, which makes the outside light colder. We used real candles because if you use dummy electric flame then it just looks like dummy electric flame. Someone had to go around and light all the candles before each take and put them out afterwards, so one shot could take 40 minutes to set up, and there were continuity issues as well.”

Though he always knew he would have a DI, Bogdanski did not let this effect the manner in which he approached his work during filming. “It didn’t change the way I did anything on set,” he says. “I’m more a classical photographer and try to do as much as possible in camera. The Digital Intermediate can sometimes help a bit with location footage, because you can fix little things in the grade, but in general the ‘fix it in post’ idea is the wrong approach.” I Mark Hope-Jones

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THE COLOUR OF

CONSCIENCE 22

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D.I.E.FILM.GMBH IN MUNICH, TOGETHER WITH CONSTANTIN FILM, HAS PRODUCED MARCUS H. ROSENMÜLLER’S LATEST FILM, THE YOUNG ADULT DRAMA DIE PERLMUTTERFARBE, A PARABLE ABOUT THE ROOTS OF TOTALITARIAN BEHAVIOUR IN THE HUMAN SOUL. TO BRING THE MAGICAL REALISM OF THE NOVEL TO THE SCREEN, THE POSTPRODUCTION SPECIALISTS AT ARRI DIGITAL FILM HAD TO REACH DEEP INTO THEIR ‘BAG OF TRICKS’.

The idea to adapt Anna Maria Jokl’s wildly popular children’s book, Die Perlmutterfarbe, for the big screen came from d.i.e.film.gmbh producer Robert Marciniak: “I discovered the book for myself a few years back, when a friend of mine, another producer, recommended it to me,” he says. “The story brought back many memories from my own past and was so riveting that I have searched for a way to adapt it ever since.”

At the core of the story, which centres on two feuding school classes, is the question of how to deal with lies and truth. The film, just like the novel, tells the story of Alexander, a pupil who unlawfully acquires a book and inadvertently destroys the mother of pearl colour that gives the book and the film its name. His attempt to cover up his wrongdoing gets him caught up in an intricate web of lies, which makes him vulnerable to blackmail.

The quandary posed by his lie, which begins to spin out of control, is what appealed to Director Marcus H. Rosenmüller after Marciniak approached him with the project: “From personal experience, every one of us can relate to the need to extract oneself from a situation such as this,” says Rosenmüller.

“I wanted to show how it works, how a lie makes us susceptible to blackmail and turns us into co-conspirators of a much greater calamity. Plus, I have

always wanted to make a film in the vein of War of the Buttons [La Guerre des boutons, 1962] directed by Yves Robert, addressing the issues of class struggle and altercation in the milieu of youth gangs.”

Like the subheading of Jokl’s novel, “A children’s book for almost everyone,” the film intends to appeal to more than just young adults. “In the end,” says Rosenmüller, “the novel is a parable of the origin of the SS.” Jokl was most certainly referring to the rise of National Socialism in her novel, which forced her to leave the country in 1933. On a more general level, however, her novel addresses the group dynamics that lead to the formation and rise of totalitarian systems.

The first task was to adapt the narrative of the novel for the screen. This entailed updating the language and externalizing the inner monologue that is a fundamental part of the novel. Anna Maria Jokl did not set her story in a specific time or place. Instead, it is more of a universally applicable experiment, revealing basic psychological behavioural patterns. Producer Robert Marciniak, however, wanted to make the story more tangible, by grounding it and making its characters more authentic: “That’s how we got the idea to set the story in Bavaria at around the end of the Weimar Republic,” he says.

Marcus H. Rosenmüller and Christian Lerch wrote the script and chose the year 1931, the year that the horror classic Frankenstein hit the big screen.

Rosenmüller even pays homage to this significant moment in film history with a direct quote in his script. Recreating the “expressionistic atmosphere of the time, the impending horror, the tragic fate, but also that odd ‘magic’ that permeated the air,” was costly, says the director. The most important prop of the film was an expensive book with the title We Are All People, which Alexander destroys in a fire. “The title of the book takes you right into the subject matter,” continues Rosenmüller. “We are all people, but we are also all monsters.” For that reason the grown-ups in the film simply serve as a metaphor within the parable, for example when fate appears in the form of a bookstore clerk.

“We were lucky, because we knew early on in the process that the project was financed, which gave us ample time for meticulous preparations,” says Marciniak. “Films with kids are difficult and, after all, we had 16 speaking parts. It took us eight months to cast the film.” The search for identical twins who could speak the dialect was fruitless.

Finally, the decision was made to have Thomas Wittmann play both parts, which in turn meant shooting in front of a greenscreen and additional work during postproduction at ARRI Digital Film.

BEFORE/AFTER: digital winter landscapes 23

THE COLOUR OF CONSCIENCE

The lead role was played by Markus Krojer, who had already starred in Rosenmüller’s surprise hit Grave Decisions (2006). During the 40-day shoot between February and April 2008, the young actor had to step in front of the camera almost daily.

“A grandiose and for him most certainly straining accomplishment,” comments Marciniak. “But we needed him, because we needed someone capable of taking the audience on this emotional journey.”

Scouting locations for a 1930s setting also proved challenging, as Marciniak explains: “We weren’t looking for a picture-perfect historic city centre, but a place where you could still sense the past. Weidenberg, near Bayreuth, had exactly that kind of historic centre – “one that hasn’t been restored to death for the sake of historical preservation,” continues the producer. In Saxony, Rosenmüller fell in love with a street in the city of Plauen because of its crumbly exteriors. Another location used in the film is an abandoned former monastery near Burghausen, which serves as the school. The building offered incredible possibilities, including “a 360-degree panorama view of nothing but historic building structure,” the director enthuses.

The visual concept of the film called for a historically authentic look for the sets and costumes with mostly muted colours.

And the ‘grey’ village with its industrial plants that was chosen as the film’s setting comes across as anything but the stereotypical picturesque Bavarian village.

“We started shooting in February and we didn’t get any snow at all,” recalls Marciniak. “But a wintry setting was very important to Marcus so creating that effect became a large chunk of the work for the visual effects specialists at ARRI. The director adds: “It would have been easier to shoot the film had the story been set during the summer months, but I wanted the colour white in the film because of its symbolic function.

Especially in one of the key scenes, when we shot Alexander from above as he collapses in a snow field and experiences a catharsis. Used as a metaphor, I wanted the white colour in this scene to glisten and shine like mother of pearl.” Large amounts of 24

artificial snow therefore had to be generated on the set, using extinguishing foam, snow mats and ice makers, and also on the computer, using digital technology.

The 35mm footage was shot on an ARRIFLEX Studio as well as an ARRIFLEX Lite, with Ultra Prime lenses. “For slow motion sequences we also used an ARRIFLEX 435 to take full advantage of the 150 fps camera speed,” explains DoP Torsten Breuer. “The story takes place during the 30s and the actors were mostly kids; that’s why we decided to keep the lighting soft. We wanted the film to have the feel of a desaturated winter ambience, which would harmonise well with the production design.”

The director wanted the camera to remain flexible, which involved working handheld to quickly adjust for blocking

mistakes made by the young actors.

“Working with kids has something remarkable about it,” says Breuer. “You even lose your fear of getting too close to the face when you’re shooting with short focal lengths; the faces of children are very forgiving.”

To ensure the seamless integration of the visual effects, ARRI Digital Film’s Creative Director Prof. Jürgen Schopper was present on location. He made certain that spontaneous directions given during the shoot were ‘usable’ later on during digital postproduction. “Torsten Breuer is a DoP who has experience shooting for greenscreen compositing, which made things a lot easier,” recalls Schopper. “Watching the interplay of Marcus H. Rosenmüller’s highly emotional directing style – he personally acted out almost every scene beforehand for the children – and the

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DIGITAL DOUBLE: Thomas Wittmann on location and playing his own twin in front of a green screen, to the right the final composite MARCUS H. ROSENMÜLLER with his young actors

cool and straightforward precision of Torsten Breuer’s camerawork was an amazing experience for me.”

The shoot wrapped on 25 April 2008, at a steel mill in the Bavarian town of Sulzbach-Rosenberg. Postproduction of the film, including lab work, editing, visual effects and grading, was completed at ARRI. The VFX team had four main assignments: removing all historically inaccurate details (retouching), creating a realistic winter setting that included replacing certain landscapes entirely, duplicating the twins using greenscreen compositing and, last but not least, creating the ‘magic’ mother of pearl colour.

The difficult part of duplicating actors with the help of greenscreens is to make the actor’s interaction with himself look believable. “You have to make sure that the focus of the eyes works for the scene,” explains Schopper. “The pupil isn’t capable of focusing on any particular point in the air; instead, it automatically focuses on the next available object and that can be jarring.

The audience might not be able to exactly pinpoint what is wrong in the scene, but intuitively they know something isn’t right.” To avoid this pitfall during scenes involving the virtual twin, a person was asked to stand in front of the greenscreen to ensure that the eyes of the actor were as realistically focused as possible. The additional person was later removed during postproduction.

Creating the mother of pearl colour was the biggest challenge for the specialists at ARRI. “We were asked to create an element for the film with a ‘magical’ radiance, something that resembles the sparkle in the eye of a child at Christmas,” explains the creative director. “But we wanted to stay away from drastic fantasy effects, which tend to look too artificial.”

The VFX team found the following solution: layering and animating multiple layers of different whites, ranging from a bright, radiating white to a light-grey, so that their different degrees of brightness produced a cloudlike shimmer. This was then suffused with glittering rays of light that would throw pulsating and interactive reflections on the faces of the children. The mother of pearl effect had to work for a little drop on a piece of paper and also for a 330-foot-long snow field, and contrast with the otherwise desaturated look of the film.

One of many advantages of the Digital Intermediate is that effects shots no longer have to be viewed in one block and out of context during the approval process. “The DI process moves the visual effects back into their proper place within the film, so they can be graded by the colourist like any other shot,” says Schopper. “The effects integrate themselves homogenously into the colour dramaturgy of the film, so it is much easier to see if everything fits together and if the effects shots

ON SET: Torsten Breuer, Marcus H. Rosenmüller and Robert Marciniak

accomplished what they set out to accomplish. For the DI and the effects to interact in this way over a period of several weeks results in a fluid process, which also generates valuable feedback for our work.”

With a budget of over 4 million Euros, Die Perlmutterfarbe is the largest production to date for d.i.e.film.gmbh.

Funding came from the FilmFernsehFonds Bayern, the DFFF, the FFA, and the BKM/Kuratorium Junger Deutscher Film.

In Germany, Constantin Film will release Die Perlmutterfarbe theatrically in January 2009. I Ingo Klingspon

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Love Hate and Mscope On 08/08/08, Love Hate, the first project to be shot using ARRI’s innovative new Mscope process, finished principal photography. A romantic comedy with a difference, the short film revolves around the relationship between a sweet-natured young charity worker and the physical embodiment of his hatred, played respectively by Ben Whishaw and Hayley Atwell. Blake and Dylan Ritson’s inventive and darkly witty script isn’t the only unique thing about this short: Using ARRI’s Mscope, DoP John Lynch was able to give the film a strikingly cinematic visual style, one which Producer Scott Jacobson applauded as “excellent” and extremely powerful for its ability to capture the extraordinarily detailed emotional performances of two of Britain’s hottest rising talents.

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Combining anamorphic cinematography with Dual HD recording, Mscope provides strong aesthetics at a very practical and affordable level, further increasing the wide range of opportunities offered by the ARRIFLEX D-21. As a cinematographer renowned for his work with anamorphics, John Lynch appreciated the quality of image that could be achieved using Mscope.

He shared his thoughts on working on Love Hate: “I like the camera, like the monitor… the pictures we’ve managed to get are absolutely fantastic and I can’t wait to see the results on the big screen”.

In order to get as much material as possible out of a tight schedule, the crew averaged between 25 and 30 setups per day, shooting fully open and using all possible sensitivity settings, from 100 to 800 ISO (equivalent).

Lynch noted that the D-21’s capacity to produce stunning images in various different conditions, from daytime exteriors of a busy London bridge to bleak interior shots lit exclusively by a laptop screen, was central to the production’s success. One standout moment in the film is a long tracking shot during which the two protagonists walk through an underpass lit by a multitude of different-coloured neon lights. This required the camera to be mounted on a rickshaw, allowing the intense dialogue between the film’s two stars to be captured in a single shot.

Though accomplishing this was a challenge for Focus Puller Nathan Mann, the shot exhibits the trademark flaring of anamorphic lenses, enriching its visual impact. Combined with the two performances this creates one of the

VISIONARRI

most humorous, memorable and technically accomplished scenes of the film.

For Writer/Directors Blake and Dylan Ritson, using Mscope was an “immensely exciting opportunity,” allowing the Coen-esque brothers to achieve a punchy visual style, complementing Love Hate’s compelling storyline. Dylan commented that working as a pair was “the closest you could come to splitting yourself in two” and that they were “always coming up with new ideas of how to film a scene.

Shooting in scope meant these ideas could always be… achieved in the exact style we wanted.”

