Camera Operator Winter 2014

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WiNter 2014

Cate Blanchett, Sally Hawkins, Andrew Dice Clay in Blue Jasmine

Features

Cover

JANET MIGLIO

Volume 23, Number 1

Serving with ‘The Butler’

by Grayson Austin SOC The director encouraged the camera operators to grab extra footage even when cameras weren’t supposed to be rolling.

16

Challenges of ‘Lone Survivor’

by Jacques Jouffret SOC Filming this war movie sometimes required the operator to guess where the action was headed next.

Adam Scott and Ben Stiller in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.

Photo by Wilson Webb. © 2013 20th Century Fox

28

‘The Secret Life of Walter Mitty’

by David J Thompson SOC The director/lead actor had a very precise vision of how every scene should look.

38

Being a Part of ‘Blue Jasmine’

by Will Arnot SOC The camera operator often worked with the actors to set up the camera coverage.

Departments

48

2 President’s Corner

60 Hi Def with Jeff

4 Editor’s Note

63 Last Take

by Chris Tufty SOC

by Jennifer Braddock

8 News & Notes 14 Establishing Shot

by Jeff Cree SOC

63 Advertisers’ Index 64 Roster of the SOC as of 1/26/14

President’s Corner

Reflections he last two years as the President of the Society of Camera Operators have been most rewarding for me and I thank all our members and the Board of Governors for allowing me to helm this wonderful organization!

It’s been a bouncy ride, with schedules and personalities that needed patience and openness to sort out. But at the end of these two years I’m proud to see: • The Endeavor Shuttle film receive the SOC credit as dozens of our camera operators and assistants worked day and night on the shoot, volunteering their time.

• The SOC treasury with a healthy balance in the black.

• A website that is redesigned and working beautifully.

Please log in and upload your photo, résumé, demo reel, etc.

• A vibrant membership of over 700 individuals and corporations that keeps growing.

• New employees to run the SOC more efficiently. ▷ An office manager who answers the phone in person among other duties ▷ A bookkeeper who manages our accounts and invoices • A Corporate Membership that is also growing and includes both longtime sponsors and new ones.

• New ID cards that allow us to attend screenings,

BACKCOUNTRY PICTURES

T

workshops, and meetings (although they’re still in prototype).

• A beautiful magazine that now is publishing 4 times a year and generating a healthy profit for our Charity.

• Two $10,000 checks presented to the Vision Center at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles during the last two years.

• The numerous workshops and events hosted by the SOC that encourage learning and personal interaction between members.

It is with a thoughtful heart that I will be stepping down from the Presidency of the Society of Camera Operators in the upcoming months. Thank you!

BOB FELLER

Chris Tufty, SOC President

2

Camera OperatOr: president’s COrner

Mitch Dubin is all smiles with his personally engraved Cammy for the 2013 Camera Operator of the Year/Film and an SOC jacket with his name embroidered on it.

They were presented to him at the January meeting.

More photos from the meeting are on page 8.

Winter 2014

PRODUCERS GUILD OF AMERICA AWARD

WA R N E R B R OS. PI CTURES T HA N KS TH E S OC I E T Y OF C A M E R A OPERATORS A N D PR OU D LY C ON GR ATUL ATES OU R N O MIN EE

“A m a j e s t i c, i n n ov a t i v e h e a r t - p o u n d i n g s p e c t a c l e! T h e c a m e ra ro t a t e s in l o n g, c o n t in u o u s s h o t s, in c l u d in g a wo n d ro u s 13 - min u t e o p e n e r. C a m e ra a n g l e s h e i g h t e n the vastness at one moment and c l a u s t ro p h o b i c c o n t a in m e n t t h e n e x t.”

CLAUDIA PUIG -

“ Wo rd s c a n d o lit t l e t o c o nve y t h e v i s u a l a s t o n i s h m e n t t his s p a c e o p e ra c re a t e s.”

KENNETH TURAN -

INCLUDING

W W W . WA R N E R B R O S 2 0 1 3 . C O M

Editor’s Note

A Great 2014!

I

awards. The historical award goes to Jim Muro for that zipline shot in The Mighty Quinn that they love to show at film schools.

Pictorvision and Motion Picture Marine are getting the tech awards. Camera Operators of the Year for Film and Television will be announced.

The event will be held in the brand new Guerin Pavillion and Herscher Hall at Skirball Center.

Hope to see you there!

Student members’ names are now included in the roster. We’re very happy to have many of them join us as associate members once they graduate.

SOC Awards Now on March 8

All About Relationships

As you probably know, the SOC awards event will take place on Saturday, March 8. The date was changed because of what the media has dubbed “Jamzilla” (Carmageddon was already used). The 405 will be closed around Skirball Center the weekend we’d originally planned to hold the event there.

More information about the event is on page 13. Chris Haarhoff SOC, Bill Coe, Jack Carpenter, Barry Wetcher, Leonard Chapman and Stan McClain SOC are all receiving

The four feature articles in this issue are about those all-important relationships on set—the ones the camera operator needs to do his/her job. But they may not all be the ones you immediately thought of.

On The Butler, the camera operators, particularly “B” camera operator Grayson Austin SOC, needed a close relationship with hair & makeup and wardrobe in order to get the special shots the director wanted.

Filming Lone Survivor, on the other hand, was helped considerably by the fact that “A” operator Jacques Jouffret SOC had worked with three of the four main actors before and knew how they moved. The actors never got a rehearsal and had to do a certain amount of improv over rocks and trails, with the camera trying to follow.

The stunt department built a special camera car to film The Secret Life of Walter Mitty chase sequences through New York.

Lead actor/director Ben Stiller believes in rehearsing thoroughly and doing as many takes as necessary to get the scene he envisioned, so it got plenty of use.

Will Arnot SOC built a lot of relationships on Blue Jasmine —not only with director Woody Allen and DP Javier Aguirresarobe, but also with the actors, especially Cate Blanchett and Sally Hawkins, and with Woody’s producer Helen Robin. He used his connections in San Francisco and New York to help the producer get top-notch crews. Because scenes got minimal rehearsal and blocking, the actors and camera operator needed to work closely together on each take.

Having good relationships with the members of your camera crew is always essential. Getting to know what your director and DP want and figuring out how to keep them both happy is something you learn early in the game if you’re going to succeed. But as you can see, the relationships outside the crew are just as important. And you might even develop lifelong friendships!

Here’s to a successful 2014 for all of us—happy networking!

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Camera OperatOr: editOr’s nOte

HOPPER STONE

t’s the start of a new year, and this is a special year for our magazine. We’ll be publishing four—count ’em—four issues this year—Winter Spring Summer and Fall. We are always looking for articles from the camera operator POV, so let us know what you are working on and share your set stories! Email us at camopmag@soc.org; you can send us an article directly or we can make it easy for you by setting up a phone interview. It is your story and you will get to edit it before it goes into print.

Added to the Roster

Winter 2014

UNIVERSAL PICTURES THANKS THE SOCIETY OF CAMERA OPERATORS AND CONGRATULATES OUR NOMINEE

JACQUES JOUFFRET SOC

CAMERA OPERATOR OF THE YEAR - FEATURE FILM

®

BEST SOUND EDITING BEST SOUND MIXING

WINNER 2 CRITICS’ CHOICE AWARDS BEST ACTION MOVIE BEST ACTOR IN AN ACTION MOVIE MARK WAHLBERG

NATI O N A L B OA R D O F R EV I EW

ONE OF THE BEST FILMS OF THE YEAR

“EXTRAORDINARY! A SINGULAR TRUE STORY OF INCREDIBLE COURAGE WHEN IT COUNTS THE MOST. BRILLIANTLY ACTED AND DIRECTED.

‘Lone Survivor’ is action-packed, unforgettable, tense and inspiring.”

Pete Hammond, MOVIELINE

© 2013 UNIVERSAL STUDIOS

universalpicturesawards.com

BASED ON TRUE ACTS OF COURAGE

ACADEMY AWARD NOMINEE

6

ACADEMY AWARD NOMINATIONS INCLUDING 速

BEST PICTURE BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY ALBERT BERGER, p.g.a & RON YERXA, p.g.a PHEDON PAPAMICHAEL, ASC

dream big DIRECTED BY

ALEXANDER PAYNE

WRITTEN BY

BOB NELSON

SOCIETY OF CAMERA OPERATORS BOARD OF GOVERNORS OFFICERS President .................................. Chris Tufty Vice President .......................Mark August Vice President ..................David Frederick Vice President ..................... Michael Scott Recording Secretary.......... Bill McClelland Treasurer .......................... Douglas Knapp Sergeant-at-Arms ................. Mike Frediani

BOARD MEMBERS AT LARGE Jennifer Braddock Rachel Hudson Rochelle Brown Kenji Luster Dan Coplan David Mahlmann Rich Davis Denis Moran Mitch Dubin Heather Page David Emmerichs Tammy Fouts-Sandoval Eric Fletcher Lisa Stacilauskas John Hankammer Chris Taylor Casey Hotchkiss Dan Turrett

COMMITTEE CHAIRS Awards ............................. David Frederick Charities .........................David Mahlmann Communications .......................................

Constitution & By-Laws .............................

Corporate Liaisons ................ Mark August, David Frederick COY Awards .....................Rochelle Brown Education & Mentor ............... Hugh Litfin, Michael Scott Events .......... Jessica Jurges, Rachel Lippert, Jessica L Lopez, SOC Historical..............................Mike Frediani Magazine Editor ............ Jennifer Braddock Membership ...................... Rachel Hudson Merchandising & .............Brad Greenspan, Promotions ................ Rochelle Brown Newsletter Editor ........... Jennifer Braddock Public Relations/Publicity ......... Rich Davis Publications....................... Douglas Knapp SOC Rep, East Coast ..................................

SOC Rep, South Coast .......... Heather Page Technical Standards ....... David Emmerichs

STAFF AND CONSULTANTS SOC Office Manager ....Heather Ritcheson Office Administrator ............ Diana Penilla Accountant ................Rick Birnbaum, CPA Bookkeeper ........................ Michelle Cole Web Administrator .................Rick Gerard Publications Manager ....... Douglas Knapp Publications Layout ..............Lynn Lanning Publishers ...................... IngleDodd Media Calligrapher............................. Carrie Imai Legal Reps ............. Jonathan Feldman Esq, Magasinn & Feldman

SOC Lifetime Achievement Awards March 8, 2014

to benefit

is a registered trademark.

All rights reserved.

Subscription Rates: USA $25/year; Outside USA $35/year (U.S. Funds Only) Subscribe online at www.SOC.org Camera Operator is published 4 times a year by the Society of Camera Operators © 2014 Society of Camera Operators

Buy tickets at soc.org

CAMERA OPERATOR WINTER 2014 Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jennifer Braddock Managing Ed/Art Director . . . . . . . . . Lynn Lanning Post-Production Manager . . . . Douglas Knapp sOC Cover Photo . . . . Wilson Webb ©20th Century Fox Production Coordinators. . . . . . . IngleDodd Media Advertising Director . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dan Dodd

CONTRIBUTORS Will Arnot sOC Grayson Austin sOC Jennifer Braddock Jeff Cree sOC David Frederick sOC Michael Frediani sOC Casey Hotchkiss sOC

PHOTOGRAPHY Bob Feller Michael Frediani sOC Robin Charters Anne Marie Fox Janet Miglio

Jacques Jouffret sOC Dave Kanehann sOC Douglas Knapp sOC Lynn Lanning Taylor Lewis David J Thompson sOC Chris Tufty sOC Elke Weiss Merrick Morton smpsp Gregory R Peters Vojtech Pokorny Hopper Stone Michael Tackett Wilson Webb

For display advertising information, contact: Dan Dodd (310) 207-4410 x236 fax: (310) 207-1055 Dan@IngleDodd.com For article submissions, please contact: SOC Attn Magazine PO Box 2006 Toluca Lake, CA 91610 Phone (818) 382-7070 email: camopmag@soc.org

Visit the SOC web site www.SOC.org Winter 2014

Camera OperatOr: masthead

7

News & Notes

What’s going on with members and in the industry

SOC Membership Meeting

O

ver 90 SOC members enjoyed a delicious breakfast, sponsored by ARRI, in the Saban Center Conference Room at the Motion Picture Home on Sunday, January 26.

The SOC is proud to be the first group to see ARRI’s demo of its newest camera, the AMIRA. Attendees enthusiastically tried it out.

A Board of Governors meeting followed the breakfast meeting for the general membership.

PHOTOS BY BOB FELLER AND MIKE FREDIANI SOC

David Frederick SOC, Ben Hardwicke, Chris Tufty SOC

George Clooney and Matt Damon in The Monuments Men

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Camera OperatOr: News & NOtes

Winter 2014

BEST PICTURE 5 HHHH HHHH HHHH HHHH A C A D E M Y A W A R D N O M I N AT I O N S ®

INCLUDING

THE NEW YORK OBSERVER

TIME OUT NEW YORK

ROLLING STONE

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

HHHH HHHH HHHH HHHH HHHH

HHHH HHHH HHHH HHHH HHHH

HHHH HHHH HHHH HHHH HHHH

HHHH HHHH HHHH HHHH HHHH

THE STAR TRIBUNE

IN TOUCH

THE HOUSTON CHRONICLE

SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS

OTTAWA CITIZEN

THE GUARDIAN

EMPIRE

MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL

TOLEDO BLADE

EDMONTON SUN

THE GLOBE AND MAIL

METRO NEW YORK

FT. WORTH STAR-TELEGRAM

VANCOUVER SUN

OTTAWA SUN

PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE

THE MIAMI HERALD

CALGARY HERALD

EDMONTON JOURNAL

MIAMI.COM

“THE BEST AMERICAN FILM OF 2013.”

David Frederick SOC Adds Movie Motion to Pictures

by Taylor Lewis

D

avid J Frederick SOC puts motion in pictures. His résumé is rich with feature films and television dramas that place the viewer in the center of the action. From his iconic work on the big screen’s Driving Miss Daisy to the quirky momentum of TV’s Sons of Anarchy, for which he won an SOC Award, Frederick’s unique stamp is on every project, whether he is operating handheld, Steadicam, or with other hot new technology. It is no surprise that he was one of the first to use Freefly Systems’ MōVI M10 handheld 3-axis digital stabilized camera gimbal system. And he has put the muchtalked-about system through its paces on a number of recent projects.

Filming the wrestling match for The Fosters.

For ABC Family’s The Fosters, Frederick Photo courtesy of Robin Charters. pointed to his first experience with the M10 that was owned by Robin Charters who was was very successful. The editors were thrilled with the fluidity instrumental in set-up. “Moving through a party crowd, the of movement and excitement of the POV and following MōVI allowed me to start and finish designed shots that shots that we were able to accomplish in a very short time. required the camera to be placed in narrow confined spaces “The great advantage of the MōVI is the quick ease and to achieve a certain effect that was not possible with the effective agility of camera placement without re-rigging for larger GPI Pro Steadicam rig that I own.” low mode. It’s uncanny how horizontally stable it is. The Later, he was tasked with providing a variety of shots of MōVI utilizes its internal navigation system to know where actor Jake T Austin in a high school wrestling match on a the horizon is, and does its ‘level’ best to maintain the level two-wall set. horizon no matter how you toss it around.”

“This time,” said Frederick, “we used the MōVI rig with a Frederick was careful to emphasize the importance of using RED Epic wearing a Nikon 17–35mm stills zoom, SmallHD an experienced MōVI technician for setup and to deal with on-board monitor, single-channel follow focus and Teradek trimming the controls. He also noted that his 25-year Bolt video transmitter.” For two hours he used the handheld rig circling the wrestlers capturing high to low points of view. experience as a Steadicam and handheld camera operator comes into play with MōVI to make the shots work and to For additional wrestling shots, they mounted MōVi atop a satisfy both the director’s vision and script requirements.

16´ pole, operating pan and tilt via wireless remote control, “One surprising aspect is that the MōVI is dead quiet and glided the camera rig overhead through a human tunnel during its operation,” he said. “You can have the camera a foot of team members. “It served as the actor’s POV as well as a away from an actor in a dialog scene with no issue. The only following and leading objective shot of the actor going noise you hear is the creative whir of the crew’s footsteps.” through the tunnel of teammates,” said Frederick.

Frederick is often asked if he sees MōVI replacing the As second unit DP on NBC’s mid-season show Crisis, he Steadicam. “Absolutely not,” he replies. “These are two paired a MōVI M10 with a Canon 5D Mark III DSLR different tools and can complement each other, affecting a outfitted with a Canon 16-35mm stills zoom. different language of storytelling. For one thing, the Steadi“We scouted a Gold Coast mansion to be the location for cam can deliver precise and predictable frames with the same an FBI SWAT team swarming in for a rescue. The edict from the script was that the audience would be seeing this through freedom from dolly track or shakiness of handheld camerathe agents’ helmet cams only. Afraid that conventional work. When operating the MōVI, I get the feeling that I’m handheld was too jarring for the run of the scene, I suggested participating in the movement and composition. In confined the MōVI to the producers—and it was a go. spaces I like to stick the MōVI in and make shots that I “I did over 30 setups for that sequence,” said Frederick. “It cannot do with the Steadicam because of its size.”

Winter 2014

Camera OperatOr: News & NOtes

11

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Buy Tickets at soc.org For SOC Awards Sponsorships & Advertising IngleDodd Media SOCawards@ingledodd.com I (310) 207-4410

establishing SHOT I

Wayne and his crew, everything from the political roles on set, lighting, camera choreography, blocking scenes—all practices I still carry with me today.

My advice to future operators is that the clearer you can be in what you want to do or achieve, the more others can help

I

started in high school, working a side job at a local production company doing various production assistant jobs. It was James Cameron’s company, Lightstorm Entertainment, which was an amazing place to start for anyone who wanted to work in the camera department; that was my first big break. I spent many hours on various test and experimental shoots working and learning from incredible craftsmen in all departments. During my time at Lightstorm Entertainment, the Titanic years, I picked up anamorphic focus pulling and assistant cameraman skills. At the time, we were a bit ahead of the curve with HD and 24P, and that early experience parlayed into moving up into camera operating.

My second big break came from working on sitcom pilots with DP Wayne Kennan ASC. I learned a lot by watching

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Camera OperatOr: establishing shOt

COURTESY OF DAVE KANEHANN SOC

MICHAEL TACKETT

joined Local 659 in 1978 as a 2nd AC, and after about a year moved up to 1st AC. I worked as a first until 1987 when I moved up to camera operator on MacGyver.

MacGyver had moved to Vancouver BC; Paramount was only willing to bring the DP, Bill Gereghty, from the USA. The local crews up there were pretty inexperienced, and after two weeks, they fired the operator and decided to bring an experienced operator up from Hollywood. Little did they know that was my first day as one!

I had to pretend I was an experienced operator. I was scared to death, but after realizing I wasn’t supposed to grab camera gear when we were on the move, I managed to pull it off. I learned so much that year.

Working and moving up in television is the best because you get in so many different situations; dolly shots, cranes, long lens, handheld, etc. It’s something new and challenging every day. You have to be able to think and work fast.

—Casey Hotchkiss SOC

you get to where you want to be in the industry. Secondly, don’t forsake the process; the bumps and bruises that come along the way are a part of learning. You can learn something from every situation and every job no matter how big or small the gig.

—Dave Kanehann SOC Submit your story about how you got started in the business to camopmag@soc.org For the subject line, please use Est.Shot or Establishing Shot. If you’d rather talk than write, let us know and we can arrange a phone interview.

Winter 2014

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Cecil (Forest Whitaker) is a White House butler.

T

he Butler, which came to be known as Lee Daniels’ The Butler due to a threatened lawsuit, is a factbased film about a real White House butler who served under eight administrations, beginning with Eisenhower. Forest Whitaker has the title role of Cecil, with Oprah Winfrey as his wife. The Presidents are played

by Robin Williams (Eisenhower), James Marsden (Kennedy), Liev Schreiber (Lyndon Johnson), John Cusack (Nixon), and Alan Rickman (Reagan), with Jane Fonda as Nancy Reagan.

Lee Daniels directed, with Andrew Dunn as Director of Photography. Jeff Tufano was on “A” camera, with Grayson Austin SOC (This Is the End, and the forthcoming Endless Love and Focus) as the “B” camera operator.

Grayson shares some of his memories and feelings about this movie.

The Director Makes It Feel Real

One of the biggest things while we were shooting is how real it all felt. With certain projects, you can kind of feel that there’s more going on. This project felt like we were really in the middle of something important, in touch with some of the things going on in the different time periods. I have to attribute that to Lee Daniels, the director.

Lee is not only a great actor’s director, but he is very focused on details—everything from what the actors are doing, to props, wardrobe, makeup and hair. He touches every part of it. I don’t think he can help himself. If he doesn’t think that the wardrobe looks quite right or if he’s not happy with a certain prop, he will change it until it feels right, until it feels real.

Even working with background extras—I’ve worked with plenty of directors who leave it to the ADs to deal with background, but Lee’s so involved with everything that he’s even keen on what the background extras are doing. He’d spend time talking with them. He’d let them know what the scene was about, what was going on during the time in real life, what they should be thinking about, what they needed to do for the scene. All those little details make so much of a difference, and affect everybody else, crew included. It felt like we were documenting things more than creating a fabrication.

Even while we were shooting, I was thinking about what

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Camera OperatOr: the Butler

was going on during the time period, how people were feeling as a whole, how these characters were feeling and interacting, and that helped me as an operator. I think that was one of the biggest things that Lee brought to it—that feeling that we were all really there and a part of it.

I had such a good time in a strange way. It’s so hard to describe in words. Being in the hotel room while our actor playing Martin Luther King Jr is talking to a group of young people about life and philosophy and how to treat each other —it’s hard to shoot it and keep your concentration.

Part of the Moment A lot of the time it was like shooting a documentary, especially when it came to the historical moments away from the White House. We referenced the archived footage from those events. We didn’t necessarily try to exact match the original footage, but we all watched it and used it as a guiding point. It’s incredibly helpful having that in the back of your mind.

There’s a scene where they’re traveling on the Freedom Bus when it encounters protesters. A car swerves in behind with this lit up cross. I did all the handheld stuff on the bus while it’s moving. So I was there with the actors and the background players. We had waited for darkness for that scene, so I hadn’t seen the car lit up. I hadn’t seen the background extras in full force. It was a very torches-and-pitchforks kind Winter 2014

of moment, to round the corner and be in the bus with the Freedom Riders when this car lights up. It feels very real when people are trying to basically roll the bus over, and throwing bottles, and there are torches everywhere. Lee had spoken to the background and told them, “there’s no embarrassment for whatever you do.” He just let them go and they did a great job of making that situation, that fear, very apparent. All those things combined into something really

Winter 2014

great and I just happened to be right in the middle of it when it was happening.

For the scene at the lunch counter, I happened to be sitting on the set when Lee was talking to his background players. He spoke to the groups separately so that none of the groups knew exactly what was coming. The kids sitting at the counter got a totally different talk than the locals at the diner, and the group that comes in harassing them got an even different talk from Lee. So when they did come together, it wasn’t completely pre-rehearsed. We did go through it several times but mostly, for the young people who come in to do the harassing, Lee had to let them know that it was okay to go farther than they felt comfortable, because no one wants to act that way. For most people, it’s not natural. He had to give them permission to go farther because he really needed it to be accurate in feel, in tone.