From the very beginning of the five-day shoot, the huge benefits of shooting in Mscope were noticeable. The camera

crew had a standard Astro on-board monitor on their D-21, fed by just one of the Mscope channels, giving them instant, undistorted images of the correct aspect ratio. Throughout shooting, both directors were glued to the 17” HD monitor, which also needed only one Mscope channel, allowing them to assess the performances, exposure and focus, and most importantly meaning that they could immediately decide on any changes they felt necessary in order to keep the film’s visual style at the highest level possible.

For him, producing such alluring images of the actors’ expressions was one of the major advantages of shooting in Mscope. Speaking during the final stages of filming, he said: “We’ve got two great writer/directors, a fantastic DoP, our Focus Puller, Nathan Mann was excellent, always sharp, and we’ve got a great cast… the images I’ve seen are amazing”. As the shoot drew to a close, Blake Ritson agreed, claiming that “it’s always brilliant to work with something new like Mscope… it’s the future.” I

Taking a hands-on role in his first short film as producer, Scott Jacobson was actively involved in securing Mscope for the project and also, by spending every day on the set, ensuring all of its benefits were utilised.

For more information go to www.arri.com/mscope Luka Krsljanin

DoP JOHN LYNCH operated the D-21 himself throughout the shoot

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Photo: Nick Wall

Lighting Knightley An interview with John Colley, Gaffer on The Duchess Directed by Saul Dibb and shot by Gyula Pados, HSC, The Duchess tells the story of Lady Georgina Spencer, one of the most fascinating and controversial women of eighteenth century Britain. When Lady Georgina married William Cavendish, 5th Duke of Devonshire, in 1774, she became the Duchess and a prominent figure on the aristocratic social scene. Before long the lavish but emotionally bereft lifestyle took its toll and her existence descended into a struggle against an unforgiving society and her own considerable vices. The film, starring Keira Knightley and Ralph Fiennes, was shot on location at a string of historic houses across England, with lighting equipment supplied by ARRI Lighting Rental.

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VisionARRI: What kind of preparation work did you do with Gyula Pados?

VA:

John Colley: We spent many days just going through the script before we started shooting. Both of us came onto the project quite late and we really had to force ourselves to find time to go through it all scene by scene. Gyula had very strong ideas about how he wanted the film to look and how he wanted to differentiate summer and winter scenes, so that made it pretty easy for us when we were pre-lighting and rigging. Whatever we’d spoken about on the recces tended to be what we actually did; Gyula was very clear with his ideas and I think we were successful in achieving our plans.

JC: At the first couple of locations in the first few weeks we were taking 10-by-10 lighting towers up and down to suit the scenes we were shooting around the houses. We would have to take them out for reverses and then put them back in – we were moving them back and forth for days at a time. At Holkham Hall, which was our biggest setup, the decision was made to light every room and just leave the lights up; so we had 18 10-by-10 towers with 12K Pars and 18Ks through each window and if we weren’t able to get a scene we could just walk away, do whatever needed doing and come back to pick up the scene whenever we wanted to. Vince Madden, the Rigging Gaffer, did a tremendous job.

VA: What challenges did the location filming present?

Many of the properties we filmed at are maintained by the National Trust, which imposes a lot of restrictions in terms of touching walls and ceilings, and protecting tapestries and paintings, so we used helium balloons and soft lighting a great deal. The biggest challenge for night scenes was sneaking in a backlight somewhere; if you’ve got a massive banquet scene where you’re looking everywhere, it’s very difficult to get any backlight when you can’t rig the interior of the building at all.

On the master shot it can be almost impossible sometimes, but then once you go in for medium and close shots you can do what you like.

JC:

How did you tend to light these historic locations?

VA:

JC: For day scenes we did most of the lighting from outside.

Some of these older buildings have got dark wooden walls that absolutely soak up the light, so we had lights coming through almost every window of each room we shot in. For the evening and night scenes, helium balloons allowed us to look quickly in all directions; we used two 8kW tungsten sausages a lot of the time. These would mimic candlelight and we would have real candles in the scene as well; we looked at some flicker effects but we just couldn’t find anything realistic enough. The whole film was shot with two cameras, sometimes three, and we didn’t have time to do big re-lights when we wanted to look in different directions; we would light for all of our angles and then just tweak a little bit as we went round.

Photos: © Pathé Productions 2008

Photo: Nick Wall

Photo: Peter Mountain

VISIONARRI

Did that mean you had a lot of lights rigged at the same time?

What other particular lighting units were you using?

VA:

JC: It was ARRI 18Ks or 12K Pars coming through the windows and on various occasions when we needed a little bit of extra punch we used the ARRIMAX, which was fantastic. We used the Dedoflex an awful lot; it’s a nice, soft, natural looking source; we also tended to use Rifa lights and spring balls.

All the tungsten lights we used inside had ¼ or ½ CTS around them just to warm them up a little bit and then we’d dim them down. Everything was dimmed; often we had a couple of thousand kW more than we needed and dimmed down to 30 or 40 percent.

For the day scenes we used a lot of high contrast – 12K Pars bounced into 4-by-4 mirrors, putting splashes of light on the backgrounds and the walls. We used mirrors on several occasions just to put in some hard background light and keep the contrast levels quite high for daytime, whereas for night time it’s an obvious choice to go for soft lighting – candle lighting. For some of those daytime scenes we actually used mirrors in a way I hadn’t seen before and it was very effective; I liked the look of them. I Mark Hope-Jones

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Illumination Dynamics Lights up MTV Video Music Awards Los Angeles-based lighting, grip and power distribution company Illumination Dynamics (ID), an ARRI Group Company, recently completed an extensive order from Lighting Director Tom Kenny for the 25th annual MTV Video Music Awards (VMAs) on Sept. 7th in Hollywood. Not only was it the first time the VMAs had returned to Los Angeles in a decade, but the star-studded event also pushed the envelope of drama and spectacle for live entertainment. Taking advantage of the many stages and backlots of the Paramount Pictures studio, the showcase of performances included top talent in the world of pop music like The Jonas Brothers, Kanye West, Rihanna, Pink and Christina Aguilera.

ID’s Account/Production Manager, Mark Villa, headed up the project for ID, working closely with Kenny. Blending the latest automated technology with the look of a classic Hollywood backlot, ID provided the automated package and, along with Paramount Studios Set Lighting, various ARRI fixtures and other conventional film lighting equipment.

“We also decided to work with VER because their inventory complemented our own for the specifics of this show,” says Villa. “ID, VER and Paramount personnel all worked well together to insure the show’s success.”

“ID provided a massive build for the VMAs,” notes Kenny. “This was a momentous job, lighting five exterior backlot sets and one massive studio set; it’s been the biggest undertaking for the VMAs so far. I was just following in the footsteps of Allen Branton, who created very high standards in lighting; ID helped me and my team create an adventurous and stunning show for MTV.” “Our first time working with Tom Kenny was a great experience,” asserts Villa.

“Tom has a very detailed yet grand vision for his shows and he is able to convey his thoughts in a way that allowed us to provide both the gear and the necessary support. He also happens

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to be one of the more humorous people in the business and that trickles down to his Gaffer Mike Grimes and through to the rest of the crew. There have been a lot of smiles and a ton of dry jokes on this job, and no one is left out; it’s great.”

The admiration is mutual; Kenny notes, “I’ve been blown away by the service that Mark Villa and Mark Rudge (Director of Automated and Theatrical Lighting) have given us. I was extremely impressed by the dedication of the ID team.”

Villa gives credit to MTV for allowing Kenny and other creatives to produce the dazzling look of the 25th VMAs. “MTV’s creative process is constantly evolving and as a group, their design teams are always looking to up the ante when it comes to the artists’ performances,” he says. “They have definitely kept us on our toes, but I think that as a team we have all responded well and the finished product is pretty impressive.”

Illumination Dynamics is a subsidiary of ARRI CSC and has facilities in Los Angeles and Charlotte, North Carolina.

Further information can be found on www.illuminationdynamics.com I An Tran

VISIONARRI

DISCUSSING THE NEXT SETUP:

Photo courtesy of Max Schmige

Karl Walter Lindenlaub and Camera Operator Julian Morson

Ninja Assassinhits Berlin After shooting Speed Racer (2008) in Berlin, Andy and Larry Wachowski – creators of The Matrix (1999) – and their producing partner, Joel Silver, decided to shoot their next project in the German capital as well.

Directed by James McTeigue, who made his name with V for Vendetta in 2005, Ninja Assassin is a martial arts extravaganza. It tells the story of a young assassin who breaks away from the secretive Ozunu Clan that trained him as a killer in order to avenge the murder of his best friend. The camera package, including an ARRICAM Studio and Lite, ARRIFLEX 435 and 235, was supplied by ARRI Rental Germany, as was the lighting and grip equipment. The film was the first major Hollywood project for the ARRI Lab in Berlin.

Since the establishment of the German Federal Film Fund (DFFF) in 2007, the Berlin-Brandenburg region has quickly grown to become the “Hollywood of the East,” a term coined by the German trade publication Blickpunkt:Film. The Wachowski brothers have not been alone in choosing to film in Berlin; Tom Cruise came to the city in 2007 because he wanted to create a more authentic look for his World War II thriller, Valkyrie.

Ninja Assassin received 5.8 million Euros from the DFFF and a further 651,000 Euros from the Medienboard BerlinBrandenburg, making the film a German-American co-production. Additional support came from the Medienfonds Fünfte Babelsberg Film of Studio Babelsberg, which was also involved in both V for Vendetta and Speed Racer. Raiza, the central character of Ninja Assassin, is played by South Korean pop star Rain, who inspired the idea for the film with his extraordinary martial arts fighting in Speed Racer. The film was shot in Berlin between April and June 2008 by the renowned German Cinematographer, Karl Walter Lindenlaub, ASC, BVK, whose previous features include The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (2008) and Independence Day (1995).

“The shoot generated more than 180 hours of 35mm, 4-perforation footage,” says ARRI Project Manager Clemens Schmid. The sheer quantity of material made the daily processing and scanning of film in preparation for the Avid edit a major undertaking. Colourists Jens Beyer and Silvia Kubisch worked in rotating shifts, as did everyone else assigned to this demanding project. ARRI Berlin handled a number of other postproduction tasks such as digitizing the HD dailies, which were completed on the Avid Adrenaline, adding the sound and recording the footage onto a hard drive. Throughout the shoot Larry and Andy Wachowski, Executive Producer Grant Hill, Director McTeigue and DoP Lindenlaub received dailies on personalised DVDs. In the early mornings and late at night the crew also took advantage of ARRI’s Digital Grading Cinema, a state-of-the-art projection facility, to screen the 35mm as well as the HD dailies. Ninja Assassin truly put ARRI’s new facilities in Berlin to the test; a test that was passed with flying colours.

Footage later made its way to Chicago, where postproduction will be completed. Warner Bros. plans to release Ninja Assassin in 2009. I Andreas Wirwalski

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When ARRI Met Kia Fine sand and extreme heat makes any desert treacherous; it is no place for delicate camera equipment, nor for a timid vehicle, but when ARRI cameras met Kia’s Mohave SUV for a television commercial shoot in Dubai, both rose to the challenge.

32

Korean Director Sin Sang-Soon and his production team felt slightly apprehensive when they arrived for what was their first shoot in Dubai. “I was worried, not knowing what it would be like,” says Sin Sang-Soon. “But I was pleasantly surprised at the international standard of equipment and crew there. Also, working with a DoP who knows the desert so well was a real asset.”

Demonstrating the capabilities and versatility of the new Mohave SUV in a variety of terrains called for spectacular scenes involving extreme desert driving. All were captured faithfully by ARRI cameras that had to function under highly challenging conditions; it was well over 45°C in the desert and similar temperatures in Dubai city were further exacerbated by 70% humidity.

“The ARRI equipment took huge punishment,” says DoP Anthony Smythe, Managing Director of Filmquip Media in Dubai. “It wasn’t just the intense heat and flying sand, it was also driving fast enough in the dunes to get the Kia airborne.”

Smythe used ARRI 435 ES and 235 cameras, Ultra Prime lenses and an Optimo 24-290mm zoom. “For all the tracking sequences in the desert we hard-mounted a Flight Head MkV on a 4x4 pick-up, and in the city we used a Techno 15 crane on a tracking vehicle. The ARRI 235 proved invaluable, both handheld and on the car rigs. I was impressed by the way the Flight Head performed; we did some hectic dune bashing. We also mounted an R1 type rig on the front of the Kia and the cameras literally ate sand all day.”

The commercial involved a helicopter sequence, for which a Tyler Side Mount was used. This sequence was a success, but only just; hot conditions mean less lift for a helicopter and the pilot was struggling, even on full power.

Facing a different challenge was Focus Puller Kevin Falconer, who worked with two cameras but only one camera crew.

Shrugging that off, he says: “The ARRI equipment supplied by Filmquip Media was amazing; it was maintained with no problems at all in spite of really punishing conditions. Glad wrap was the order of the day for the car rigs; the cameras were showered with fine sand all the time, but no gear was damaged or even problematic. The professional camera team was outstanding and so was the teamwork of the production crew; I have to say that the DoP excelled himself.”

The Filmquip Media crew, accustomed to the tricky business of dune driving, hailed another star of the show whose performance in the dunes impressed everyone: the Kia Mohave itself. I Lisa Buschek

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Hovis Packs 122 Years of History into New Commercial In 1973 Ridley Scott directed an advert for British bread maker Hovis. Depicting a small boy pushing a bike laden with loaves up the cobbled street of a northern town to the strains of Dvorak’s New World Symphony, it went on to become an advertising classic and was recently voted Britain’s best-loved commercial of all time.

Hovis had a lot to live up to when creating its epic new advert.

At 122 seconds, exceptionally long by television standards, it represents the 122 years since the birth of the first Hovis loaf and charts some of the highs and lows experienced by Britain during the company’s existence.

The narrative follows a boy, who is seen buying a Hovis loaf in 1886. He then takes an unusual journey home, dashing through events in British history including the suffragette movement, the First World War, the Second World War, the Queen’s coronation in 1953, England winning the 1966 World Cup, the 1980s miners’ strike and the Millennium celebrations. It all ends with the message ‘As good today as it’s always been’.

lining up shots and preliminary rehearsals in order to maximise our actual shooting time with Brian [the lead, played by Glasgow schoolboy Brian Mackie].”

A large cast of extras resulted in some particularly hideous call times for the wardrobe, hair and makeup departments. “The busiest day involved getting over 600 people into costume for the suffragette and First World War scenes, which were both

Produced by Rattling Stick for creative agency MCBD, the story was brought to life by leading commercial Director Ringan Ledwidge and shot by Alwin Kuchler BSC. Camera equipment, including an ARRICAM Lite and two ARRIFLEX 235s, was supplied by ARRI Media.

Shooting was packed into six days this summer. “The schedule was very tight,” says Humphries, “considering the amount of shots we had to get, and your time is restricted when filming with a minor as children can only work for a limited number of hours each day – so we used a stand-in where possible for

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Photo: Jake Green

One of the initial hurdles of the shoot was to find locations with buildings that were architecturally correct for each period.

With large parts of the city protected by conservation areas, Liverpool provided a number of suitable streets. Attention to detail was rigorous and modern-day features were meticulously disguised. “Hundreds of door and window plugs were needed to cover non-period paint work, UPVC windows and doors,” recalls producer Sally Humphries, “and lots of everyday items had to be camouflaged – parking meters, alarms, bollards, lamp posts – the list is endless.”

Photo: Jake Green

Photo: Jake Green

VISIONARRI

shot the same day,” remembers the producer. In contrast to the complexity and sheer scale of the shoot, Alwin Kuchler decided that visually the look would be kept simple. “In initial conversations I had with Ringan [the director],” says Kuchler, “we discussed a small visual arc, in terms of the history. He didn’t want to start with scratchy black and white images and end with crisp, clear colour images. The aim was to make the transitions through history more fluid, more subtle than that, so that the story didn’t jerk from period to period.”

Shooting on Kodak VISION2 5217 200T and 5218 500T, Kuchler used uncoated lenses with some filtration. “I started off with a stronger Antique Suede and some diffusion and as the story progresses I used less and less,” he explains. “By the end I didn’t have any filters at all.” His aim was to achieve a refined look which could easily be controlled in post. “There was an aspect that once you cut it, you don’t want to suddenly realise you went over the top and have therefore interrupted the fluidity of the story,” he says. “I wanted the look to be subtle enough so that it wasn’t in the way of what was unfolding.

“The focus was more on good framing and the use of camera angles to integrate the different periods smoothly,” concludes Kuchler, “so that as the boy runs home you understand he is travelling through history. The charm of the ad is that it’s so simple, yet so epic.”

The full 122-second advert was created for initial broadcast, with a number of shorter 90-second and 10-second versions also cut – all part of a huge campaign to mark the re-launch of the Hovis brand. I Michelle Smith

DoP ALWIN KUCHLER BSC setting up a high angle shot with an ARRIFLEX 235

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THE INNER TRUTH

For her second feature film as a director, Julie Delpy has turned her attention to a historical subject, using the legend surrounding the Hungarian Countess Erzsébet Báthory to create a “Lehrstück” about a woman’s failed attempt at self-assertion in a man’s world. The effects specialists at ARRI Digital Film were entrusted with the exciting challenge of conceiving a number of setups that are crucial pillars of the narrative structure of the film.

“For us, the appeal of the project is that an artist who’s been fascinated by the material for years isn’t only writing and acting in the film, but is also directing it. This form of complete artistic synthesis was what attracted me to the project,” admits Producer Andro Steinborn of X Filme International.

The Berlin-based company produced The Countess, a German-French co-production, in collaboration with Celluloid Dreams Productions.

Julie Delpy’s screenplay follows the known historical facts of the Countess’s life, but offers a very subjective interpretation of the true motives and psychological downfall of a woman who was powerful and feared in her time; a woman who, in the annals of the 17th century, gained unfortunate notoriety as “The Blood Countess.” The film is a tightrope walk along the edge of a female psyche

36

that is heading down a path of obsessive selfdestruction, and the camera follows to the bitter end with a cold interest.

The core of the plot is easily summed up: at a ball at court the widowed Countess Báthory (Julie Delpy) falls hopelessly in love with the much younger Istvan Thurzo (Daniel Brühl), the son of the Count Gyorgy Thurzo (William Hurt). The shortlived affair ends when the young man is forced to leave her, after which she descends into madness and self-destruction, realising too late that she has been the target of a plot spearheaded by her lover’s father. He not only undermines all her attempts to contact Istvan, but also subjects her to the manipulative counsel of his henchman, Dominic Vizakna (Sebastian Blomberg), who confirms her misguided belief that it is the age difference that

VISIONARRI

BEFORE/AFTER: digital mountain scenery including animated birds taking off

OF BLOOD

“ARRI HELPED US ENORMOUSLY IN THE EARLY STAGES. IT WAS IMPORTANT TO US THAT EVERYTHING STAYED UNDER ONE ROOF…” threatens to destroy her love. This leads her to the bizarre idea that the blood of virgins can rejuvenate her skin; as a result, countless young girls lose their lives over the years for her ‘bloody’ beauty regimen. The political trap finally snaps shut when Count Thurzo walls her up in a dungeon and seizes her property, all in the ‘service’ of the Hungarian crown.

What, on paper, reads like a forgotten treatment of Hammer Film Productions turns under Julie Delpy’s direction into a dark yet quiet chamber play, free of any slasher visuals.

“A historical costume drama with an international cast, shot and produced entirely in Germany – that was a challenge for us,” admits Steinborn. “At least – we’ve never done anything like it before.” To raise the 5.5 million Euros needed for this period

piece, X Filme International devised a diverse financing concept. The film was pre-sold in 20 countries and received private equity money as well as funding from the MDM, Medienboard, FFA and Mini-Traité. A large amount also came from the DFFF, because the production and postproduction of the film were to be completed exclusively in Germany. “For an artistically ambitious project like this, the support you can get in Germany these days is quite attractive,” Steinborn continues. “ARRI helped us enormously in the early stages. It was important to us that everything stayed under one roof because on European projects such as this postproduction tends to be spread out over several countries. I thought it was all very exciting and we at X Film International definitely view this as an approach we’d like to take again in the future.”

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THE INNER TRUTH OF BLOOD

DIGITAL FACE REPLACEMENT: to turn Julie

Still from Homo Faber courtesy Eberhardt Junkersdorf/Bioskop Film

Delpy into the young Erzsébet for the wedding scene her face was lifted from a shot in the film Homo Faber, which Julie made at the age of 18

Julie Delpy’s collaboration with DoP Martin Ruhe came about purely by chance. While she was preparing her own film she went to the premiere of Anton Corbijn’s Control with her producer. Steinborn recalls: “She is friends with Corbijn, so we went to see the film and we were impressed by the camerawork. We later met with Martin Ruhe and things came together very quickly; we are super happy with our choice.”

The cinematographer used an ARRICAM Studio and an ARRICAM Lite with Cooke S4 lenses and an Angenieux Optimo zoom, all supplied by ARRI Rental.

“Because of the tight budget we had to think about what we could light and how we could stick to the schedule,” recalls Ruhe, who was also in charge of the lighting design of the film. “Scouting locations, we had to ask ourselves the crucial question: where are we going to put the lights? Ideally, you’d find one castle and shoot everything you need there and then look for exteriors in the surrounding area. But in the end the shoot involved ten castles, all of them historic landmarks, which meant building large lighting rigs wasn’t an option.”

Often, lighting from the outside wasn’t possible either, because the castles were perched on rock walls or hillsides, or were surrounded by a castle moat. “This left us only one option,” continues Ruhe, “which was to light everything with small units and move all the light sources along the floor, since we had to work relatively quickly in so many locations; for our gaffer, the logistics were a nightmare.” Luckily, working this way dovetailed with the filmmakers’ desire to capture the typical light of the time using candles and a few china balls.

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The main location was Kriebstein Castle, which served as the Countess’s home. Filming also took place at Albrechtsburg Castle, Mildenstein Castle, the Königstein fortress and also Wartburg Castle. “We found a great number of castles and fortresses from that particular time period in the eastern part of Germany,” says Steinborn. “And they’re in an amazing condition that’s unmatched elsewhere.”

During preproduction, Ruhe watched numerous historical films and looked at contemporary paintings, but “finally decided to follow the contemporary painting style of that time.” The visual concept for The Countess calls for muted colours, not only because the film was shot during the winter months, but also to serve the story. “We wanted red to equal blood,” continues Ruhe. “Therefore we decided that it had to be a very saturated red, so there was hardly any red in the wardrobe.”

The film was shot between February and April, primarily in Saxony, Thuringia, and Berlin. Filming was made slightly difficult by Julie Delpy’s multiple responsibilities. “It wasn’t always easy to give her what she wanted,” says Ruhe.

“Directing and acting are two very different aspects of the work. In front of the camera she was supposed to perform and not think much about it, but at the same time she was the filmmaker and had to make decisions. And so the biggest responsibility of the DoP is to help her so that she can make those decisions easily.”

VISIONARRI

“THAT’S THE ADVANTAGE HERE IN-HOUSE – THE SYNERGIES, THE SHORT DISTANCES, THE ENTIRE FILM KNOW-HOW IS HERE AT YOUR DISPOSAL.” The visual effects specialists at ARRI Digital Film were involved early on because the planned VFX shots were essential plot elements of the film. “We helped shape all of the dramatically crucial sequences,” says Creative Director Prof. Jürgen Schopper. “We are very proud to have a film such as this one here at ARRI.” The project has offered the perfect opportunity for Schopper to apply the credo that he has championed for years, in his VFX work and in his teaching, which is that storytelling has to be an essential part of the effects so that they won’t be reduced to a mere afterthought.

The feasibility of two effects that were particularly close to Julie Delpy’s heart had to be meticulously evaluated prior to the shoot, because they defined the parameters of the entire camera setup and lighting design in those scenes. The script called for a wedding scene showing the 15-year-old Erzsébet next to her significantly older husband. Instead of using a girl of about that age, the director had the idea of playing the scene herself and later, during

postproduction, replacing her face with its younger version from earlier films she’d acted in. And so, old Julie Delpy films were scoured for options and in the end two shots from Volker Schlöndorff’s Homo Faber (1991) were used.

Now, the real jigsaw puzzle work began. Of course, no one knew the focal length that was used, almost two decades ago, to shoot these Homo Faber scenes, so Schopper sought the help of ARRI’s camera department. “That’s the advantage here in-house – the synergies, the short distances, the entire film know-how is here at your disposal,” he says. After Ruhe had come to similar conclusions with regards to focal length, camera height and angle, the scenes were set up. “But that wasn’t all,” Schopper continues.

“We had to read the lighting design of the shots as well. And, since we couldn’t change the way her face was lit back then, we more or less customised the lighting of the cathedral to match the lighting of the insert.”

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THE INNER TRUTH OF BLOOD

DIGITALLY INTEGRATED: to create historically accurate scenes many

elements were filmed individually and later combined into a single shot.

In this example, an actor in front of the church, a stage coach in front of a green screen and a complex matte painting background

VFX Team The Countess Creative Director VFX: Prof. Jürgen Schopper VFX and DI Producer: Nina Knott Senior Compositing Artists: David Laubsch, Tobias Wiesner, Manuel Voss Mattepainting: Chris Dreher Computer Graphics 3D Artists: Andreas Alesik, Marcel Knüdeler, Marius Herzog

The old shot captured a sideways glance, which fits well into the psychology of the wedding scene. “A stroke of luck,” says Schopper. “It works perfectly, because it gives the impression that the 15-year-old girl really does glance at the man who looks down on her joyfully.” The smile on her face in the Homo Faber shot was slightly too pronounced, so was subtly toned down in postproduction. Remarkably, the scene was shot without using tracking marks; only Delpy’s eyes served as reference points.

The same approach was used for two other key scenes in the film. One shows the protagonist, who, after one of her blood facelifts, looks into the mirror and sees a younger version of herself. “The exciting part about this digital insert is that it really is a reflection in an old historical mirror,” explains Schopper. “The surface of the mirror isn’t really even, which creates distortions that we had to insert on the computer as well, but exactly because of that, the shot looks very authentic.”