There are some hard moments in that scene. I know in my head that the coffee isn’t hot. I know this because I was there, but you still react to it. You can’t help it. It’s hard to be there, but powerful, definitely. We shot a lot of things handheld but for that particular scene, believe it or not, we did somehow manage to cram dollies behind the lunch counter. I’m not sure how the grips did it, but they got some track back there and shrank down the dollies so there are actual dolly moves in that scene.

Camera OperatOr: the Butler

19

Those scenes where the kids are being pelted by the water cannons, surrounded by dogs and police—we did a lot of that handheld. We were right in the middle of the action with rain gear and rain suits and everything, just getting blasted ourselves. It was definitely challenging, managing to keep the equipment working, trying to keep a sense of the shot, composing the shot—all while you’re in the middle of the tension of barking dogs and water cannons and people screaming. You definitely have to fight to survive in the middle of all that.

Knowing, and Not Knowing I think it’s better that we didn’t necessarily pre-plan every single little thing. I kind of like not knowing the absolute exacts because then you don’t pre-react. You don’t tense up at the wrong time. You don’t point somewhere before something’s happening. It’s a different sort of style. I remember talking to Andrew Dunn, the DP, about it. You don’t want to anticipate things because you want to be there in that same moment of reaction with the character. You hear it or feel it and then you go. You may miss the first bit on camera, but that’s how things actually happen for people. You don’t turn and look before the gun goes off. We discussed those kinds of things prior to shooting, and decided we were going to let things happen. Some things we would get, and some we might not, but it would be better to let them happen and react to them as a visual style.

We almost always used two cameras unless it was a specific Steadicam shot or something where it was so wide that there

20

Camera OperatOr: the Butler

was nowhere to put another camera. Both Jeff and I were in the mix pretty much all the time.

It was one of the last film jobs that I worked on. We shot both Kodak and Fuji stock for the film and at one point towards the end, we actually had some trouble getting film.

We were running low and there wasn’t any more of the Fuji stock we needed in the country. We had to have it ordered from out of the country, which was one of those moments —it’s like wow, I’m really on the cusp of there not being any more film. With so much digital being shot, I’m sort of in the midst of that changeover. That really made it a solid point.

As far as working with the equipment—I’ve done so much digital now lately that I feel like I should say that there was a certain nostalgia about going back to film, but for me as an operator, it doesn’t necessarily change the way I think. I try not to get too focused on the cameras and the equipment.

Don’t get me wrong, I like all the bits and pieces. But I’m thinking about where I can put the camera so the lens will be in the right spot, rather than the type of equipment I’m using. We had all the things that we needed to make that happen.

Towards the end, we used Technocrane a little for some scenes and we used Steadicam a pretty healthy amount.

There are some tracking moves. There are some practical sets.

We shot the bulk of it right in New Orleans, so a lot of the practical sets are very old and you can’t do much to them.

They don’t want you to bring in a lot of stuff. They don’t want you to alter things. So we used Steadicam quite a bit in those Winter 2014

Cecil’s son Louis (Daniel Oyelowo) is arrested after a demonstration.

When they arrive at the White House, the Kennedy family meets the staff.

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locations. It also helped to keep a sense of movement going for the picture.

Bits and Pieces Lee asked Jeff Tufano, the “A” camera operator, and me to look for moments, no matter when they happened. That included even when we weren’t officially rolling. Lee wanted a sort of unstaged drama. It was more about letting things play out, and getting any beautiful candid moments that you could get, and not being discouraged if you got some stuff that wasn’t absolutely fantastic. It was about getting those brief moments in between what’s on the page.

As operators it gives you a creative freedom to try things and look for things and then just go for it.

Because I was on “B” camera with a longer lens a lot of the time, Andrew and Lee gave me that sort of carte blanche, to roll whenever I saw something that I liked. I had a great focus puller, Richard Lacy, who was very good about dealing with improv and rolling when he might not have been completely set, and still able to smile about it all afterward.

I would watch the actors a lot, and sometimes when they were just in an unguarded moment, that was the best expression. So Richard and I spent a lot of time in sort of stealth mode, acting like we weren’t rolling, but rolling. It became sort of a little dance, trying covertly to keep crew out of the shot and to not let everybody know that we were actually rolling on something. That became almost a little game.

If I didn’t have a specific assignment, then it was back to my “stealth mode” assignment. I spent a lot of my time on the Stealth shooting — catching Nancy Reagan (Jane Fonda) in a quiet moment between sets.

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long end of the zoom looking for facial reactions and watching the actors and background for those moments and telltale quirks, body language, things like that. It’s fun.

It’s a study in human behavior.

There was a moment where Jane Fonda, who plays Nancy Reagan was just sitting in a chair between setups, just a thoughtful moment. We were in Liev Schreiber wore prosthetics one of the White and a hairpiece to become LBJ. House sets, one of the larger expansive sets. There was nothing going on, and it just looks so great. I couldn’t resist trying to roll on it but it was a fairly wide shot. Richard did his wonderful job of corralling people to not cross through, and the ADs also would try to covertly help us, keeping people out and not alerting the actors that we were concentrating on anything in particular, and Lee loved it. You could almost do no wrong in that sense. If you were being thoughtful about it, if you were looking for those sorts of moments that just happen, that are not contrived—that’s what he really wanted.

Extra Collaboration I always had a huge respect for makeup and hair, but so much more on this show because I was given leeway to do whatever I needed for the stealth shots. A lot of times I was doing some very very snug close-ups, and that can be a problem, especially when you’ve got a lot of prosthetics going on, which we did. Actors had facial prosthetics, hairpieces, and so on. I had a lot of dialogue with both hair and makeup departments about the “stealth mode” shots I was supposed to do, and they were very responsive. I’m sure at some point the hair and makeup people may have wanted to kill me for shooting such tight shots, but they were always so wonderful.

And it looks great. But we had a really good conversation and communication about all of it, which doesn’t always happen.

Continuity was also a problem; we were not only shooting out of order, but we had so many different actors coming in and out for very short periods of time. It meant I had to have that sort of communication with the other departments.

And they would come to me and ask me what I thought about how it looked. I’ve done period pieces before but I hadn’t done that much of that kind of detail-oriented thing when it came to wardrobe and hair and makeup. So it was a great experience for me, working closely with those departments, not just saying casually, “Yeah, it looks fine” and hoping that they’d get out of the shot quickly. We had a great collaboration.

There are so many moments like that. It’s amazing because the schedule was really tough and we had a laundry list of big Winter 2014

actors. Some of them only came in for a couple of days to to making sure that we’d see what we wanted to see and do their pieces. We had to be ready, and be willing to get nothing more. whatever came to us without a lot of specific rehearsal.

There’s another reveal where Cecil takes his wife to the Overall there was very little rehearsal. A lot of things were White House for the first time. It’s the scene where Nancy semi-improv. For instance, for the scenes with Forest and Reagan has invited them to be dinner guests. That is also a Oprah, there’s great scripted dialogue but there was also a lot Steadicam reveal. But on the other side, there’s nothing but a of room for improv as well. Lee encouraged it, and so we had very, very narrow walkway that’s raised up in the air to get to to be aware of it too. You have to sort of go along with the the doors. Our still photographer, Anne Marie Fox has a flow and be prepared. really funny photo from the other side of that set with all the Andrew’s lighting is great, but it’s not so specific that it backstage filmic kind of stuff going on. There’s myself, can’t sort of change and flex. I’d try to be aware and ask him if Richard Lacy, and my grip who’s sort of keeping me from there was an area of the set or a direction that he would rather I not shoot, but most of the time he was basically giving us the ability to shoot whatever was there, whatever was going on, wherever the actors wanted to go. Again, you feel very free to do things, not at all constrained. Everybody felt that. Even on a tight schedule, it still felt like there was some freedom involved. So Jeff Tufano and I felt like we were actually contributing to setting up shots and getting good pieces and that our ideas were encouraged and valid, all those things that you always like to feel.

One of the scenes I love is where Cecil and his son are in a jail cell after protesting together. The shot starts off on the actors and you don’t actually see the bars in frame yet, then pulls back and widens out to see them in the jail cell. We did that as a Steadicam shot, but there’s actually a zoom hidden in there as well. We did that quite a bit actually. But in this Cecil’s first day on the job has him serving President Eisenhower (Robin Williams). particular scene it’s not as apparent and was actually a difficult shot. As falling off the edge. There’s Forest and Oprah in front of me, far as its onscreen presence, it’s seems like a simple shot. But waiting to walk through the doors. I think our boom operabetween myself operating and Andrew working the zoom tor is somewhere in there as well. All of us are trying to keep control, it was quite difficult to do. You’ve got two brains our footing on this little raised walkway and waiting to enter involved, trying to coordinate who is doing what and I can barely handle the one brain I’ve got, much less someone else’s. the White House on the other side.

But again, it’s a great reveal. It opens up into this large Revealing the White House expansive set and then winds around to see Forest and We built sets for the White House bits, Oval Office, Oprah, to see her expression on entering this iconic place. hallways and things like that. There are some practical You get to really experience it. Sure, you can take a tour, but locations for the White House kitchens and the staff areas to be invited to the White House—and it’s one of those that we sort of adapted for our own purposes. things that Cecil’s wife has talked about all through the We used Steadicam for both of the big reveal moments movie, getting to see the White House, and here she finally that really stand out in my mind. One of those was a reveal is. A great scene, a great little reveal, but just tricky to make into the Oval Office where it’s Forest’s first time actually it happen, working around so many background extras and serving the President. There’s some Steadicam with him in getting everybody on the same page about what’s going on. the hallway and then it opens up to reveal the Oval Office.

On paper, it didn’t seem like it would be difficult, but we had True Professionals I have to touch on Richard Lacy’s focus pulling and just to take such care with it because there was always something his general demeanor. The difficulty comes in not exactly just off frame that shouldn’t be there. So framing was critical Winter 2014

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Check out the head bottom right—that guy is standing on the floor. The camera crew is on a very narrow 4-foot-high raised platform. Key Grip Chris Ekstrom is sitting on the top of the ladder to spot anyone from falling off the back. 1st AC Richard Lacy is in the cap, and dolly grip Jeremy Webber’s head is blocked by the camera carried by Grayson Austin SOC. They’re ready to reveal Oprah and Forest when their characters enter the White House as dinner guests of the Reagans.

knowing what’s going to happen. Richard was very patient about all of these things and was terrific pulling focus in dire circumstances. He’s a really great guy anyway and we had a lot of fun on “B” camera. We spent a lot of time laughing and enjoying what we were doing. All those things are important when you’ve got to work so closely with somebody. Since they’re only a couple of feet away from you all day long, it helps to get along and have a good time.

Michael Charbonnet was the focus puller for “A” camera. Michael is one of the first guys that I worked with when I first got here to New Orleans years and years and years ago. He is an A-level camera assistant and focus puller, a wonderful guy. If I didn’t have Richard with me, I would be sad that I wasn’t with Michael. He’s one of those guys. He doesn’t lay a lot of marks. He doesn’t get uptight about stuff. He just does things really well, no matter what you ask of him.

We shot quite a bit in handheld mode, but we had dollies for a lot of things. Being on the long lens so much of the time, I appreciate having a dolly and a good dolly grip. My

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dolly grip, Jeremy Webber is someone I’ve worked with and known for a long time. He was really great about letting me sort of free form things.

A lot of the time, I would just give him an instruction to keep some movement going, which is the key—just keeping a little bit of constant motion going on. So I’d have him just

Oprah laughing, probably at something very British that DP Andrew Dunn just said...

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In the cotton field, where we had to add cotton to all the plants since they harvested everything just before we went to shoot at the location! Director Lee Daniels is sitting in the foreground (wearing pajamas), Grayson Austin is at the camera, Richard Lacy is pulling focus and DP Andrew Dunn is whispering sweet nothings in Richard’s ear...

doing a very slow dolly move. Not necessarily with a purpose.

Not necessarily from point A to point B. I didn’t want him to get into being structured about where he needed to move to.

I sort of let that be open, so that he had that same sort of feeling as I do. Sometimes I would do it myself, just use my feet or whatever to move the dolly a little bit, a Flintstone kind of thing. Sometimes, it’s easier for me to do that than it is to translate some strange thought in my head to somebody else. But Jeremy has worked with me long enough now that he gets what I’m trying to do anyway. Most of the time I can just leave him to his own thoughts about where we should be and just let him go. He’s fantastic.

Jeremy isn’t just my dolly grip. He’s also my safety guy when I do Steadicam or handheld. He’s there with me, helping guide me through people and things and keeping me out of trouble when I’m lost in the scene. I never worry when I’m with him. I know if he’s behind me that I’m not going to get hurt or run into anything or trip over stuff.

Robert Morrison was the “A” camera dolly grip. I’ve done lots of time in the trenches with him as well. He and Jeremy try to work together a lot, so no matter what camera I’m on, whether I’m doing the “A” or the “B” camera, I know I’m going to be happy and I’m going to be taken care of and they’ll look out for me.

Our still photographer, Anne Marie Fox was really great about all the free form stuff that we were doing, and she wasn’t even aware of what I was doing in stealth mode. She got some fantastic shots from I don’t know where. Considering that Jeff and I were shooting all different ways, I don’t Winter 2014

how she stayed out of our shots and still got everything.

This was my first film with Andrew Dunn, and my second with him, Endless Love opens on Valentine’s Day. Andrew’s a great guy. He’s so lovely and so easygoing, a real “gentle folk” kind of person and fun to work with. I would just about drop whatever I was doing to do something with him.

He’s wonderful.

I had never worked with Lee Daniels before either, but I had heard quite a bit, both wonderful and strange and interesting, and he’s all of those things. I mean, he wears pajamas to work every day. Every single day of shooting, in pajamas. And that was our wrap gift from production —a set of pajamas.

Actor’s World I even wore pajamas on set one day. I ended up acting as James Marsden’s hand double for a scene. It was some insert shots of him looking over some photos during the Cuban Missile Crisis. James actually picked my hands. He thought that my hands looked most like his. Go figure. So I put on the pajamas and I did the scene and Andrew operated my camera and Jeff the other and we did it. I’m not gonna lie.

It felt a little strange to be wearing pajamas in the President’s bedroom. I’ve made a cameo here and there occasionally, but this was unique.

Forest was fantastic. He put so much into his character. He really concentrated on the details. We had a consultant with us, a former White House employee, about all the day-to-day details and how things were done. Forest spent a lot of time Camera OperatOr: the Butler

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You’re looking at technical bits and pieces. But seeing this as a final film really made me think that I should probably start that way, even during the shooting. It gave me a renewed sense of approaching a project as a story first instead of just this technical thing that I’m helping to build.

The Butler had an impact on me as being something I’m very proud of being a part of, and helping me renew something about the filmmaking process. The job can become very 9 to 5-ish if you’re not careful, which is why I love doing projects like Grayson at camera, Richard sitting beside it, our 2nd assistant camera Aeron these that are just great McKeough (great guy and great 2nd) and Andrew pointing at something with his stories. You have something laser and saying something very British (which is probably what made me laugh). that everyone can take working on his technique as a butler because it was important something from, no matter who they are, no matter what to him that it all seem real, that none of it felt like he was just —whether they remember those time periods or not, they going through the motions—pouring the tea, cleaning can still associate with what the people are feeling. So the silverware, and so on. movie really gave me something that I wasn’t expecting it to The riot scenes were difficult because we weren’t really sure give me. Plus it’s always nice when something you work on what was going to happen. So much of it is handheld. Forest gets noticed as well. really didn’t want to know what was going to happen. He wanted to react to things as opposed to knowing exactly what was going to happen at any given time. So we were sort of in the dark as well and again, it’s reactionary as opposed to pre-planned operating. In one sense I love it because it sort of forces you to react like the character reacts, but at the same time, it’s a little scary not knowing what’s happening and wanting to get great shots.

The Bigger Picture I saw the movie in a theater and was genuinely moved by it —and I was there when we shot it! So I knew all the things and I knew what was going to happen and within reason what was going to be said and done, but you know what? I still found myself reacting and being moved by everything that was going on in those performances. I try to go to movies as a moviegoer anyway, but sometimes, you find it hard.

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Richard; Grayson; Michael Charbonne,“A” camera 1st); Jeff Tufano, “A” camera operator Winter 2014

C a rry On appr ov e d

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Challenges of ‘Lone Survivor’

by Jacques Jouffret soc

Photos by Gregory R Peters. © 2013 Universal Studios. All Rights Reserved.

Marcus Luttrell (Mark Wahlberg) is offered food and water by Gulab (Ali Suliman) and his young son (Rohan Chand).

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one Survivor, based on Marcus Luttrell’s 2009 book, is the story of the failed 2005 mission “Operation Red Wings” in which members of Navy SEAL Team 10 were tasked with the mission to capture or kill notorious Taliban leader Ahmad Shah. The movie, directed by Peter Berg, with Tobias Schliessler as DP, stars Mark Wahlberg, Taylor Kitsch, Emile Hirsch and Ben Foster as the four on the ground.

Jacques Jouffret SOC, “A” camera and Steadicam (Into the Wild, The Fifth Estate, Eagle Eye, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, Transformers: Dark of the Moon and Transformers: Age of Extinction), recalls what it was like to film Lone Survivor.

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around 6 am and going to our location at the top of the mountains. The cold, the altitude and the schlepping of the equipment from location to location up on that ridge—that was one of the really tough parts. But also the acting, which was very action packed physically, was hard physical work to capture, at that altitude and in that rugged terrain. Despite this we completed the film fairly quickly—in just 38 days.

Perfect Fit This was my first time working with Peter Berg and Tobias Schliessler. A lot of people had told me that I would work very well with them and they were correct. It was a very easy fit for me.

Peter had been trying for many years to make this movie. It was a very important project for him. Marcus Lutrell, the Lone Survivor himself, was with us from time to time for the filming. I think the entire crew and myself were prepared to work very hard for this movie to be as authentic and true to Peter’s vision and Marcus’s story as possible. We knew going into it that it was not going to be easy physically or mentally.

Getting the Shots

Gulab (Ali Suliman) helps Marcus (Mark Wahlberg) out of the water while Jacques Jouffret SOC films it with his focus puller, Jimmy Jensen.

No Other Word for It Lone Survivor is intense to watch. It was intense to shoot.

That’s what I remember most—the intensity of it all. It was very hard physical work, in extremely difficult locations, for everyone involved, certainly for the actors and the camera crew. Still it was a great experience!

We were shooting in Albuquerque and Santa Fe, at about 9,000 or 10,000 feet, where production had found the same kind of environment that you would find on the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan. The terrain was rugged. We had the dubious pleasure of waking up at 4 or 5 in the morning, going to the kitchen for breakfast, then taking the ski lift Winter 2014

There was no rehearsal; Peter would set up the physical elements of the scene and then let the actors respond to the environment. I had to stay open to whatever could happen and be ready for it. I love working that way. Working with no rehearsal—that’s when magic happens. I would always try to give Peter and Tobias two or three different options for every set up. As the “A” camera, it was my responsibility to do a wide shot. This way the audience would have a sense of what is going on and where we are. I was always looking at the ground and the terrain surrounding me and thinking, “What happens if he does this or that…?” I was always doing a sort of pre-vis in my mind of what could happen and what the actors were going to do or where they would go, just to make sure that I was ready for anything. Camera work is all about reacting to the performance of the actors. With Peter you have to be open to the fact that anything could happen.

Since he likes the spontaneity, he wants to be surprised within a certain framework that he has created.

I would talk to Tobias, and say, “I think I’m going to be doing this or that, I’m moving left or right for this moment, I’m probably going to go on a close-up there,” etc, so that he had a sense of where I was thinking of. But mostly there was very little talk between Pete, Tobias and me. I just watched them work and I picked up the cues.

I was very fortunate on this shoot because, of the four leading guys, I had worked with three of them before. I’ve done three movies with Mark Wahlberg, two with Ben Foster, and one with Emile Hirsch. I have a very good relationship with them, and I know how they work and move, so I could sense where they were going with their ideas.

I was glad to work with Emile again. It was quite interesting, because the last time we worked together, it was on Into the Wild, which was also shot in extreme outdoor locations.

And here we were again, together in extreme locations and extreme weather. But at least we didn’t have to camp out this time, so it was a little bit easier for all of us.

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Director Peter Berg and Mark Wahlberg discuss a scene.

All the actors were incredibly giving. What we did was at times dangerous, but all the actors were just fantastic; they really gave a hundred percent. The entire cast and crew were just great.

I remember one moment, when all the actors were firing their guns so intensely that I got some shrapnel in my face. I was wounded around the mouth. I was so focused on the action, there was so much adrenaline pumping just from trying to follow the actors in the attempt to get the shot, that I didn’t even realize what had happened.

Realism

Axe and Marcus carry Danny down a rocky hill.

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The technical advisors were Navy SEALs, there to make sure that everything we did was absolutely correct. It was obviously Peter’s desire to be as accurate as possible.

They were very firm: “This is not the way we would do it. Here’s the way we would do it.” Sometimes the way they would do it was not the most visual way, but every procedure, every gesture, has a reason, and the order in which they do all those Winter 2014

Mike Murphy (Taylor Kitsch), Marcus Luttrell (Mark Wahlberg), “Axe” Axelson (Ben Foster), and Danny Dietz (Emile Hirsch)

things is very very rigid. It was quite challenging to respect that and at the same time tell the story. It could come from the most simple elements—you are behind a rock, what do you do first, you look left, you look right, hold your gun correctly, where’s your hand, why would you do such and such a thing. We spent a lot of time for each event. Maybe when you watch the movie it seems like a bunch of guys just running around and shooting everywhere, but in fact it’s very controlled and they know exactly what they are doing. I was very impressed with that, and with Pete’s absolute commitment to accuracy. Even in a case where the easiest way would have been the most visual way, the cinematic way of going about it, we stuck exactly to the way that SEAL team members would do it.

There is a shot in the film where Mark Wahlberg as Luttrell is pulling Emile and Emile is firing as he’s being pulled. It’s not an act. You might look at it and think it’s overdone, or is overly cinematic, but in fact that’s the way they would do it.

The reason Emile is firing is to protect the person who is pulling him out. They were constantly concerned with very minute details: how you hold the gun with your finger against the barrel, because you only place it on the trigger when you are ready to shoot, and things like that.

In his book, Marcus portrays all the different firefights very accurately. Pete tried very much to do it the same way. We had a name for each battle. The one I remember the most is “Push Right, Push Left.” Every step that the four members took had to be according to protocol—you move to the right,

no you can’t move to the right, let’s go to the left, you go first, and so on—the way they moved was very coordinated, and so we respected that.

Marcus was with us for most of the filming. There were a few times that Peter asked him to step out, or told him not to come, because it became quite emotional for him. He was also getting too involved, showing us step by step how it really happened. He just could not help himself. From time to time, Pete sent him out for his own sanity, saying, “I don’t want you to relive this again.” Then Marcus would come back again for things that were not as intense.