“The producers weren’t excited about the idea of replacing my face in two of the scenes,” recalls Delpy, “but now I am glad that I prevailed. Using my own face from another film, in which I’m barely 20 years old, I can better establish that Erzsébet thinks of herself as much younger. I’m very happy that it was possible to do this, and that the effect works so well.” Ruhe was also proud of the team effort: “Reconstructing a shot this way has never been done before,” he says.

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Though the face switch was labour-intensive and required a lot of research, it was just one of many scenes that involved complex compositing. Another difficult shot was a close-up of Delpy that shows the rejuvenating effect the ‘cosmetic’ blood has on her skin – the way it seems to seep into her pores. “We wanted a hard-to-detect morphing effect that would emphasise Báthory’s emotional state rather than a real physical change,” says Schopper. “It’s all about the inner truth of the protagonist, the way she perceives herself.” Each drop of blood on the Countess’s face necessitated a separate mask and work was required on almost every individual wrinkle. In fact over 100 distinct stages of compositing work were involved in subtly bringing the shine back to Báthory’s skin and hair, the colour to her eyes and the gloss to her lips.

As well as work on Delpy’s face, there were all the ‘regular’ VFX tasks: removing historically incorrect elements; extending sets and landscapes; duplicating extras and inserting digital elements such as blood and flies. “I believe that the options we have today in postproduction create other options for me,” concludes Ruhe. “Without all that, we wouldn’t have been able to tell the story the way we are telling it. You would have to narrow the images on a historical project such as this.”

The Countess is scheduled to be released theatrically by X Verleih in early 2009. I Ingo Klingspon

VISIONARRI

The Countess An Interview with Writer/Director and Lead Actress Julie Delpy After the culture clash comedy 2 Days in Paris (2007), Julie Delpy has turned her attention to a very dark subject matter for her second directorial outing.

Her film The Countess is an ambitious psychological character study of one of the most controversial female figures of western civilization: the “Blood Countess” Báthory is reputed to have murdered up to 650 young women in sixteenth-century Slovakia. During postproduction, VisionARRI had a chance to catch up with the French auteur to ask her a few questions.

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THE COUNTESS

“THE FILM TAKES US INTO A MAN’S WORLD WHERE THERE IS ONLY ONE POWERFUL WOMAN…” How important are visual effects in your film and how is the collaboration with the VFX specialists here at ARRI Digital Film?

VA:

JD: There are only a few VFX in the film, but the few that there are mean a lot to me. They have to be perfect. The film is set in the real world, and so the effects have to be used very gently, but it is exactly that subliminal aspect that makes them so difficult.

The work is moving along well and without problems.

Communication couldn’t be better and we quickly came up with solutions for what I had in mind.

CROWD

DUPLICATION: 50 extras are later 200 wedding guests in historical costumes

VisionARRI: What fascinated you about Erzsébet so much that you decided to take make a feature film about the infamous Hungarian countess?

Julie Delpy: I’ve always loved fairy tales, even as a kid, and I still do today as an adult. I particularly like the dark sides of fairy tales and myths. I like characters such as the evil Queen in Snow White or the Cyclops from the Odyssey. These sinister characters attract me. In some ways Báthory, who was a real person, has these particular fairytale-like elements that fascinate me so much. And when you dig a little deeper you find the material for tragedy in her story. It doesn’t matter if she was an insane female serial killer or, if truth be told, an innocent woman accused by greedy representatives of the aristocracy, it still remains a tragedy.

You are not only playing the lead but you also wrote the script and directed the film. How did you juggle all those roles?

VA:

Writing and directing wasn’t easy. It took years to get The Countess made and even when the financing was in place, a lot of problems remained. Now, during postproduction of the film, it’s still a struggle.

Directing on set can be very draining; you are always either running out of time or out of money.

Luckily, I had a fantastic crew and the people I work with during postproduction here at ARRI are truly fantastic.

JD:

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Some say that the Countess bathed in the blood of virgins to preserve her youth.

Did you intend for the film to be a subtle dismissal of the current Botox boom?

VA:

JD: No, I don’t want to use this film to make fun of the use of Botox, even if there is a timely element in it, namely that ageing for women is connected to a lot of fear. I personally am not afraid of ageing, but I was fascinated by this process from an early age.

Actually, the film is more about deteriorating than about a woman who is ageing and losing her mind over it; the loss of love is what drives her mad, and the fear of dying, which is something I can empathize with. I think I enjoy growing older, because I tell myself that looking older also means I have stayed alive; when I am old, I am at least not dead. Lovesickness I can relate to; dying of a broken heart might have gone out of style but I love the idea.

Your 2003 record Julie Delpy is considered a cult Neo-Feminist album.

Are similar views of relationships between men and women expressed in The Countess as well?

VA:

I grew up around two feminists – my mom was one of them and my dad was the other, even more so – and I, for whatever reason, like stories about women and songs with a female point of view.

Female characters are often very one-dimensional or they are made up of very few character traits. I don’t know if I was able to do better, but with The Countess I was trying to create a very complex woman. She is mad, but also sane and intelligent.

She thinks logically, but is still confused; sometimes she is kind but at other times she is incredibly cruel.

JD:

VISIONARRI

“WE ARE VERY PROUD TO HAVE A FILM SUCH AS THIS ONE, WITH AN INTERNATIONAL CAST, WITH THIS SUBJECT MATTER AND THIS DIRECTOR HERE AT ARRI…” I find complex behavioural patterns very interesting and wanted to play with that, using her as a very specific example. The film takes us into a man’s world where there is only one powerful woman and she is being victimized through love and power games.

Even when she appears strong, she is incredibly fragile. I have problems with the branch of feminism that argues that women are categorically better people than men. I believe that depends very much on the individual; some women are not at all better than men. But I am for equality and for equal opportunity, and we are still far from it in our own countries and in the rest of the world. When I started to write the script I was afraid I could be laughed at, because I am a woman and an actress. Many assume that women don’t have the kind of humour I have – an impertinent and politically incorrect humour.

Towards the end of the film, your protagonist says she is sorry that her uncontrolled and obsessive behaviour will make things very difficult for women in politics for a long time. What was your intention here?

VA:

JD: Over the course of history men have repeatedly kept women from power. They have pointed to examples such as Báthory and argued that women are too superficial, too crazy or too evil to rule; just think about the witch hunts. It is even possible that the person in my film is not as guilty as they say she is.

Báthory was apparently ruthless and might have had some servants who didn’t obey her killed. But then again other noblemen could have built certain events up in order to get rid of her so that one of her cousins could take over her possessions. Many were just against her because she was so powerful. That is another aspect I like as well. I Ingo Klingspon

43

Photos: Š 2008 Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. and Beverly Blvd LLC. All rights reserved.

Photo: Jay Maidment

The International 44

Following his 2006 hit Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, German Director Tom Tykwer brought many of the same team together again for his next feature, The International. Cinematographer Frank Griebe has shot every one of Tykwer’s films, dating back to the early shorts, and was again behind the camera for this latest project. Starring Clive Owen and Naomi Watts, The International is an action/conspiracy thriller about an Interpol agent (Owen) who uncovers corruption and malpractice on a worldwide scale while investigating a large banking institution. When he discovers links to terrorism and arms-dealing which lead back to his own organisation, he is forced underground and pursued relentlessly by those who will stop at nothing to protect their secrets. Due to be released by Sony Pictures in February 2009, The International was supplied with camera, lighting and grip equipment by ARRI Rental Germany and ARRI CSC in New York. Lab work was carried out at ARRI in Munich and the DI grade at the new ARRI Schwarzfilm facilities in Berlin.

“Tom first saw the script seven or eight years ago,” says Griebe. “He always liked the story, but felt the script needed work, and these things take time.” The script, by first-timer Eric Singer, was eventually completed to Tykwer’s satisfaction, after which the director started working out an overall approach to the film with Griebe. “Both Tom and I are big fans of political thrillers from the 1970s,” continues the cinematographer. “Films like All the Presidents Men [1976], made by directors like Alan J. Pakula and Sydney Pollack. For us, The International was almost like a period movie, because when you go to the cinema today the characters speak in a totally different way.

So we said ‘OK we can do it very slow, but we need a little bit more speed in a few places’, so we added more action scenes.

I feel in the end it’s a mix of the ‘70s movies with some modern aspects as well, influenced by films like the Bourne franchise.

The idea was to achieve a balance between the two.”

Photo: Christian Almesberger

VISIONARRI

“THESE 65MM SCENES HAVE NO GRAIN; THEY ARE REALLY SHARP AND JUST LOOK FANTASTIC. IT ALSO MADE A BIG DIFFERENCE THAT THEY HAVE THIS NEW ARRISCAN.”

DIRECTOR TOM TYKWER checks the framing through the ARRIFLEX 765 ARRIFLEX 765 on the highest minaret of the Syleymaniye mosque in

Since the film was always going to be put through a Digital Intermediate, its producers were able to take advantage of the financial savings afforded by shooting on 3-perforation 35mm, which reduces stock and processing costs. Griebe selected an ARRICAM Studio as his A-camera, with a Lite for handheld and Steadicam shots. He also had an ARRIFLEX 235 for cramped locations where its compact size proved invaluable, as well as a 435 for action scenes and high speed work. The crew were shooting with at least two cameras for almost every setup. Although this combination of cameras gave Griebe huge flexibility and choice, there were a few situations where he wanted something more: “Although close-ups and medium shots look very sharp in 35mm, wide, panoramic shots can sometimes look a bit grainy,” he explains. “So I came up with the idea of shooting some scenes in 65mm, with the ARRIFLEX 765. The first image and the last image of the film are 65mm; we used it for wide shots, landscape shots and also some other specific scenes. These 65mm scenes have no grain; they are really sharp and just look fantastic. It also made a big difference that they have this new ARRISCAN that can scan the 65mm film, so we could mix 35mm scanned to 2K and 65mm scanned to 4K in the DI.”

Photo: Jay Maidment

Griebe has a long and established relationship with ARRI, so he never had any doubt about where he would go for the camera equipment and lab work. “Tom and I have had good experiences with the company for a long time,” he says. “Our first film with ARRI was Winter Sleeper in 1997, and since then I have always stayed with them. On Perfume everything came from ARRI – all the equipment, all the lab work, and the DI. When we came to do The International, we had no reason to do anything different. Tom wanted to do the edit and the DI in Germany rather than travel to LA or New York; he wanted to stay home. This was possible because ARRI is able to provide the service we need, no matter how big the project.”

Istanbul (it was almost impossible to get the camera up the narrow staircase)

45

Photo: Helmut Prein

THE INTERNATIONAL

“…I DIDN’T CHOOSE THE MASTER PRIMES FOR THEIR SPEED; IT WAS MORE THE QUALITY OF THE GLASS AND THE SHARPNESS.”

For the 65mm scenes, Griebe used the specially constructed Zeiss lenses that come with the 765, which cut well with the ARRI Master Primes and Master Zoom he selected for the rest of the shoot. “My experience with the Master Primes on Perfume was just so good,” notes the cinematographer. “I did some tests and they were so amazing that I decided to use them again. On this film I shot wide open on only one or two occasions, most of the time we were at T2.8. I didn’t choose the Master Primes for their speed; it was more the quality of the glass and the sharpness. I like to have the sharpest possible negative.”

In January 2008, the production travelled to New York in order to film Guggenheim exteriors as well as interiors showing the whole rotunda. “We were in New York for about two weeks,” recalls Griebe. “We hired gear from ARRI CSC; it was the first time I had ever filmed a feature film in New York.” Lighting the museum interiors proved an extremely difficult task, as the building’s inestimable architectural importance meant that the crew were forbidden from mounting lamps to any part of the structure. Though this necessitated lighting from outside, a circular skylight at the very top of the rotunda provided the only opportunity to do so.

True to its title, the film is set all over the world and the production travelled around a great deal. “The story takes place in Berlin, New York, Milan, Istanbul and Luxembourg,” says gaffer Helmut Prein. “One of the biggest scenes in the movie unfolds at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, where there is a shootout that involves major destruction to the museum building.” This, of course, meant that parts of the sequence could not be filmed on location and the crew had to think about recreating Frank Lloyd Wright’s famous structure in a studio. Even after the decision was taken to reproduce only half of the ramps of the Guggenheim rotunda, it took some time to locate a studio large enough to accommodate them.

Eventually, an old locomotive warehouse was found near Studio Babelsberg in Potsdam, though a structural engineer had to be brought in to make the necessary renovations.

46

Photo: Jay Maidment

During the shoot, dailies were developed by the ARRI lab in Munich and graded at ARRI Schwarzfilm in Berlin, under the watchful eye of Dailies and DI Supervisor Chris Berg. Colourist Traudl Nicholson worked on both the dailies and the final DI grade, just as she had done on Perfume. “Frank handled the dailies in pretty much the same way as on Perfume,” she says.

“He would grade a few still images from each day’s shoot to give me an idea of how to grade the dailies, which were sent back to the production on HDCAM.”