Tight Space There is one particular shot with Mark Wahlberg, the Lone Survivor, when he is finally rescued. They are flying him to the hospital, and you see his realization, his character’s realization, that he’s going to survive. That scene we did inside a helicopter, and there was no way that the crew could fit in that tiny space. Peter could not get in there nor could Tobias. So with Peter’s trust, I went. The helicopter took off with only me, my 1st assistant Jimmy Jensen and Mark. I started rolling and Mark did his work during an amazingly long shot. I shot it with him just going at it, until I ran out of data space. When we landed, there was just this look from Peter asking, “We got it?” I gave him the thumbs up. That was an amazing moment for me as a camera operator and a great performance by Mark.

What, Where and How We were shooting with Red Epic cameras —three of them. I had a 19–90 zoom on my camera. I pretty much did the entire movie with that zoom. I believe the “B” camera or the “C” camera had a little bit shorter zoom, 24–78, or 25–105. That was pretty much it. We kept the package as simple and efficient as we could because we had to carry everything with us.

Two or three days at the beginning of the movie take place at the barracks; this was

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really the only soundstage work we did. Everything else was shot outside.

We shot about 30–35% Steadicam, and the rest was done handheld. The editor did a great job connecting the two. We used Steadicam to move the actors from point A to point B during the battle, and in the thick of it we shot handheld.

The death of Mike Murphy (Taylor Kitsch) and particularly the death of Ben Foster’s character, Axe, were quite emotional to shoot. Ben was sliding himself down those rocks, crawling down on the ground and finally reaching the tree where he would find his death. I was crawling on the rocks, too, the camera on my shoulder, and my left hand on

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the rocks, grabbing everything I could to hold myself, with Victor, my dolly grip, just behind me. I have no idea how I was able to make it down that ridge without breaking an ankle or something. This was my third movie with Ben, so I know him quite well. He’s an amazing actor, and we did it in three parts. But that scene—shooting it was so difficult. At one point he’s lying there, almost dead.

I moved the camera from my shoulder and lowered it to the ground with the handle and basically guessed the frame because I could not see exactly, but it worked out great—a little crooked, but still perfect. Peter loved that tableau.

Victor, also my safety grip, was with me all the time. Our key grip, Mike Anderson, who is absolutely the best, was constantly forcing us to be safe. We were always rushing and wanting to climb up and down and going on those rocks, and he was always telling us,“No, I’m not going to let you go there. Put the belts on.” We respected that and we did it. Even though sometimes we were mad at him, we knew of course that he was doing the right thing to keep us all safe.

There’s that scene with the goat herders. The SEALs had a choice of killing them or letting them go —an old man and two boys—and they made the fateful decision to let them go. Marcus was definitely not there for that scene. Pete didn’t want him there that day. The guy that we hired to be the teenage goat herder is a Winter 2014

parcour guy. Basically you see a few shots of him running and jumping from rock to rock and he’s a specialist at that. I did a lot of shots with him running where I’m on the Gator trying to keep up with him and he’s running super fast.

Those high angle shots where we see our four characters climbing on top of the mountains after they let the goat herders go? We did those from the ski lift.

The Team I had an amazing camera crew. First and foremost Jimmy Jensen, my first assistant. He’s really quite incredible. You cannot do that kind of work without a top-notch first assistant. Without having to talk to one another, Jimmy would just know what I was going for, and he was always right on it. I can count on one hand the number of good assistants that can do that kind of work with no rehearsal.

His skill at managing and organizing the camera department is pretty incredible too. I could not have done this movie without him.

We had a revolving door of “B” camera operators. Lucasz Bielan was there for a week or two. Then we had BJ McConnell for another week or two, and finally Kent Harvey for another week or two. On “C” camera I had Coy Aune, who was there for the entire shoot. He is really the one I can relate most to, as we were there together the whole time. [The credit crawl lists Coy as “B” camera and Kent as “C.”] As the “A” camera, I make sure that I focus on the action, while “B” and “C” pick up on the details and work around me.

Working with Tobias Working for Tobias Schliessler is a great experience for a camera operator. That was my first film with him; I have done another movie with him since then. He’s a great DP. He has Winter 2014

an amazing relationship with Peter. They’ve been working together for maybe 15 or 20 years, so they have a very good understanding of each other. Together, they’re just fantastic.

For me, knowing that Tobias is back there by the monitors watching what I do, and sharing his ideas and insights with me, is wonderful. What I mean by that is: as a camera operator, when I’m doing the shot, I’m actually doing the shot. I’m not watching the shot, I’m making it. There’s a big difference. You are responding so much to what’s happening, at that very moment, to all the constants that you have in front of you, that sometimes you miss the big picture.

I think it was Tobias’s visual decision to play the flares, and it came about because of where we were shooting. We were on the very top of the ridge and therefore shooting in every direction. With four characters going in different directions, I would almost always catch the flare as I panned from one to the other. It happened so many times that we decided to go with it, instead of trying to fight it. It may look like we planned it, and in a way we did, but originally it was simply what was happening with the camera following those actors.

Visually, the high altitude pretty much lent itself for that.

My Operating Philosophy For me the camera operator has two bosses—the director and the DP—and I take my cues from both of them. They each have a very different agenda but the same goal. So, as a camera operator, particularly the “A” camera operator, you’re constantly trying to understand both their needs and find a way where you can please both of them. That’s pretty much the work of the camera operator to me. Even when their priorities are in contradiction with one another, it’s your job as the operator to find a way where both their needs are answered.

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As Marcus Luttrell is taken to the helicopter, he pauses to thank the boy who helped him.

At the beginning of one’s career, you are more concerned than anything else about the execution of the shot. As you gain more experience and have more confidence, that concern kind of recedes, and the job becomes a lot more about getting your DP and your director what they each need.

From the way I look at the camera, from my position, I only have one agenda, and that is to tell the story. The DP has a much larger responsibility. He has to look out for the entire look of the film, and to make sure that everything of the director’s vision is in it. As a camera operator, I have the luxury to just worry about one thing—telling the story. That helicopter shot, that was very interesting for me, because I was both trying to film what Mark was doing in his performance trying to tell that story the way Peter would want me to, whilst in the back of my mind and at the same time I had all the concerns of Tobias my DP: Do we have the right exposure? Are we in the right position? Is the shot expressing the director’s vision? and so on.

That was quite surprising to me. This is the beauty about it.

You never know how it’s going to add up. I think what happens spontaneously on set is, first and foremost, always the best choice to go with.

My daughter and my wife came to visit me on set. My 11-year-old daughter watched me film one of those battle scenes, and she told me afterward, “Your job is so easy, Dad. You just run around like a crazy maniac among all these explosions, and that’s pretty easy compared to the schoolwork that I’ve got to do. But I did take some nice pictures.”

I’m glad that I had the opportunity to work on this project and help share this amazing story.

Magic Happens There’s a shot—it’s a pretty long shot, and as always with Peter, he never says “Cut”—he just keeps going and going and going, therefore you never know what is going to happen… We were supposed to do the full scene, which is long dialogue between the guys. But then at the end of it, Mark just started walking away, so I followed him. He kept walking and walking, and I continued to follow him and then, suddenly he turned around, looking straight into the camera, before walking away again up that mountain. He’s just an amazing actor. I’m amazed that this shot is in the movie. I thought for sure it was going to get cut because of its length, but Peter kept it.

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Camera OperatOr: LOne SurvivOr

Jacques Jouffret soc on a cold morning Winter 2014

by David J Thompson soc

Photos by Wilson Webb Š 2013 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation.

All Rights Reserved.

Walter Mitty (Ben Stiller) is in fantasy mode, to impress Cheryl (Kristen Wiig).

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en Stiller directs and stars in this updated version of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, which is based on the short story by James Thurber. Walter lives a colorless life in the real world as a magazine photo editor, but is a daring adventurer and superhero in his fantasies. When Walter’s job becomes threatened, he takes on an adventure far beyond his imagination. The cast includes Kristen Wiig as Walter’s co-worker Cheryl, Shirley Maclaine as his mother, Adam Scott as his new boss Ted, and Sean Penn as a freelance photographer.

Dave Thompson SOC, whose credits include Hunger Games: Catching Fire; Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Parts I and II; and Divergent, says, “I feel like the guy they call for dystopian heroines in distress in the dystopian future, and they all have to be handheld or on Steadicam.” He found working on The Secret Life of Walter Mitty no less challenging, for different reasons.

Walter in the helicopter

Ben Made It Happen

segue between everyone from that visual standpoint. He would have a playback monitor as close to set as possible, even on the set, so he could watch the last take instantly, or he’d come talk to me about it. We’d get the notes and go right into it, do it again and do it again. It was an extremely disciplined way to work. You couldn’t have an off day because he doesn’t have an off day. He sees everything in the frame.

Ben was very very specific in what he wanted, and it was nice to work with him in that sense. A typical day would start with an actors’ rehearsal. Then the DP, key grip Mitch Lillian, gaffer Bill O’Leary and I would walk it through with Ben. We would lay it out, walk it with the finder or use the camera and really map out exactly what we would be doing.

Remaking The Secret Life of Walter Mitty was a difficult task. You have the classic short story and the wonderful Danny Kaye movie to live up to. I think that’s where the combination of director Ben Stiller and writer Steve Conrad created the magic. I have to say it was one of the best scripts I’ve ever read. It was amazing. With a lot of scripts, something doesn’t really translate and they say, “We’ll work on it later.” But from the beginning Walter Mitty was spot on. I got it and I got what kind of movie Ben wanted to make.

Ben Stiller has a reputation for being an exacting director, meaning he knows what he wants. I had done a few movies with him as an actor so I knew what I was signing up for. I enjoy that challenge. On a lot of movies you find that they sort of take shape as you’re making them, but Ben had a very specific vision in mind and you had to be on board with that and understand his process. Across all aspects— visual, writing, acting, just the whole execution of the movie—he was very specific. I liked that he had the dedication to make it the movie that he envisioned and ultimately executed.

It is challenging when the main actor is also the director. It was very difficult Camera operator Dave Thompson in New York because as the operator you’re sort of the

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Winter 2014

Walter arrives at work

Ben would step off and do hair and makeup or costume, but then he would come back and we would rehearse it and rehearse it until it was as perfect as we could get it. We would do a couple rehearsals with the stand-ins and then Ben would come in and rehearse it and we’d watch playback and then we’d rehearse it again and watch playback and just really really tune it in, really fine tune the shot. And then we would start shooting, and shoot it and shoot it until he was happy.

There was no compromise, which was really great. He would fight for what he needed and we all got on board with that and we’d fight for it as well. No matter how hard that shot was going to be, we would figure it out.

Hanging a piano from a 100 ft crane so it can be seen in the background out of a window is a detail that could have been done with VFX. But there is an essence to doing it practically that I think translated nicely. It’s just real.

Pure. Simple. There was something that Ben really wanted to tell in that story with that piano hanging out the window, no matter how much time it took to move the piano and get it into the frame.

Ben did pretty much all of his own stunts too. If something had happened to him, we’d have lost both the director and the lead actor. Every now and then they’d throw the stunt guy in, but Ben Winter 2014

was pretty adamant about doing a lot of that himself.

If I were Ben I would just be completely exhausted taking that much on, but he seemed to come in fresh every day and he was just full of energy and laughter. He was ready to go. I don’t know how he did it. Either he doesn’t need sleep or he’s got some secret that I want to figure out.

In director mode Camera OperatOr: the SeCret Life Of WaLter mitty

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New York, I love you

The idea was to capture New York, to have it come across as a certain romanticism with New York City. Ben was very specific in setting the style and we referenced some of the great movies of Billy Wilder, like The Apartment, Being There, and of course obviously Life Magazine photos—the magazine theme was definitely a heavy player in setting the tone as well.

The production design was exceptional—everything from the actual floor that Walter worked on in the Time Life

building, to his work space where they kept the archives, to his apartment—those sets were incredible. Production designer Jeff Mann did an amazing job with that. His attention to detail was extraordinary. Even the apartment that Shirley Maclaine lived in—that was actually a practical location that they found way up the Bronx. Ben put together a really good team and I hope it comes across.

We built the Life Magazine set, that whole floor of his office building, but the exteriors were shot in Midtown: Walter and Cheryl talking about the missing photo, and of

Walter (far right), his sister and a neighbor stare at the piano.

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Walter at the 125th Street station

course the elevated platform at the 125th Street subway station, which sets up what the audience will come to expect from Walter’s fantasies.

Ben chose to shoot a lot of locations practically. I like that.

I believe it lends itself to realism. Moving walls and perfect floors to dolly on are what we expect on a stage. There’s something real and true about having to shoot on location.

Especially in NYC. The apartment they chose for Walter’s mom’s assisted living complex was an example of this—a real location up in the Bronx. It’s tough to move an entire film crew into a tiny apartment and stage big dialogue scenes.

Shirley Maclaine and Kathleen Hahn as Walter’s mother and sister, in the apartment in the Bronx

Especially scenes that transition into Walter taking on this monumental life-changing adventure.

Different Worlds

Dave Thompson filming in New York City Winter 2014

A lot of the framing was very specific to show Walter’s isolation and disconnect from the world. There’s not a lot of camera movement when he was regular Walter—it was just very graphic with a lot of headroom, like the whole sequence when he first walks into his office and he’s framed off center with so much headroom that you see the fluorescent lighting.

It was all very deliberate. The idea was to convey that Walter’s real life was very ordinary, vanilla, and when he slipped into a fantasy his life become fantastical, vivid.

The regular Walter Mitty life we shot spherical and then once we would go in to the fantasies, just to give a little bit of texture, a slightly subtle difference, we would switch to anamorphic. All the fantasy sequences were shot in anamorphic.

We would let the actors play the frame as opposed to always panning and tilting with them and trying to find that sweet spot. Keeping the lens as nodal as we could gives it certain feel. When he was in his fantasy world, we did a lot more camera movement, we did a lot of handheld, and we would do Steadicam, shooting it more in an “action movie” style. That was all Ben’s idea. The regular Walter stuff would Camera OperatOr: the SeCret Life Of WaLter mitty

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pretty much everything from them landing in the trash trucks, snowboarding, skiing down the street, we did that live and then they CG’d in the broken rubble.

The Stretch Armstrong sequence starts in the Time Life elevator as a “regular” scene and suddenly turns into a brutally vicious fight that leads to Walter and Ted flying through the wall and tumbling 40 stories into the trash trucks.

The elevator fight was designed to be one shot. I had an Arri 235 and would move and counter the action. The stunt riggers would open and close the elevator door as the action/fight spun around inside the elevator.

Three people in an elevator doesn’t sound crowded until you add an all-out street fight, a Stretch Armstrong, and Adam Scott swinging a briefcase.

The interior of the fight continues with Ben and Adam pushing through the wall of the Time Life building and falling towards

Midtown Manhattan, here we come!

Continuing the battle for Stretch Armstrong.

be more in the framing and the cuts, a very classical sort of storytelling, and then once you went to his fantasies it would get into the sort of modernesque filmmaking where you’re flying around and it’s very active.

The Battle for Stretch Armstrong We had a lot of weekends closing down streets in Manhattan. That sequence where Ben and Adam Scott are fighting over Stretch Armstrong and they go out the side of the elevator—that was a long sequence of events, riding up and down Fifth Avenue with these insane tow rigs. Not much of that sequence was green screen either. Obviously, the part where they fall out of the elevator was, but

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Ted (Adam Scott) escapes with Stretch Armstrong, pursued by Walter.

Camera OperatOr: the SeCret Life Of WaLter mitty

Winter 2014

midtown Manhattan. The shot that picks them up in the fall was one of the more difficult shots to operate. Ben and Adam were suspended from cables in a greenscreen stage. The camera was mounted on an underslung sled that was attached to 8˝ I-beams that ran about 60 feet. The sled was connected to a repeatable winch from Fisher Technologies and was able to reach incredible speeds. The sled was repeatable in the sense that we had a start and a decelerated stop mark. The camera move was done live. To add to the difficulty, a 45-degree wedge plate was put between the Libra head and the sled. So at the crucial point in the pan, the pan axis became the roll and vice versa. We had to do it on the fly. As the operator, you’re switching hands halfway through the shot to go into roll mode. It was very difficult to do it live. You just go for it. You have Adam and Ben hanging in these wire harnesses with giant fans blowing on them, fighting over the Stretch Armstrong toy as we try and do this very complicated maneuver.

A bit stressful…

The sequence continues on the streets of Manhattan. Ben and Adam leap from the garbage truck and land on concrete snowboards.

A special vehicle was built, The MiMo nicknamed the “MiMo” (Mitty Mobile) that could puppeteer Ben and Adam at high speeds as we raced through traffic and they fought over Stretch Armstrong. It was a Chevy truck that had been cut down to be a flatbed with a cage so that the stunt team could work Ben and Adam on their wire rigs while we either captured the action handheld or from the techno that was built into the “MiMo.” When we weren’t on the “MiMo,” the action was shot from an electric car with an Aerocrane and Libra head combo, or handheld following and chasing Ben as he skated for real on a longboard thru traffic. Ben is an incredible skater and was able to be in the traffic patterns and do the stunts, which gave the sequence that much more of an edge.

Kudos Bobby Mancuso was the “A” camera focus puller along with Scott Tinsley as his 2nd. I have worked with them on and off for the past 11 years . If you want to spend time in the trenches of the film industry, this is who you want with you.

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Clockwise: “A” camera operator Dave Thompson SOC, “A” camera 2nd AC Scott Tinsley, DP Stuart Dryburgh and “A”camera 1st AC Bobby Mancuso Camera OperatOr: the SeCret Life Of WaLter mitty

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Walter at last catches up with Life’s star photographer, Sean O’Connell (Sean Penn).

I have to give big props to my dolly grip, Rick Marroquin. He was a huge asset to have on a film of this nature. It’s like having another operator. He is incredible. The camera was always in the right spot. He had my back.

Our “B” team was incredible as well—camera operator Tim Norman and focus puller Ed Nessen. Tim is a seasoned operator who knows where to put the camera and get that great shot or moment that only comes with impeccable taste and instinct.

I think the cast members were excited to be part of this film as well. The cast was unbelievable: Shirley Maclaine, Kristen Wiig, Adam Scott, Kathryn Hahn, to name a few. I really enjoyed watching Ben work with his players, wearing both hats, director and actor. I can’t give enough kudos to Ben for bringing this fantastical story to life again.

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Camera OperatOr: the SeCret Life Of WaLter mitty

Camera operator Dave Thompson SOC

Winter 2014

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by Will Arnot soc

Photos by Merrick Morton SMPSP and Janet Miglio Š 2013 Gravier Productions, Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics Jasmine (Cate Blanchett) contemplates life. Photo by Merrick Morton, SMPSP.

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JANET MIGLIO

lue Jasmine is the story of a New York socialite whose world has fallen apart and who is suddenly without resources. She escapes to San Francisco to stay in her sister’s modest apartment, while she tries to figure out how to pull herself together. Cate Blanchett plays the title role, which won her the Critic’s Choice and Golden Globe Awards for Best Actress. She has an Academy Award nomination as well. The movie also stars Sally Hawkins (Oscar® nominated for Best Supporting Actress), Alec Baldwin, Bobby Cannavale, and Andrew Dice Clay.

Woody Allen wrote the script and directed the movie. His director of photography was Javier Aguirresarobe. Will Arnot soc (The Help, Milk, Charlie Wilson’s War), was the “A” camera and Steadicam operator. He reflects on some of the unusual aspects of bringing this film to the screen.

Cate Blanchett, Woody Allen, Alec Baldwin

Everyone Has Their Own Approach

The standouts for me are really Cate and Sally’s performances; the unique relationship I had with the DP, Woody, and the actors; and the wonderful working relationship that I developed with Woody’s producer Helen Robin.

Woody Allen writes great scripts and hires amazing actors to perform them. He doesn’t plot every move they make or every emotion they show. He hired them because they’re good, and they do what they do really well, so he lets them do it. Nor does he depend on video playback. This is true storytelling, with a director who really knows the material.

So often on modern films actors are getting new script pages every other day or having constant re-write discussions with the multiple screenwriters or producers involved. That doesn’t happen on Woody’s movies. He has a solid script, discusses it with the actors, and trusts their talents to bring it to fruition.

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That’s part of what makes Woody so iconic. He loves to tell these quirky stories, and the writing and the editing are where his chief passion lies. But with the acquisition in the middle, the actual filmmaking, he seems to be over it, and not really interested in being on set. He doesn’t get terribly specific with his actors which can be hard on them, and he’s relatively uninterested in the whole technical shooting process. He would often depart shortly after a shot especially if we had a big turnaround, usually to sample a local restaurant or have a quick meeting, but he was always around when it counted.

He was very professional and deft in his timing of being there when needed.

Woody has worked with an amazing list of DPs over his career: Gordon Willis, Nestor Almendros, Vittorio Storaro, Vilmos Zsigmond, Sven Nykvist to name a few. Woody isn’t a man of many words. He talks to his actors and his DP, and expects that information to be disseminated accordingly. On Winter 2014

Blue Jasmine Woody chose to work again with Javier Aguirresarobe who is a seasoned cinematographer from the Basque region of northern Spain. He worked with Woody on Vicky Christina Barcelona. Woody had planned to do this film with his Midnight in Paris cinematographer Darius Khondji, but Darius had to pull out for personal reasons three or four months before shooting started, so Woody turned to Javier because of their previous working relationship. It was clear that the two of them had an understanding of where they were heading with each of the scenes, but a curious dilemma quickly presented itself for me to bridge the differences between Woody’s expectations of Javier working it out with me and Javier’s more European approach where the operator works it out with the director.

Javier is a sweet sweet guy and a great cinematographer. He began to gain more commercial exposure in the US after he lensed the second two Twilight movies. His English is good, but there’s definitely a limit, so communication was not always complete. We would work out some broad strokes together, like dolly or Steadicam and a general shot direction but after that … He works on the European system where he runs around doing a lot of lighting with his gaffer and key grip and sort of leaves a lot of the camera stuff up to me. On the flip side, Woody only wanting to speak with Javier left me a bit stuck between a rock and a hard place, but not in a bad way, really. I would just stand within earshot and eavesdrop on their conversation. Every job has its own way of working things out and this is what ours was. As Woody came to trust

me he was a little more open to my input. Basically, I came to find that Woody is actually pretty shy and this was a lot of why he channels his needs and thoughts through just a few key people, the principle one being his sister Letty Aronson who produces all his films with him and is always around.

Consequently I keyed in on these people and tried to align myself with them as well in order to earn Woody’s attention.

Sometimes I was sort of allowed to be in the conversation or put in my two cents regarding such things as what part of the room made sense to use. It was often a lot of practical locations and we were on a pretty limited budget. Everything was fairly simple. No big fancy toys or fancy shots. The movie really relies on the good script and the good acting. Having said that, Woody has worked with Santo Loquasto, his production designer for many years for good reason, as Santo often made amazing places out of very little.