Photo: Helmut Prein Photo: Helmut Prein

VISIONARRI

“The idea was to fly a truss beam box with 18Ks on ARRI MaxMover remote stirrups above the glass skylight, or dome,” says Prein. “One big problem was finding somewhere to put the crane that held the lighting rig, especially as it had to be left in place overnight. Instead of using standard Fresnel lights we decided to utilise 18K ARRIMAX units, which have almost double the output of regular 18Ks. ARRI CSC supplied us with six of the units – the maximum number we could rig in our lighting box without losing the option to move them on the MaxMovers. Another consideration was that we had to tilt the lights down to almost a 90° angle. After having a telephone conversation with ARRI Munich we decided to go ahead and the ARRIMAX lamps took it; we didn’t have any failures during our entire shooting day.”

When the shoot wrapped and postproduction began, the team were pleased to be able to make use of ARRI’s recently expanded facilities in Berlin. “We used the new DI grading suite at ARRI Schwarzfilm, which was a first for us, because for Perfume we were in Munich,” says Griebe. “The suite in Berlin is unbelievable as it can seat about 30 people and the screen is huge; I think it’s the biggest grading suite in Europe.

It was very useful to be able to do more in Berlin, because that is where we wanted to be based.”

Photo: Jay Maidment

Traudl Nicholson worked with both Tykwer and Griebe in the DI suite, though the director’s hectic schedule meant the grade was broken up into several blocks rather than being done in one go. “The International has a totally different look from Perfume, which was more of an old fashioned looking movie,” she says. “This one is very modern and stylish, with colder colours and nice, natural flesh tones. The different sets and locations had different looks; in Turkey it was warm and sunny, with a lot of contrast, whereas some of the office scenes were quite grey in tone. The movie doesn’t have one look; the sets were so good and so different that they did a lot of the grading for us.”

ISTANBUL: Steadicam Operator Markus Pohlens, behind him Best Boy Grip Glenn König (right) and Tom Tykwer (left)

(above) MILAN: multi-light rig suspended 246 feet above the Piazza Duca

d´Aosto on a crane (centre) NEW YORK: crane-mounted floating light rig above the Guggenheim Museum (below) BERLIN: replica of the Guggenheim interior at Studio Babelsberg

VFX Producer Dominik Trimborn worked with Nicholson and the filmmakers to ensure that the extensive visual effects were integrated as seamlessly as possible during the grade. “A representative from the VFX company would come and see us once or twice a week, just to make sure things were progressing along the right lines,” continues Nicholson. “The Guggenheim sequence was particularly difficult because the studio footage, the location footage and also the second unit footage all had to be matched. There was a lot of different material and a lot of VFX, so it was a challenge to bring all of that together and carry one look through the scene. Another difficult scene came up during the first reel; it involves a guy who has died, but his flesh tone was quite magenta-red, so he didn’t look very dead! We had to do an extremely tricky shape on him to take the colour out of his face; I’m sure it will end up on my show reel!” I Mark Hope-Jones

47

Al Mahed The Awakening of Arabic Cinema

Syrian Director Mohammed Malas’s most recent work, Al Mahed, is an extraordinary and opulent period film set in pre-Islamic times. The idea for the extravagant project, produced in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, came from Sheik Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan. The producers were able to bring on board seasoned Portuguese DoP Elso Roque, who had to work in the most excruciating heat during the six-month shoot.

The shoot, which lasted six months, commenced in March of 2007 in Abu Dhabi, or rather, the nearby Al Fujayrah, where it was so hot that the crew had to move to the ancient city of Palmyra, an oasis in Syria. All interiors and exteriors were shot there and, at times, up to 600 extras and a great number of horses crowded the set. The legendary septuagenarian filmmaker Mohammed Malas co-wrote and directed the film; most recently he created quite a stir at the Marrakech International Film Festival with his epic drama Bab el Makam (Passion). Film lovers will also remember that the Syrian director introduced his highly regarded film Ahlam el Madina (Dreams of the City) at the Berlin Film Festival in 1985.

ON SET in Syria

Al Mahed, an old Arabic noun, can be translated as birth, awakening, or beginning. With regards to the content of the film, Al Mahed is a rather ambiguous title. The story is set about 50 years prior to the birth of Mohammed, the founder of the Islamic faith, who lived between 570 – 632 C.E. It takes place in the southern part of the Arabian Peninsula and is based on historical facts: one day the Yemenite king Abraha and his powerful army appear outside the gates to Kinda, a legendary desert paradise populated by poets and thinkers. Abraha is on his way to Mekka to destroy the Kaaba, which at this point in time was a pagan shrine. Kinda’s King Saad and his brother Amr want to grant the ruthless Abraha entry into their kingdom, but Amr’s son, the knight and poet Al Walid, wants to banish the besieging army and its leader with the help of partisan troops. The day of Abraha’s arrival is the day Al Walid is supposed to marry his cousin, Lubanah, the daughter of the king. But, in dangerous and trying times, private happiness is a much lesser concern…

48

On Al Mahed, Malas could count on the extensive experience of another filmmaking veteran, DoP Elso Roque, who, in 2000, was made an honorary member of the Associação de Imagem Cinema e Televisão Portuguesa (AIP). Born in 1939, Roque learned his trade under, among others, François Truffaut and his DoP Raoul Coutard during the shooting of La Peau Douce (The Soft Skin, 1964). But even a seasoned expert like Roque, who had also worked with Manoel de Oliveira and João Botelho, struggled with the rigors of the desert climate during sweat drenched, 16hour shooting days on location.

While most of the location work was shot on 35mm, certain scenes that would involve CG elements added during postproduction were shot digitally. A particular challenge was the diversity of languages spoken on set, even though the majority of the cast and crew members came from Arabic speaking countries. The cast consists, at least in the leading roles, of well-known and popular actors from the Arabic television world, such as Khalid Taja and Hisham Abdel Hamid. The starring role, however, went to the Austrian-Egyptian actor and filmmaker Faris Rahoma, who plays the freedom fighter, Al Walid.

VISIONARRI

With access to seemingly unlimited funding, the young production company Al Reef Art Productions from Abu Dhabi took their first big-budget Arabic film about the pre-Islamic period to Damascus, where a rough cut was assembled, and later to Munich for the completion of postproduction. In Munich, during the summer of 2008, the specialists at ARRI Film & TV completed the DI, the VFX and the sound, as well as the inserts and the English subtitles. Meticulous preparations kept digital effects, such as the duplication of soldiers on foot and on horseback or the moving of campfires and tents, to a minimum. The grading work undertaken by ARRI Digital Colourist Manfred Turek was more involved. Many scenes had been shot in extremely bright desert light, which resulted in an incredible contrast range, while the highly reflective desert sand posed additional challenges. In order to create an authentic look, Turek had to use shapes for almost every setup.

As a result, many of the Lustre tools were put to good use, for example, in adjusting the skin tones of the international cast to make them more consistent.

Later, the footage went back to Abu Dhabi for approval.

Al Mahed, according to Ghada Saleh, the producer in charge, will premier in October at the Middle East International Film Festival (MEIFF) – Abu Dhabi 2008, a perfect way to kick off the new direction that local film production is taking. According to a Reuter’s report in September 2008, the Emirate of Abu Dhabi is putting up one billion dollars to get into the business of international film production. This amount is allocated to fund a total of eight feature films per year, over a period of five years. I Andreas Wirwalski

DISCUSSING A SHOT: DoP Elso Roque and Director Mohammed Malas 49

Hi-Motion a Winner at the Olympics The 2008 Beijing Olympics were not only the first games to be broadcast in full HDTV, but also the first to make extensive use of high speed digital cameras. After competitive testing in April this year, BOB (Beijing Olympic Broadcasting) invited ARRI Media to be the official supplier of high speed HD cameras and requested as many of its Hi-Motion systems as could be made ready in time.

“The great challenge has been creating the infrastructure required to enable total coverage of such a huge range of events,” notes ARRI Media’s Digital High Speed Manager, Andy Hayford. “High speed has not been used much at past Olympics because neither the technology nor the infrastructure was in place. The Hi-Motion was perfectly placed for this year’s Olympics because it is a true HD camera and has such a proven ability to integrate with OB infrastructures. It provides footage fast enough and of sufficient quality to be used extensively through a live event.”

The Hi-Motion came of age at just the right time to be part of the huge step forward in presenting such a complex event to a worldwide audience in HD. As the market leader in the field of high speed digital cinematography at live broadcast events, the Hi-Motion had already been used for a wide range of sports. This proved to be ideal preparation for the diverse challenges of an Olympics at which seven Hi-Motion cameras filmed eleven different events.

One particularly interesting Hi-Motion setup was utilised for the two marathons and the two cycling road races. For these events the Hi-Motion was mounted on a gyroscopically controlled remote head that was itself mounted to a specially adapted Lexus camera car. This was the first time a high speed camera had been vehicle-mounted for the live broadcast of an Olympic event.

Footage from the Hi-Motion cameras was integrated by BOB into its main coverage, which was supplied to all of the RHBs (Rights Holding Broadcasters). Each of these broadcasters, such as the BBC, could also locate Hi-Motion clips on the BOB media server and edit them into their own postproduced programmes and highlight montages.

Though the cameras were supplied on a dry hire basis, representatives from ARRI Media travelled to Beijing to ensure that the integration of the Hi-Motions into the live coverage of each event was as seamless as possible. They also provided training for the operators and technicians who had not used the system before.

Hi-Motion coverage proved a tremendous success, as BOB’s Head of Engineering, Sotiris Salamouris, acknowledged when BOB was presented with an award by SVG (Sports Video Group) in September: “It has been challenging work, with many firsts: the first Olympics in full HDTV, full 5.1 surroundsound audio, virtual enhancement in HDTV by the host broadcaster, central HDTV server in the IBC, HD RF coverage in all outside races with no helis and Hi-Motion cameras in multiple sports. It would be impossible to achieve any of these objectives without strong support from the international broadcast industry, vendors and service providers from all over the world that contributed with their expertise, resources, and hard work; our thanks go to all of these significant partners.” I Mark Hope-Jones

50

Dominik Trimborn

New Head of VFX at ARRI

After two years absence, Dominik Trimborn has returned to ARRI with a new role – Head of the Visual Effects Department. With him he brings clearly defined goals for the systematic expansion of the services ARRI DIGITAL FILM currently offers its feature film and television clients.

“What appeals to me,” says Trimborn, “is that every project poses new challenges. There are no boring chores in this job that can be fixed using a set formula; each time you have to think about developing something new or reprogramming something. In the end, everything is possible in VFX. There are no limits; you can do anything your budget allows you to do.”

Trimborn’s new role will involve advising clients and acquiring new projects for ARRI. Internally, he will focus on building VFX supervisor/ producer teams: “It will be my job to ensure that the teams and the projects are a perfect fit,” he says. Also high up on his agenda is the expansion of a stand-alone 3D department within the VFX division of ARRI Digital Film.

Trimborn, a Munich native, has worked in visual effects since 1995 and has a great deal of experience working on top-level productions. In 2003 he joined ARRI Digital Film as Visual Effects and Digital Intermediate Supervisor, overseeing the visual effects for films such as Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (2006) and Don’t Come Knocking (2005). Since 2006 Trimborn has been an ARRI consultant for Scandinavia and over the last 14 months he has worked as a Visual Effects Producer on The International, Director Tom Tykwer’s latest film.

One of the main advantages ARRI offers its clients is the wide range of services it can provide in just one location, including equipment rental, lab work, postproduction and sound.

“What clients like,” says Trimborn, “is the fact that they don’t have to deal with the issue of getting data delivered from here to there; the workflows are optimized and are therefore extremely time efficient. Offering this closed chain is absolutely unique in Germany; our Digital Intermediate and VFX divisions are located under one roof and work hand in hand.”

ARRI’s VFX facility has so far specialised in small to mid-size national productions, though Trimborn has plans to expand and accommodate major productions as well. “It is our goal to work on large productions more often in the future,” he says. “We want to remain strong on the national level while working to establish an international presence. Large international productions with around 500 VFX shots tend to spread the work over a number of postproduction houses. In the medium-term, we intend to become a key player on this level.”

Although based out of Munich, Trimborn intends to focus some of his attention on strengthening ARRI’s Berlin facilities: “Together with the ARRI subsidiary Schwarzfilm, we want to be represented much more prominently in the Berlin film business, especially in terms of VFX services,” he says. “With flexible teams we can easily assist productions in Berlin.” I Ingo Klingspon

51

Life at the

Sharp

Based on the novels of Bernard Cornwell, Sharpe is a long-running television drama series starring Sean Bean as Rifleman Richard Sharpe, a British soldier during the time of the Napoleonic Wars. The original series was set in Europe and aired in the UK between 1993 and 1997; nine years later the original team reassembled for Sharpe’s Challenge, a new adventure set during Sharpe’s years in India. The latest episode, Sharpe’s Peril, remains in India and sees the title character decide to leave the army before being drawn into a bloody conflict while escorting civilians on the way to Calcutta. Shot by DoP James Aspinall, Peril was the first episode of Sharpe to be filmed on 3-perforation 35mm rather than Super 16 and was supplied with ARRICAM Studios, an ARRIFLEX 435 ES and Ultra Prime lenses by ARRI Media in London.