Playing the Scenes I would garner as much as I could from Woody and Javier, but what it came down to was that Sally and Cate and I really ended up working the closest together, because sometimes they would be somewhat in the dark about where things were going in terms of coverage, or whether their performance or certain lines would be on or off camera. It was a great experience for me to have to think as the DP in many ways, thinking through the coverage, making sure we got every aspect of the line at the right time, making sure it cut and maintained screen direction, as well as all the basic stuff that

JANET MIGLIO

Sally Hawkins and Andrew Dice Clay

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Camera OperatOr: Blue Jasmine

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DP Javier Aguirresarobe takes a reading.

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in mind, so it wasn’t just completely shoot from the hip, but there was still a lot of freedom of movement.

The film became unique in that way—Javier and his European style meets Old School American—and yet it’s sort of New School Steadicam technique that relies upon the fluidity of the Steadicam to craft the coverage and create the specific angles, not just swoop around. As my career’s gone on and on, I’ve come to dislike Steadicam more and more simply because it’s never quite as good or precise as I want it to be. I always want it to look like a dolly. Working like we had to, it was fun and challenging in that way, because it was just a series of fairly controlled shots that we could still adjust on the fly if need be.

Interiors were hard work. We had one primary interior, Sally Hawkins’ apartment, where Cate comes to live when she moves out West. Her life has come apart and she has no money, so she moves in with Sally. We spent maybe 10 days in that location. That’s a lot of shooting in tight spaces. The Steadicam made sense simply from the space standpoint, but it made everything else challenging, keeping the lighting out and avoiding equipment and stuff like that.

The Importance of Light Woody had originally chosen San Francisco because he wanted the gloom of overcast days. He wanted everything to be sort of dreary and sad and a little depressing. Therefore he wanted the cloudiness of San Francisco in the summertime when there is usually what is known as an inversion layer whereby the warm summer climate is higher than the cool cloudy lower layer that sits over the city. As the famous Mark Twain saying goes: “The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.”

In general, Woody dislikes shooting in harsh sunlight. I think that’s something he picked up from cinematographers like Gordon Willis who would famously wait almost half the day to get the right cloud cover. I think this preference lends a certain freedom to the filmmaking, where you’re not being dictated by the light to where the camera has to go. Overcast light is something that he waits for and often structures his working day around. On this movie, he picked it for an emotional reason as well. But we didn’t have the normal San Francisco August, which should have been socked in by clouds. It was sporadic. We fought it on occasion, and took advantage of it whenever the clouds were in place.

We shot on film. I thought for sure last year would be the turning point for me, where I’d shoot more digital than film, but by far it wasn’t the case. I shot a lot more film last year than I did digital. This year I think might finally be the turning point. But on this one, we shot everything with Arri LTs and film.

Javier, in the interest of adaptability and working fast because Woody doesn’t like to shoot long days, used a lot of wireless iris control. We see a lot more of that now on digital, where you have a DIT and a DP commonly stuck in a tent, and MERRICK MORTON, SMPSP

the operator keeps track of. It’s different on every project, but I’ve never worked so closely with the actors before, regarding these kinds of details that are usually conveyed to them via the director or DP. Woody and Javier would have a conversation about the blocking and we would work it out with Cate and Sally, but it would just be fairly broad strokes, so it would be left to me and the actors to work out what would happen where. We’d talk about the scene and work out things like, “it really looks like this is where this moment is going to take place” and so on. Javier would then sweeten the lighting or accommodate certain things for shooting, so it was a kind of a fluid backand-forth, where I would really do the dance between the actors and Javier, and on rare occasions with Woody. I would note various performance things, like whether we were going to get something on the reverse, or whether we needed to shift the blocking in order to accommodate a particular angle. There was a lot of working it out as we went. It wasn’t like we all sat down and had a big powwow and knew how the whole sequence was really going to be plotted out. It gave a lot of room for both Cate and Sally to stretch their performances and move around the room or the location.

Because of that, we did a lot of Steadicam. It was definitely a daily tool. It was not my choice, but it was definitely the way Woody likes to work, because he doesn’t want to be bothered with locking into a conversation about exactly where a shot or performance has to take place. He’d rather just know that this is the story point and this is what we need to tell, and let it happen where it may. Steadicam obviously is the great adapter for whatever happens and so it just made sense for the whole MO [Method of Operation]. It sort of reminds me of earlier days in my career when Steadicam was first coming around and I was doing low-budget things. We just kind of rock ’n rolled around and got what we got, and it wasn’t so formal. On this project, the acting was certainly on a higher level, the story was on a higher level, there were goals

Winter 2014

MERRICK MORTON, SMPSP

Cate Blanchett, Max Casella, Bobby Cannavale and Sally Hawkins stroll through San Francisco’s Chinatown.

they often ride the iris quite a bit more with digital than you would with film. It’s a little less forgiving on the digital end.

In shooting film Javier has carried over this technique, I think from having shot digital in the last few years. But on this film, he rode the iris more than I’ve ever seen anyone do in my whole career!

As I came to understand his technique, I would keep that in mind as I adjusted the Steadicam to accommodate different backgrounds or moved with the actors, putting a certain background behind them to help his constantly shifting iris. I was dubious at first, but he did an amazing job.

It didn’t matter how big the iris pull would be. Javier’s trick was all about being verrrrry slow at it so you wouldn’t see it.

Whenever you change the iris quickly, you see it. The slower he did it, the more he could get away with. It was remarkable how much he did it. It seems like he did it on almost every shot.

He utilized it especially when we were doing a little bit of run-and-gun around town with some montage moments, like when Cate and Sally were out with their respective or prospective new boyfriends, in Chinatown or going around Coit Tower. The most remarkable example was near Coit Tower, a certified Magic Hour shot with an 5-stop iris pull.

The actors were at a vista overlooking San Francisco Bay, and they all posed for a selfie. We set a frame, got the Bay behind them, and found a way for them to shift their blocking arrangement which then allowed me to slide around with the Steadicam and put a background behind them that was more appropriate to the exposure. It’s all about controlling the Winter 2014

background to accommodate the lighting rather than actually lighting it. We did a lot of it with natural light, bounce board or something simple so that we could stay light on our feet and moving.

As long as I shifted the camera so there wasn’t a split background, with half of it very hot and half of it very dark, the iris pulls worked. I just had to make a choice and keep the background in mind and put them against all dark or all light in the background. Then Javier could expose for the shadow side, or stop it down for a little bit of highlight. He and I did a sort of dance with that, which reminded me of working with Terrence Malick and Chivo [Emmanuel Lubezki], because that was a lot of how Chivo and Terry Malick crafted their look, basically keeping the actors with a certain background in mind. In their world, it was about backlight all the time no matter what, so wherever the actors move, I move accordingly, to keep the sunlight or other light source always behind them. Chivo would then have an exposure methodology based on that, always being in natural backlight. This was a similar thing in many ways. It was kind of fun being loose and free in some respects but at the same time keeping those technical decisions in mind. It’s a fun balance in that regard —with Steadicam, always moving the camera, but keeping it all usable for the light. That’s often the peril with Steadicam, that it compromises the lighting, because good lighting usually relies upon one or two usable angles to light for, and once you go off those angles, the lighting looks flat.

Lighting is all about the angle of incidence. Cinematographers appreciate it, I think, when the operator is paying Camera OperatOr: Blue Jasmine

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MERRICK MORTON, SMPSP

Working closely with Peter Saarsgard and Cate Blanchett

attention to those needs. There’s a lot of tendency when the Steadicam comes out to free range just because you can, and I think it’s a disservice to the DP. When they’re trying to tell a story with the lighting or evoke an emotion or create a specific amount of modeling, you really have to keep that in mind. There may be 100 ways to shoot something, but really, you have to pick one and stick to that and honor it.

Javier is a fantastic lighter. One of our major responsibilities as operators is to protect that lighting. In order to protect it, you have to come up with smart angles that help it, and helping lighting is often about finding the right background, whether it’s against a window or a dark wall or a light wall with dark foreground or a colored wall that shows off the wardrobe or the emotion.

Emotional Workout I get hired for either “A” or “B” camera. When I come in and work for really great “A” camera guys (last year with Jim McConkey and this year with Peter McCaffrey) and I’m on “B” camera, I try to have a strong connection with the “A” guys and the DP as to how they’re going to approach the sequence and then I really fall in line with that. I’ve been on projects as an “A” guy where the “B” camera guy isn’t as attentive. It can cause problems because you’re shooting a master with certain coverage in mind. The master shot sets up a lot of things, such as general eyelines and lighting direction and various continuity elements. It’s really important then for “B” camera to come up with a shot that falls in line with the master. “B” camera might come up with a genius shot, but if

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it means you can’t cut from the master into it, or means that now you have to reshoot the master because the director is in love with this “B” angle, it becomes a problem for everyone. “B” camera should be aware of what shot they’re matching to. When the “B” camera doesn’t support that or the lighting angle and they’re just kind of out for their own glory, it’s really a tricky thing. It all comes down to good communication.

We didn’t have any “B” camera on Blue Jasmine. Woody is very much a single camera director and that’s great for Javier.

Coming up with the angles that we were shooting to protect either the schedule or the master shot means you have a game plan in mind to get through the day. That’s especially important when you’re on limited time and limited budget. You’ve got to think through the consequences of all the “great shots” you may have in mind, but it’s all got to work for the DP and the location and the performance. In the interest of short days and not having to wade through hours of coverage in the editing process, Woody’s shooting and coverage requirements are quite minimal. I loved that. It put the onus on me, the actors and Javier’s lighting skills to accommodate the scene in as few shots as possible. But it also gets back to my point of Woody being old school and having faith in the power of his script and the performance of his actors. Real filmmaking.

Brave.

I learn a lot about coverage from shooting big multi-camera movies. The thought process using multiple cameras still informs the way you have to approach a single camera film like Blue Jasmine, because it teaches you how to think in Winter 2014

Winter 2014

JANET MIGLIO JANET MIGLIO

Hal and Jasmine in happier times

JANET MIGLIO

Before things went sour, Jasmine and Hal were rich New Yorkers. Here they’re entertaining her brother-in-law and sister.

Woody Allen directing Cate Blanchett Camera OperatOr: Blue Jasmine

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you do a complete turnaround, you could be missing a whole emotional beat. Sometimes it was a fine line between making a muddy shot that was too wide for the emotion but needed to accommodate the blocking, or giving up the geography in order to impact the emotion. We wanted to make sure that we got both sides of the conversation, as it were, within one shot. Again it was all about being loose and on the one hand serving the lighting angle, but on the other hand making sure that we had the emotional beats covered in the same shot.

Outstanding Cast I’ve worked with Cate before, on a Ron Howard film in 2002 called The Missing. I saw the same dedication to her craft there. She’s just one of these people who immerses herself completely in the material, and yet remains incredibly available for technical needs from the crew. When actors are that good that they can focus on such a high level of acting and still be available to help us out, I just want to be able to give them everything they need, everything I can give them to help them achieve their performance—calm quiet sets, keeping a lid on the chaos if it starts to bubble up, talking with the ADs and director about the coverage in order to serve the performance, trying to streamline things so that we’re not working out our technical bits and pieces while they’re trying to sort out the emotional arcs for their characters.

Sometimes this can make things difficult when a method actor remains in character and you have to try and find a way to convey mundane technical things to them without

MERRICK MORTON, SMPSP

terms of coverage. And because I didn’t get a ton of information from Woody, and sometimes limited communication due to language and working style with Javier, on a film like this the emotional beats were as important as anything. The movie is about Cate’s character coming apart psychologically.

That was what was so amazing about Cate’s performance— I don’t think anyone was really sure (including Woody) just how crazy she was meant to be in any scene. Cate’s professionalism, dedication and thought showed clearly. In between takes or scenes, when we’d be working out camera and lighting, she’d be off to the side going through a range of feelings. You could just see the wheels spinning as she calibrated just how mental or put together she needed to become. Her emotional spiral was especially hard to gauge, I imagine, because we were shooting scenes out of order as is fairly customary.