What do you think the continuing appeal of Sharpe is for TV audiences?

VisionARRI:

Paul Frift: Sean Bean, probably! I think really it’s because Sharpe is one of those classic ‘boy’s own’ adventure stories; there’s sword fighting; daring deeds; doing the right thing; fighting evil – all those elements are there.

How much of the project was filmed on location in India?

VA:

PF: It was entirely shot in India. We were in a town called Khajuraho, which has a lot of famous temples so its infrastructure is based on tourism and they have plenty of western style hotels, although there’s nothing much around the town. We wanted to get some sort of water adventure into this episode, which was the main reason we went there.

When they did the original recces in the summer of 2007 they thought we might be into production by November, when there would be a lot of water in the river. By the time they actually got the funding in place it was the dry season, so a river crossing scene that was conceived around a raging torrent with perilous rapids had to be rewritten because the water only came up to your knees!

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Sharpe has always been shot on Super 16 in the past; why the change to 35mm for this one?

VA:

The decision was made because of the drive towards HD broadcast both here and in the States.

The American money behind the project would only accept either HD or 35mm, so the producers decided to go for 35mm. HD wouldn’t have worked in the kinds of terrain and temperatures we were working in. You’re dealing with 40-plus-degree heat out there; the speed at which you have to work and the amount of action I don’t think lends itself to HD or any other video format really.

PF:

Did the savings of shooting 3-perforation affect the decision?

VA:

Yes, absolutely; without 3-perforation I doubt we would have made the financing work. It was a very good format for us both in terms of the budget and the fantastic quality of the images. Funnily enough I had done a 3-perforation job back in 1988 as an assistant director; it was a drama series called Piece of Cake, about a Spitfire squadron during the war. Holmes Associates made it and Andrew Holmes had tried to pioneer 3-perforation in the UK but it didn’t really take off!

PF:

VISIONARRI

e End

Producer Paul Frift talks to VisionARRI about filming Sharpe’s Peril on location in India

TOM CLEGG directs Sean Bean VA: What were the principal challenges of the location filming?

PF: Illness is the big thing. You never know who’s going to turn up ready to film on any given morning and the doctor becomes pretty much the most important man on the unit. It’s just down to being in a completely different country and never being sure what kind of water vegetables have been cooked in – that sort of thing. You’re surrounded by dust and animals and millions of people who don’t have running water or toilet facilities.

VA:

“WITHOUT 3-PERFORATION I DOUBT WE WOULD HAVE MADE THE FINANCING WORK. IT WAS A VERY GOOD FORMAT FOR US BOTH IN TERMS OF THE BUDGET AND THE FANTASTIC QUALITY OF THE IMAGES.”

What were you doing about rushes?

PF: We were using a lab in Mumbai and that all became a bit of a mission. Just transporting our rushes there and getting DVDs back was very difficult; there were a lot of cultural differences and language problems. We never quite got it completely sorted out to be honest.

Quite a few members of the team had a lot of previous experience on Sharpe, including Director Tom Clegg. Were they all used to the difficulties of being on location?

Was the change in format linked to a change in style or visual approach?

VA:

PF: The director and producers have got a successful formula so they didn’t really want to change it. They’ve always tried to make Sharpe as cinematic as they can, so having 35mm didn’t make a specific difference in that sense.

You were a long way from ARRI Media; did you feel you had adequate support and backup for the camera equipment?

VA:

VA:

Oh, completely. Most of the first four series were shot in the Ukraine and they encountered incredibly difficult conditions from the start; I believe that one year they didn’t have any water and had to dig a well. They would always be battling against the climate, the local mafia – all sorts of things – so they were well battle-hardened. Tom is an absolutely amazing guy; he’s in his seventies and he’s done every single Sharpe. He never gets ill and he’s always the first to the top of the hill; I don’t know where he gets his energy from.

PF:

Yes, we did. Obviously you take two cameras – actually I think we took three – and so to that extent one feels relatively comfortable. There are always Indian rental houses that one could turn to if necessary, but I know Russell Allen at ARRI Media and he’s never let me down. I PF:

Mark Hope-Jones

53

Y R O T S A N A I S I U LO

MOMENTS IN TIME

Legendary documentary maker Robert J. Flaherty directed the final film of his career in the bayous and marshes of southern Louisiana over the course of 15 months between 1946 and 1947.

Louisiana Story tells of how the lives of a young Cajun boy and his family are affected by the arrival of an oil derrick in the swampland behind their home.

It was filmed entirely on location by a young Richard Leacock, who would go on to become one of the most influential documentary cameramen of the twentieth century. Remembered to this day for its exquisite blackand-white cinematography, Louisiana Story was among the very first American films to make use of the revolutionary ARRIFLEX 35 II camera.

There is a fundamental conflict at the heart of documentary filmmaking, a conflict shared by almost every art or science that seeks to observe and record the world around us. In quantum physics this conflict is described by Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, which states that the act of locating a particle in a defined space prevents the particle’s momentum from being simultaneously measured. Put simply, the very process of observing limits what can be observed and in fact often alters the subject under observation. Anyone who has pointed a camera at someone and asked them to ‘act naturally’ will recognise the paradox implicit in such an instruction. Documentarians have struggled with this quandary since the earliest days of the genre. Russian pioneer Dziga Vertov, for example, was so obsessed with 54

his pursuit of “film truth” that he went to great lengths to conceal his cameras while shooting and eventually tried to circumvent the problem by making a film about a man making a film (Man with a Movie Camera, 1929).

Robert J. Flaherty is frequently cited as having effectively invented the documentary feature with his 1922 film Nanook of the North. Though groundbreaking for its location shoot in the Canadian Arctic and for starring real Inuit ‘Eskimos’, Nanook was actually a carefully staged work of fiction and is often judged harshly for shaping reality to fit preconceived ideas. Such a judgement, however, is based on ethical principles of documentary making that had yet to be generally accepted or even conceived at the time Flaherty made the film. Indeed the term ‘documentary’ did not appear until 1926 and was coined to describe another of Flaherty’s features.

The notion of truth in film is a difficult and ongoing conundrum; Flaherty’s idea of the

truth he wanted to convey was a sort of poetic realism, an amalgam of falsities that combined to express the heart of the people and the places he filmed. As Richard Leacock wrote in 2000: “Flaherty never claimed to be documenting and he never claimed to be an ‘anthropologist’, or ‘scientific’ or ‘objective’. I was trained as a physicist so I do have a notion of what we mean by ‘objective truth’ and can assure you that there is no such thing in the social ‘sciences’. Flaherty had a view and it is holding up very well. He was a superb filmmaker.”

Nanook was a major international hit and Flaherty applied the same approach to a number of subsequent features, including Moana (1926) and Man of Aran (1934).

Despite his successes, Flaherty’s films were few and far between, mainly due to the difficulty he had in finding backers who were prepared to pay for projects that were labours of love and took a long time to make. An offer made him by the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey in 1945 was without doubt the most

nothing wrong in telling Inuit hunters how to behave while bringing in a seal on camera. Whatever his personal views, Flaherty took a three-month, all-expenses-paid tour of the Southwest to learn about oil and then, once the muse had struck him, accepted the assignment.

DIRECTOR ROBERT J. FLAHERTY at the camera with DoP Richard Leacock (above) and helping his young star up a tree (below)

attractive of his career and remains one of the most generous corporate sponsorships of artistic filmmaking in history. If Flaherty was prepared to make a film that essentially glorified oil drilling, the company would undertake to foot the bill for the entire production without demanding any reference to Standard Oil in the titles. Even more incredibly, Flaherty would retain sole distribution rights as well as absolute control of all revenue. In its own words, Standard Oil wanted “a classic, a permanent and artistic record of the contribution which the oil industry has made to civilization”; a film that would “present the story of oil with the dignity and epic sweep it deserved and assure this story a lasting place on the highest plane in the literature of the screen.”

In a modern world that demonises the oil industry, it is difficult to imagine a respected documentary maker being forgiven for taking on such a commission. For Flaherty, however, it was simply a chance to tell a story, which was something he could never turn down. The fact that he meticulously avoided references to modernity in many of his films demonstrates that he did make a distinction between technology and nature, but he saw no battle between them, despite the fact that many of the indigenous peoples he filmed were in danger of being wiped out by the march of civilisation. Perhaps this was why the idea of deliberately manipulating reality to suit the needs of the camera caused him no concern. He saw nothing disingenuous in presenting a vision of oil derrick and natural environment coexisting in perfect harmony, just as he saw

Flaherty purchased two ARRIFLEX 35 II cameras from The Camera Mart on West 45th Street in New York City before embarking for Louisiana. On all of his previous films he had worked with relatively primitive equipment and the bright, reflex viewfinder of the 35 II was nothing short of a revelation.

“This was, I believe – certainly in America – the first feature film that was almost entirely shot with ARRIFLEX cameras,” recalled Leacock years later. “The ARRIFLEX was something new then and regarded with infinite suspicion by professional filmmakers, but Mr Flaherty would go to any lengths in order to gain the flexibility and the freedom this camera gave us – the direct vision, where you really saw what you were filming.”

On a day-to-day basis, Leacock and Flaherty would set out into the bayous with a general sense of what they needed to get, but an absolute willingness to simply keep exposing film until they got it. There was a great deal of natural history photography – alligators attacking birds and racoons scrambling through trees – all of which required Leacock to be extremely responsive to everything going on around him. The camera’s light weight and reflex viewfinder were great assets, allowing the cinematographer to capture unpredictable moments and react speedily when something caught Flaherty’s eye.

Inspired by the ability to so easily see what was in frame and in focus, Flaherty was confident enough to operate the second 35 II himself throughout the shoot. His experiences with the ARRIFLEX cameras were sufficiently positive for the director to write a glowing letter of praise to his supplier, which was subsequently used on an early ARRI marketing release; it is printed in full above. Louisiana Story premiered on 22 August 1948, at the Edinburgh Film Festival and was released to widespread critical acclaim. In 1994, it was identified as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” by the Library of Congress and will be preserved for ever more in the United States National Film Registry. I Mark Hope-Jones

55

PRODUCT

UPDATE Cineassist Digital Video Recorder A compact and robust digital video recorder, the Cineassist DVR is modular in design and can be used for a variety of different applications. Small enough to be mounted on a camera for Steadicam or crane shots, it can also be used as a ‘clamshell’ video recorder in conjunction with an attached 6” mini-monitor and battery. Video (PAL and NTSC), audio and timecode are recorded as QuickTime files to CompactFlash cards in variable Motion JPEG compression ratios and can be transferred to a PC through a USB interface or a memory card reader. DVDs of these files can be made quickly and easily, enabling on-set rushes to be created immediately when shooting on film.

Standard industrial connectors ensure compatibility and auto-record operation with ARRI IVS systems.

The flexibility (9-36V) of external power options means a range of different batteries or a mains adaptor can be used. The Cineassist has a standard BNC output and the same mini-monitor socket as an ARRI IVS, so any monitor can be used, so long as it has a suitable mounting bracket. An integrated UHF tuner (DVB-T in preparation) allows wireless video signal input and auto-record function.

The main processing unit of the Cineassist body is milled from a single block of high-strength aluminium. Unlike hard disk or tape recorders, this solid-state system uses no moving mechanical parts, providing the reliability and durability needed for rough on-set applications. Integrated into the housing are threads and positioning holes for monitor brackets and for mounting to a camera.

MOUNTAINEER

Recording time depends on the CompactFlash cards used, though experience shows that 14:1 is a good compromise between recording time and quality.

This compression ratio allows 10 minutes of footage to be recorded per GB, so two 8GB card would capture 160 minutes.

The Cineassist features all the advantages of a digital video recording system, including variable frame rates, instant playback and extended control features via PC control. It is a versatile and reliable device for video backup, offline editing and fast creation of daily video rushes for film production workflows.

Features: • Auto-record function via RS power cable or BNC

•

REINHOLD MESSNER and cameraman Jakob von Lenthe at Nanga Parbat

•

ARRIFLEX 765

•

CINEASSIST with an

•

cable (recording of a take starts without pushing a button) Auto-playback (the recorder jumps back to the beginning of a take after recording) Live/playback button for comparing a recorded image with a live image Variable speed simulation, forward and reverse Real timecode or internal timecode

Technical Specifications: Power Supply: Consumption: Video Input: Video Output: Audio Input: Audio Output: Batteries: Video Quality: Size: Weight: 56

9 – 36 V DC 7.2 Watts (12 Watts with mini-monitor) Composite 1.0Vp-p, 75 ohms, 525/60 (NTSC) or 625/50 (PAL) Composite 1.0Vp-p, 75 ohms, 550 TV lines (at 5:1 compression) 525/60 (NTSC) or 625/50 (PAL) 1 VRMS nominal, 3V p-p max, 20K ohms impedance 0.707 VRMS, 2.0V p-p, 600 ohms impedance NiMH 13.2 Volts 35.6 Wh S-VHS to Digital Betacam 150mm x 110mm x 35mm (without monitor and battery) 700g (without monitor and battery)

VISIONARRI

News from around the world New Awards for Young and Innovative Filmmakers ARRI has introduced four new awards this year in recognition of the creative accomplishments of film producers. The awards give both German and international filmmakers a chance to win prizes in the form of vouchers for top quality services, redeemable at any of the ARRI Group companies.

(left) GASTEIG in Munich, (centre) ANGELA REEDWISCH hosting the Starter Awards 2008, (right) ARRI-ZEISS AWARD (f.l.t.r.) Dr. Winfried Scherle (Zeiss); Matteo Garrone, Dr. Dieter Kurz (Zeiss) and Prof Franz Kraus (ARRI)

The ARRI-Zeiss Award was introduced at this year’s 26th Munich International Film Festival. It was created to recognise the best foreign film in competition at the festival and this year went to the Italian production Gomorra. Producer Domenico Procacci was presented with a grant of 50,000 Euros, to be invested in future film projects. This grant, in the form of a voucher, can be used towards all rental and postproduction services at ARRI Rental Deutschland, ARRI Film & TV Services, ARRI CSC in New York, ARRI Schwarz Film or ARRI Media in London. ARRI’s Managing Director, Franz Kraus, says the award, which was created in partnership with Jena’s Carl Zeiss AG, should “ensure the representation of international films at the Munich Film Festival in the future.”

Best First Feature in Competition In Switzerland, up-and-comers do not go unrewarded either. At this year’s 4th Zurich Film Festival, the Swiss film laboratory Schwarz Film AG, a member of the ARRI Group, awarded the inaugural Best First Feature in Competition Award to For a Moment, Freedom, directed

by Arash T. Riahi. This award is given to the winning film’s producers, who receive a grant in the amount of 10,000 Swiss Francs (about 6,200 Euros); the grant is a postproduction voucher that can be redeemed over a period of two years at the Schwarz Film AG facilities in Bern, Zurich or Ludwigsburg.

Newcomer Award – Production Munich’s Newcomer Awards have been held in conjunction

with the Award for Theatre Programming ever since 1985.

This year the ceremony was held for the first time at ARRI’s movie theatre in Munich and, as the host, ARRI introduced an additional Newcomer Award in the production category.

The new award recognizes creative film productions that have distinguished themselves through a willingness to take on risks and by exceeding expectations in terms of budget constraints. This year the award went to Kathrin Geyh and Daniela Ljubinkovic of the young Munich-based company, Target Film Produktion GbR, as well as director/co-producer Michaela Kezele, for their short film Milan. The multiple award-winning short, which is nominated for the 2008 Student Academy Award, tells the heart-wrenching story of a Serbian family during the NATO attack on Belgrade in 1999. The recipients were given a voucher for ARRI lab and postproduction services worth 6,000 Euros.

The Ludwigsburg Production Grant In May of this year the film school in Ludwigsburg, the Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg, and the Kunst, Kultur and Bildung foundation of the Kreissparkasse Ludwigsburg bank hosted the annual HIGHLIGHTS event, which screens and honours the best student films of the academic year. On this occasion, ARRI Film & TV and Schwarz Film introduced a new award, the Ludwigsburg Production Grant, a voucher for 5,000 Euros redeemable against postproduction and lab services at any of the company’s facilities. The first winners of the grant were the Munich-based producers Janine Wolf and Justin Niklas Mundhenke, who are currently studying at the Filmakademie in Ludwigsburg. They received the award in recognition of their project Jedem das Seine.

ARRI-Zeiss Award

57

NEWS FROM AROUND THE WORLD

News from around the world Colour Grading on the Large Screen at Zurich’s Schwarzfilm PHILIPP TSCHÄPPÄT is proud of the new colour grading suite in Zurich

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The 850-square-foot grading suite and the 200-squarefoot projection room are equipped with a Nukoda System and a Barco 2K projector. Work is completed directly on the large screen (19’ x 10’) in the following aspect ratios: 2.35:1, 1.85:1, 1.66:1 and HD 16:9. This technology makes it possible to grade feature films under movie theatre conditions. On its ARRISCAN film scanner with Digital Ice (automatic retouching), Schwarzfilm offers high resolution scans of exceptional quality in 2K and 4K. This makes for optimal postproduction conditions later on in the process.

“One of the main advantages of the DI process, compared to traditional postproduction methods, is that the automatic digital retouching process generates an absolutely clean negative,” explains Beyer. “Digital grading opens up entirely new creative approaches in colour grading and visual effects, and additional sequences, such as titles, can now be easily inserted. In addition, it is possible to quickly and reliably output digital data to all available formats.”

Schwarzfilm was founded in 1945 by Edgar Schwarz in the Berner Lorraine, where it quickly grew from a small shop into an established film lab. Under the management of Philipp Tschäppät the company, as a member of the ARRI Group, has grown into an internationally active postproduction service provider with an impressive client roster consisting of many highly successful film professionals. “Only the big players in the business can successfully make the investment-intensive transition from the analogue to the digital world,” says Tschäppät. “By joining forces with ARRI we have managed to make this leap. Now we are able to claim a top spot here in Switzerland and internationally as a service provider of digital postproduction and the DI process.”

The Schwarzfilm AG in Zurich, a member of the ARRI Group, and its new colour grading suite are currently the number one topic of conversation in the Swiss film business; digital postproduction facilities of such a high calibre are unique even in the Swiss metropolis itself.

International feature films, high-end television productions and several commercials have already been completed in Schwarzfilm’s state-of-the-art grading suite since the summer of 2008. For this purpose, the former Bellerive television studios, housed in a landmark building in the Kreuzstraße directly on Lake Zurich, have been equipped with the most up-to-date technology for digital colour grading. The bright, large rooms on the rooftop level of the same building are currently being remodelled so that, by the end of the year, Schwarzfilm will be able to offer title, 3-D and VFX services at this location as well.

Jens Beyer works as Schwarzfilm AG’s Colour Grader.

He is supported by Andrea Oki (Customer Support), Zoé Ledermann (VFX, Design) and Daniel Plappert (Digital Intermediate Technician). As a team they have worked on films such as Tandoori Love (Cobra Film Zurich), Motel (Pandora Films SA), and Entre Os Dedos (Clap Filmes, Portugal), as well as various commercials. Their next project will be the feature film, Im Sog der Nacht (HesseGreutert Film AG, Zurich), which will be completed in the Digital Intermediate (DI).

VISIONARRI

News from around the world ARRI Rental Luxembourg: From Camera to Full-Service Package

Seven to ten feature films are shot every year in the small European enclave of Luxembourg. Compared to its neighbour, Germany, that’s a small number, but for a country with a population of 483,000, it’s an impressive output. Luxembourg’s great advantage is its proximity to Germany and France, two of the leading European nations in film production; it also offers a number of unique contemporary and historical locations as well as modern studio facilities. A recent highlight of Luxembourg’s emerging film industry was the British-Luxembourgian co-production Girl with a Pearl Earring (2003), which was nominated for three Academy Awards.

STEFFEN DITTER, Head of ARRI Rental Luxembourg

In 2001, ARRI Rental Luxembourg was established in the town of Contern, southeast of Luxembourg (city), and is headed by Steffen Ditter. The company was initially setup as a camera rental house but branch services have expanded to include lighting and set equipment. Since its inception, the new company has equipped several feature films each year, among them German, Austrian, British and Swiss productions. ARRI Rental Luxembourg bridges the gap between the service areas covered by its sister companies ARRI Rental Germany and ARRI Media in London, allowing clients from almost anywhere in Europe access to reliable ARRI support. The company is also able to handle the logistics of a full service package, involving rentals as well as lab service in either Munich or Bern. Productions that have so far taken advantage of the full service package are the David-di-Donatello Award-winning Belgian-FrenchGerman melodrama Irina Palm and Michael Radford’s The Merchant of Venice, starring Al Pacino. In 2003 the EU commission approved a tax shelter program for Luxembourg and Germany and the two countries signed a co-production agreement, making Luxembourg an even more attractive prospect for producers.

Up until now, ARRI Rental Luxembourg’s most important clients have been Samsa Film, Delux Productions, Iris Productions, Red Lion, and Paul Thiltges Distribution. Earlier this year Iris Productions took advantage of ARRI’s fullservice package for its WWII drama Réfractaire, which ARRI Rental supplied with an ARRICAM Studio and Cooke S4 lenses, as well as all lighting and stage equipment. In the case of Red Lion’s Rocdoc, ARRI Rental provided DoP Jean-Louis Schuller with an ARRIFLEX 416 and ARRI Film & TV will complete the lab work. In June this year, DoP Carlo Thiel used the company’s newest camera system, the ARRIFLEX D-21, on Dawning; the entire 4:4:4 postproduction chain will be completed in Luxemburg by BCE.

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NEWS FROM AROUND THE WORLD

News from around the world ARRI Media and DVS Forge Slow Motion Alliance ARRI Media in London has extended the reach of its slow motion services by forming a rental agreement with Digital Video Sud (DVS) in France. An ARRI Hi-Motion camera, the high speed digital camera system that can now record at 600 fps in full HD resolution, travelled out to DVS from ARRI Media in September 2008 and now forms part of the French company’s inventory of slow motion cameras.

DVS was founded in 1997 in response to the fast-growing market for slow motion footage in the commercials and live broadcast sectors. In particular, televised sports coverage has been transformed in recent years by the emergence of digital high speed cameras. The Hi-Motion is capable of instant playback and is therefore easily integrated into existing OB infrastructures; it also conforms to the demands of HD broadcasting, being a purposedesigned HD television camera. The Hi-Motion now resident at DVS has already been put to use at the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe horse racing event in Paris, which took

place at the Hippodrome de Longchamp in October.

“We have signed a contract with DVS whereby they are our partner for providing Hi-Motion to France and the Southern European market,” says Andy Hayford, ARRI Media’s Digital High Speed Manager. “DVS is an established slo-mo specialist company and the service they provide is a complete package to the broadcaster including operational vehicles as well as technicians. We at ARRI Media view this new partnership as the start of a long-term relationship.”

High Praise for Hi-Motion Super slow motion footage shot with the Hi-Motion camera system has won a Golden Podium award at this year’s Sportel convention in Monaco. Andy Hayford, ARRI Media’s Digital High-Speed Manager, accepted the award on behalf of Sky Sports and Director Mike Allen, who came top in the ‘Best Cut/Edited Slow Motion Shot’ category for his edited sequence of the 2008 Ryder Cup.

With an inventory of ten Hi-Motion camera systems, ARRI Media is the biggest supplier in the world and Sky Sports is its biggest Hi-Motion client. In 2007 ARRI Media helped to develop a unique approach to Sky’s slow motion digital coverage of the Solheim Cup, the premier event in women’s international golf.

“The director wanted the high speed camera to travel quickly between numerous locations around the 18-hole course,” explains Hayford. “We built the Hi-Motion into a golf buggy that ran off batteries powering the system through an inverter and did the replays via an RF link from the buggy back to the OB trucks. The buggy was completely mobile and self-contained; it worked very well.”

Mike Allen wanted to use the same setup for Sky Sports coverage of the US Open in June 2008, so ARRI Media passed on the technical configurations to Fletcher Chicago, a Hi-Motion supplier based in Illinois. This proved such a success that Sky put in the same request for the Ryder Cup in September and it was footage captured from the specially adapted HiMotion buggy at this event that won Allen his Golden Podium award.

60

“The team of cameraman, engineer and producer worked really hard to move the system that was built into a golf buggy around the course for three days to get the dramatic and emotive Hi-Motion shots that were then put into this gorgeous sequence,” says Hayford. “I was honoured to accept the Podium D’Or on behalf of Sky Sports’ Mike Allen.”

VISIONARRI

of the Best

…Secret Agent Gadgets

As part of a general finessing of the Bond style ushered in for Daniel Craig’s tenure as 007, the producers of Quantum of Solace continued a purge of the elaborate gadgets with which the franchise had become associated. The nadir of plausibility had perhaps come with the invisible car in Die Another Day (2002), Pierce Brosnan’s last outing as Bond. For some fans, the gadget cull is a blessing, while for others it represents a lamentable abandonment of tradition. Whatever your views, here below is a selection of six of the most memorable secret agent gadgets from the heyday of film and TV spies.

The Avengers (1961)

From Russia with Love (1963)

The longest-running spy series of Englishlanguage television ran for 161 episodes between 1961 and 1969.

Patrick Macnee played agent John Steed, a quintessential English gentleman whose trademark bowler hat and whangee-handled umbrella were more than just dapper accessories; the bowler was lined with metal and served both as weapon and shield, while the umbrella concealed a sword, knockout gas and a recording device.

Ian Fleming’s fifth Bond novel became the second EON film, with Sean Connery reprising his role from Dr. No the year before. It introduces the much loved character of Q (Desmond Llewellyn), who issues Bond with his first high-tech gadget: an attaché case containing throwing knives, a tear gas dispenser, 50 gold sovereigns and a collapsible sniper rifle. Though relatively credible in itself, this multi-purpose case triggered an avalanche of increasingly farfetched gadgets in subsequent films.

The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1964) This American television series was partly inspired by an idea of Ian Fleming’s, though he was forbidden from taking any further part in it by Bond producers Albert Broccoli and Harry Saltzman. The show features Napoleon Solo (Robert Vaughn) and Illya Kuryakin (David McCallum), agents for the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement. Perhaps their best known gadget was a radio communicator disguised as a pen, into which they would utter the oft-quoted line: “Open channel D.” Get Smart (1965) Maxwell Smart (Don Adams) was the incompetent and bumbling hero of this satirical espionage series, which aired on American TV screens until 1970. Though he always managed to save the day in the end, it was usually either by dumb luck or the talent of his attractive female partner, Agent 99 (Barbara Feldon). Smart’s most frequently seen gadget was a shoe that contained a phone, which he had to take off in order to use.

Our Man Flint (1966)

The Ambushers (1967)

Another parody of the spy genre, Our Man Flint stars James Coburn as Derek Flint, an ex-spy and international playboy who gets drawn into a fight against a trio of mad scientists bent on global destruction. Flint’s gadget of choice was a lighter that supposedly had 82 separate functions; 83, if you count the lighter.

The success of the Bond films made it difficult for other filmmakers to do anything other than either copy or ridicule them and by the late 1960s, most were opting for the latter.

Starring Dean Martin as the womanising spy Matt Helm, The Ambushers was the third of four critically panned films based on the novels of Donald Hamilton. The best gadget in this one, or at least the funniest, is a gun concealed in a girl’s bra, about which Helm quips: “An agent should always keep abreast of the times.”

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PRODUCTION UPDATE

ARRI RENTAL Title

Production Company

Director

DoP

Equipment

Season of the Witch

Mid Atlantic Seven Kft.

Dominic Sena

Amir M. Mokri

Henri Quatre – Macht der Güte KRUPP - Eine deutsche Familie (AT) Inglourious Basterds

Ziegler Film

Jo Baier

Gernot Roll

MOOVIE – the art of entertainment Zehnte Babelsberg Film / Weinstein Bros.

Claussen & Wöbke & Putz

Carlo Rola

Frank Küpper

Quentin Tarantino

Robert Richardson

ARRICAM Studio & Lite, ARRIFLEX 435 Advanced, ARRIFLEX 235, Lighting 2x ARRIFLEX D-21, Master Primes, Lighting, Grip 2x ARRIFLEX D-21, Master Zoom, Lighting, Grip Lighting, Grip

Neele Leana Vollmar

Torsten Breuer

Crazy Film Avista Film

Axel Sand Thomas Kronthaler

Bernhard Jasper Christof Oefelein

ndF TV60Film

Ute Wieland Jan Fehse Matthias Tiefenbacher Peter von Haller

Maria, ihm schmeckt' s nicht Tod aus der Tiefe Postkarten aus Copacabana Die Rebellin Das Haus meines Vaters DAU Bran Nue Dae

Essential Filmproduktion Ilja Khrzhanovkij BND Film Production Pty. Ltd. Rachel Perkins

Jürgen Jürges Andrew Lesnie

ARRICAM Studio & Lite 3-Perforation, Ultra Primes 2x ARRIFLEX D-21, Ultra Primes ARRICAM Studio & Lite 2-Perforation, Ultra Primes 2x ARRIFLEX 416 Plus, Lighting, Grip ARRIFLEX 416 Plus, Ultra Primes, Lighting, Grip 2x ARRICAM Lite, Ultra Primes 2x ARRICAM Lite 2-Perforation, ARRIFLEX 435 Advanced

ARRI MEDIA Title

Production Company

Director

DoP

Equipment

Green Zone Dorian Gray Mistresses II

Compond Films Ltd Dorian Gray Films Ltd Ecosse Films

Paul Greengrass Oliver Parker Peter Hoar

3x ARRICAM Lite, 3x ARRIFLEX 235 ARRICAM Studio & Lite, Cooke S4 Primes ARRIFLEX 416, Cooke S4 Primes

Law & Order: London Silent Witness XIII The Scouting Book for Boys Skellig 44” Chest U Be Dead Barclay From Time to Time Unforgiven Dead Set

Kudos

Various

Barry Ackroyd BSC Roger Pratt BSC Lukas Strebel Andy Hollis James Welland David Luther

BBC Celador Films

Various Tom Harper

Tim Palmer Robbie Ryan

ARRIFLEX D-21, Cooke S4 Primes ARRICAM Lite 2-Perforation, Ultra Primes

Feel Films 44 Inch Ltd Darlow Smithson Prods BBC FT2T Films Red Productions Zeppotron

Annabel Jankel Malcolm Venville Jamie Payne Colm McCarthy Julian Fellows David Evans Yann Demange

Steve Lawes Dan Landin Mike Southon BSC Damien Bromley Alan Almond BSC Sean Bobbit BSC Tat Radcliffe

ARRIFLEX D-21, Ultra Primes ARRICAM Lite, Master Primes ARRIFLEX D-21, Cooke S4 Primes ARRIFLEX D-21, Optimo Zooms ARRICAM Studio & Lite, Cooke S4 Primes ARRIFLEX D-21, Cooke S4 Primes ARRIFLEX D-21, Ultra Primes

ARRIFLEX D-21, Ultra Primes

ARRI CSC Title

Production Company DoP

Equipment

Serviced by

Blood Done Sign My Name

Blood Done Sign My Name Productioins

Steve Mason

2x ARRICAM Lite 3-Perforation, ARRICAM Studio 3-Perforation, Master Primes

ARRI CSC FLA

Bored To Death (pilot)

HBO

Vanja Cernjul

ARRIFLEX D-21

ARRI CSC NY

Burn Notice

TVM Productions

Bill Wages ASC

2x ARRIFLEX 416, ARRIFLEX 16SR 3 Advanced HS, Ultra Primes

ARRI CSC FLA

Lipstick Jungle

NBC Television

David Dunlap

2x ARRICAM Lite 3-Perforation, ARRICAM Studio 3-Perforation

ARRI CSC NY

MTV Music Video MTV Awards Nowhere To Hide Sunrise Productions

Gaffer

Oscar Dominquez John Murlowski Justin Duval

Conventional & Automated Lighting Illumination Dynamics LA Conventional Lighting & Grip

Illumination Dynamics LA

ARRICAM Studio & Lite, Lighting

ARRI CSC NY

Taking Woodstock Tuxedo Terrace Films LLC Eric Gautier

Gene Engels

Ugly Betty

Michael Marzovella 2x ARRICAM Studio & Lite 3-Perforation

ABC Television

Michael Price

ARRI CSC NY

Published by the ARRI Rental Group Marketing Department. 3 Highbridge, Oxford Road, Uxbridge, Middlesex, UB8 1LX United Kingdom The opinions expressed by individuals quoted in articles in VisionARRI do not necessarily represent those of the ARRI Rental Group or the Editors. Due to our constant endeavour to improve quality and design, modifications may be made to products from time to time. Details of availability and specifications given in this publication are subject to change without notice.

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ARRI FILM & TV - POST PRODUCTION SERVICES - FEATURES Title

Production Company

Deutschland '09

Herbstfilm Produktion

DoP

Services

Fatih Akin, Wolfgang Becker, Dominik Graf, Tom Tykwer u.v.a.

Die Fremde Independent Artists Feo Aladag Die Päpstin Constantin Film Produktion Sönke Wortmann Die Perlmutterfarbe d.i.e. Film Produktion Marcus H. Rosenmüller Die Tür Wüste Medien GmbH Anno Saul Die zwei Pferde Grasland Film / Atrix Film Davaa Byambasuren des Dschingis Khan & Davaa Byambasuren Inglourious Basterds Zehnte Babelsberg Film / Quentin Tarantino Weinstein Bros.

Hilde Egoli Tossell Film Kai Wessel John Rabe Hofmann & Voges Florian Gallenberger

Martin Gressmann, Frank Griebe, Bella Halben, Jürgen Jürges u.v.a.

Judith Kaufmann Tom Fährmann Torsten Breuer Bella Halben Martijn van Broekhuizen Robert Richardson

Lab, DI, TV-Mastering (HD), VFX

Hagen Bogdanski Jürgen Jürges

Laura – Ob ihr wollt oder nicht Lippels Traum

Elsani Film

Ben Verbong

Theo Bierkins

Lab Lab, DI, TV-Mastering (HD), Sound Lab, DI, TV-Mastering (HD), VFX

collina filmproduktion

Lars Büchel

Jan Marsik

Männersache Pandorum Salami Aleikum

Constantin Film Produktion Constantin Film Produktion Dreamer Joint Venture Filmproduktion 23/5 Filmproduktion X Filme International

Gernot Roll Christian Alvart Ali Samadi Ahadi

Gernot Roll Wedigo v. Schultzendorff Bernhard Jasper

Hans-Christian Schmid Julie Delpy

Bogumil Godfrejow Martin Ruhe

Andreas Dresen

Andreas Höfer

Storm The Countess

Whisky mit Wodka Senator Film Produktion

Director

Lab, DI, TV-Mastering (HD) Lab, DI, TV-Mastering (HD), VFX Lab, DI, TV-Mastering (HD), VFX Lab, DI, TV-Mastering (HD) Lab, DI, TV-Mastering (HD), Sound Lab

Lab, DI, TV-Mastering (HD), VFX, Sound D-21, DI, Lab Lab, DI, TV-Mastering, Sound D-21, DI, Lab Lab, DI Services Lab, DI, TV-Mastering (HD), VFX, Sound Lab, DI, TV-Mastering (HD)

ARRI FILM & TV - POST PRODUCTION SERVICES - COMMERCIALS Client

Title

Moving Adventures Medien GmbH McDonald’s Deutschland GmbH McDonald’s Deutschland GmbH HOMANN Feinkost GmbH AOK-Bundesverband

EOFT – European Outdoor Film Tour “Los Wochos”

Agency

Production

Moving Adventures Medien GmbH Heye & Partner GmbH Erste Liebe Filmproduktion GmbH “Quality Check Heye & Partner GmbH Rapid Eye Movement – Kartoffelspot” Filmproduktion GmbH “Bread & Dip” FJR Werbeagentur GmbH made in munich Filmproduktion GmbH AOK Plus SERVICEPLAN Vierte FINAL TOUCH Werbeagentur Filmproduktion + International GmbH Wunderwelt Wissen SERVICEPLAN Zweite “September Ausgabe 2008” Werbeagentur GmbH Carrera “Go” + “132” e+p commercial München

SevenOne Intermedia GmbH Stadlbauer Marketing + Vertrieb Ges.m.b.H. Zain Zain Business Solutions Vodafone D2 GmbH Vodafone

JWT JWT

The Talkies Hager Moss Commerical

Director

DoP

Various

Various

Tibor Glage

Björn Haneld

Ernst Kalff

Dieter Deventer

Mark Seydlitz

Felix Storp

Nikolai Karo

Antonio Palladino

Reiner Holzemer Peter Aichholzer Andreas Grassl Jörgen Lööf

Winnie Heun Joseph Yacoe

ARRI LIGHTING RENTAL Title

Production Company Director

Dop

Gaffer

Rigging Gaffer Best Boy

Green Zone Dorian Gray Mistresses II

Compond Films Ltd Dorian Gray Films Ltd Ecosse Films

Paul Greengrass Oliver Parker Peter Hoar

Harry Wiggins Chuck Finch Chris Bird

Ian Franklin Tom Finch

Law & Order: London Silent Witness XIII The Scouting Book for Boys Skellig Free Agents Occupation Ladies Of Letters Fixer Freefall Runaway Ashes To Ashes

(Law & Order) Ltd BBC Scouting Book Films Ltd

Various Various Tom Harper

Barry Ackroyd BSC Roger Pratt BSC Lukas Strebel Andy Hollis James Welland David Luther Tim Palmer Robbie Ryan

Mark Clayton Paul Brewster Andy Cole

Benny Harper Dave Sherman Paul Cronin

Skellig Productions Ltd Big Talk Productions (Occupation) Ltd Tiger Aspect (Fixer) Ltd Crunch Productions BBC (Ashes To Ashes) Ltd

Annabel Jankel James Griffiths Nick Murphy John Henderson Sam Miller Dominic Savage Stephan Pehrsson Ben Bolt

Steve Lawes Magni Agustsson David Odd BSC John Ignatius James Welland Ben Smithard Stephan Pehrsson Fabian Wagner

Andy Long Perry Evans Tom Gates Larry Park Brandon Evans Andrew Duncan Hayden Bonniface John Walker

Mark Hanlon Ossa Mills Brian Livingston Pat Miller Chris Allkins Chris Polden Gavin Ogden Andy Bell

Mark Funnell Richard Merrell Chris Davies

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t ’ n a c u o y d i a s o h w . . . l l a t i e v a h D-21 DELIVERS

YOU EXPECT High-end film style functionality

High-end digital image quality

35 format sensor, lenses and accessories

ARRIRAW T-Link connection to data recorders

Log and standard HD output modes

Familiar, 2K film-like post workflow

Straightforward operation

HD and/or ARRIRAW data output

Optical viewfinder

Improved colour saturation

35mm depth of field

Use of anamorphic lenses Optimised sharpness Increased sensitivity

ARRIFLEX D-21: THE FILM STYLE DIGITAL CAMERA

www.arri.com/d-21