It was a real privilege to work so closely with both Cate and Sally as they worked out their often emotional exchanges.

The discussions between us included such things as whether they should be facing the camera or in profile or three quarters, or maybe catching just one eye, to communicate the whole emotion—it really came down to that. It often wasn’t clear if we were going to go on and do a complete reverse.

Cate and Sally and I were always conscious in terms of covering ourselves, and that included how they’d sometimes exit or enter a shot, how far they’d turn around. Instead of being a conventional over the shoulder, we constructed the blocking slightly more loosely so that they could have a chance to overlap some of the other person’s performance. If

Sally Hawkins with Louie CK

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all the characters in this film are just perfect for the roles they had to play.

All that stuff really counts, and of course Woody being Woody, everyone wants to work with him, so it’s a little easier for him to get great actors. I remember director Mike Nichols telling me it only takes one bad apple to ruin a film.

But if you do due diligence to the casting, a lot of it takes care

MERRICK MORTON, SMPSP

upsetting their “character.” Often it isn’t possible, so you just have to find a way to get on with it. For example I remember working on Pollock years ago in New York which Ed Harris both directed and starred in as Jackson Pollock. Pollock was renowned for his drinking, so after a healthy but brief conversation about the setup Ed would then go off to hair and makeup, and upon his return be “in character” as

Sally Hawkins with Bobby Cannavale

Pollock, acting surly and drunk, which made working extremely challenging at times!

I worked with Bobby Cannavale, who plays Sally’s boyfriend, on Romance & Cigarettes some years ago—an underthe-radar musical cult film that John Turturro directed in New York and Tom Stern shot. It was good to work with Bobby again. He was great and funny and really showed his acting chops when he fights with Sally and Cate in the kitchen.

Louis CK was great too. His part was a brief story point in the film where Sally’s trying to find a good guy, not a schlub, and she thinks she’s found it in Louis CK. It’s great storytelling where he doesn’t have a ton of screen time, just a couple of moments here and there editorially and it’s all part of the dynamic backstory. Again another nod to Woody’s efficient storytelling where you don’t have to show a lot, but just a couple of key moments elegantly shot, in order to reveal another facet of the character—in this case that there is a glimpse of something better for Sally.

Andrew Dice Clay was really fantastic. I thought he had such a great role and was a brave choice, so original. Really, Winter 2014

of itself. It’s like Woody says, “Hire great actors and let them run free. If you hire great actors, you’ll get great performances.” Mike Nichols is very much of the same sentiment.

Writer/director Tate Taylor seems to have that Midas touch as well, with everyone both on The Help and his new one that we’re filming, Get On Up. Even the smallest bit parts with one tiny line—if you get the right person and the right sentiment, that moment is so magical. But if you get that one bad apple who can’t produce what’s needed, then one little tiny plot point falls through and it weakens the progression of the story. Every little bit counts, and every actor, no matter how big or small. I try to keep that in mind for myself. Every shot counts, every hello, every bit of respect for my coworkers, every bit of personal conduct on set, it all counts towards a healthy and productive set. It is one of the great responsibilities we have as operators.

Some Essential People We had about 6 or 7 weeks in San Francisco and finished with 2 weeks of filming in New York. Pat McArdle was with me in San Francisco as the first assistant. He’s an incredible Camera OperatOr: Blue Jasmine

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MERRICK MORTON, SMPSP

focus puller and always a great ally, friend and comrade.

Pat and I being some of the go-to guys in San Francisco were able to get on board and we had Jeph Folkins as 2nd AC, Dave Childers as key grip and Steve Condiotti as gaffer.

For me, one of the standout things on this film was working with Helen Robin, Woody’s producer. I got a call maybe 3 or 4 months out which is unusual. I don’t normally get booked that far out, but on all of Woody’s pictures they make a point of hiring local people in order to keep costs down on their often limited budgets that are usually privately funded. With Woody’s desire for using Steadicam I got a call early on. So I got to have an elongated dialogue with Helen in terms of putting crew together and various resources both technically and crew-wise. Because she was wearing many more hats than she’s used to, I think any help was appreciated.

I really admired Helen’s ability to control so many things at once. She made some really smart decisions that helped us immensely, things like how many trucks and who goes where. It’s those little things that on some movies are simply line items, and on other films it can mean the difference between getting through the day or not. It is really frustrating working with other producers who simply try to cut costs to toe some executive studio line, but at huge expense to the day to day flow of a production.

Woody’s outfit has a few key players who are always on board—his production designer Santo Loquasto who’s been with him for 20 years or so, and Helen Robin, also for about 20 years, and several others. It’s sort of a unique thing and I suppose that Helen really takes the brunt of it no matter where they end up, whatever way Woody likes to do it, a certain size and a certain quality of personnel or just simply organization—just enough stuff to get good results but not so much stuff that you’re burdened with all the trucks and equipment.

Helen was prepping the job out of New York so she had to get everything up on its feet remotely in San Francisco. Even though she had a local boots on the ground UPM, there were a lot of ways in which I could be helpful to her to convey what we needed in order to Camera operator Will Arnot SOC and DP Javier Aguirresarobe confer. function smoothly as a small but effective crew.

Fortunately I was one of the very few they took from the West Coast when the production moved to New York for for a smooth transition to New York, so I loved it. I felt really the last 2 weeks of filming. Unfortunately they didn’t bring involved, as much as I could be. The obvious things on set Pat or any of the rest of the camera crew, but having worked every day, and sorting out the crew for New York with Helen in New York for 17 years before I moved out to California, — it really did become just me and her many times. The I know almost all the guys in the film community in New UPM in San Francisco wasn’t going and doesn’t know New York, so I was able to hire Jim Belletier and his crew, and York, and Helen’s boots on the ground in New York weren’t my old pal in the grip department, Gary Martone as key in San Francisco, so for the camera end of things—some grip. The film community in New York is vibrant and after technical stuff Javier needed, grip and electric—I was able to a couple of years you get to know almost the whole lot. be a liaison. I love being involved with the production. That There is a pervasive sense of watching each other’s back in feels like real filmmaking. I don’t like just showing up and New York; the pond just isn’t that big, and that is part of receiving a bunch of orders—point the camera here, turn it what I miss dearly, having left there. on and pan over there—it’s not all that fulfilling, although Helen and I had a really great dialogue all the way through sometimes what is required. So Blue Jasmine was great in that in terms of making things work in San Francisco and working respect. It was really rewarding and fun to be that helpful.

Hi Def with Jeff

The Transition to 4K–Is 4K Coming?

By Jeffrey Cree SOC

broadcasters were beginning to lose market share and therefore revenue. Due to this loss of revenue many broadcasters took their time transitioning to digital to spread their capital costs across multiple years. But the biggest issue was the lack of reasonably priced display technology available for the home viewer. There was even a shortage of converter boxes used to make your old TV sets work with the new transmission system. This shortage of technology prompted the FCC to add two more years to the transition period. The biggest issue was that early CRT based HD televisions were big, heavy and expensive. It was only when Plasma and LCD technology developed that HD televisions became an everyday commodity. After the consumer had a way to watch HD in the home at reasonable cost the transition accelerated, leaving very few people behind in the analog world.

Moving Faster

The transition to high definition took more than ten years to accomplish but 4K already has generated more momentum than HD ever developed. The transition to 4K will not very day I have the opportunity to talk with members of have the hurdles that we had moving to HD. Many of the the production and post production markets and it roadblocks have already been removed for the 4K movement. always surprises me how many of them assume that the We have no government mandates that will slow the market transition from HD production to 4K production is going to from moving to 4K. Digital transmission for terrestrial, take as long as it to took to transition from standard definisatellite and cable broadcasting is already in place, most of the tion to high definition. When I look into my crystal ball to digital infrastructure used for HD can support the move to find the answer I get mixed messages.

4K. The move is made simpler Some equipment manufacturers that due to one simple fact: most of support our end of the business are us depend on content providers moving quickly to support the 4K other than the broadcaster for market while others are introducing our primary programming in the new high definition and 2K products. home. Content providers such as But if we look at the consumer market DirecTV and Netflix have it seems that 4K is a tsunami that is already announced 4K streaming coming our way. If this year’s CES is services so the demand for any indicator, 4K is well on its way. 4K content is already growing. Even was everywhere, with every major the studios that are normally manufacturer having product that slow to accept changes in supported true 4K or QFHD [quad delivery formats are beginning to full HD or 4 times the number of pixels demand 4K capture for the of full HD]. Content providers such as shows they produce.

HD-TV comes super-sized Netflix have announced 4K service and Unlike during the transition to companies like Intel have introduced HD, the current display tech4K media boxes. So what can we in the Broadcast and nologies can produce QFHD or true 4K displays at reasonProduction marketplace take from these mixed indicators? able costs. The recent CES show in Las Vegas was a very good indicator that 4K is here. Every major manufacturer in the The slow transition to HD world of display had an Ultra HD or 4K product line to First let us look at why the high definition transition took display at the show. OLED, LCD and LED technology have so long. Moving from NTSC to high definition was a made it possible to build 4K large screen displays at a cost prolonged exercise with many hurdles to overcome. We had very near that of simple HD displays. It has taken just three government involvement because of the required changes in years to match what it took more than nine years to accomthe terrestrial broadcast standards. The FCC mandated a plish with the move to HD. All of this ability to display 4K is transition timing that took many years to move the broadalready creating a demand for content at levels that were not casters from analog to digital transmission. Without this seen in the transition to HD for many years. Our current move to digital we would not have the bandwidth to support limitation seems to be streaming bandwidth but Google and the increase in resolution so it was important that the others are moving to remedy that with fiber links and other broadcaster be required to make the move to digital. The schemes to improve bandwidth to the home. transition was also prolonged because the traditional Current camera technologies can easily support 4K. Imager PHOTOS BY VOJTECH POKORNY

E

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design has progressed to a level that 4K super 35mm imagers can be placed in cameras that sell for below ten thousand dollars. Smaller 4K image sensors are even available for consumer cameras. Many cameras including models from Sony, Canon, Red and Black Magic Design have moved to RAW delivery, eliminating the costly image processing in the camera and thereby making 4K and above resolution cameras cheaper than their NTSC and HD predecessors. All of the new 4K cameras are exhibiting greater dynamic range and larger color gamuts providing logarithmic improvements in picture quality in addition to the improvements in resolution. All of these improvements are sufficient to attract the consumer to 4K viewing. Even those projects that only demand 2K or HD will benefit from improved picture quality by using a camera with a 4K image sensor.

Recording technologies have improved as low cost file based data recorders have replaced the very expensive tape machines. Sony, Codex, AJA, Sound Devices and Convergent Designs are making each generation of file-based recorder with higher capacities and at a lower cost. Digital tape was limited to 8 or 10 bit sampling; many of the new file based devices are working with 16 bit RAW which improves the quality of the image and the ability to manipulate the image in post production.

All of the new 4K equipment tends to be a fraction of the cost of what equipment was during the transition to HD. The improvements in technology since the late ’80s and early ’90s have made it possible for the production market to make the move to 4K without bankrupting the industry. Cost was always a factor during the HD transition but it should not be a barrier in the move to 4K. Is 4K coming? I do not think so; I feel it is already here.

What’s Available Now Let us take a look at the offerings that are available to us in the production market; I think you will be surprised at the breadth of the product that is available to us today.

Many manufacturers have jumped into the market with 4K cameras systems. 4K capture can easily support our current HD demands as cross-conversion technology is readily available to make the transformation from 4K to HD. This is simplified by the fact that true 4K (4096 x 2160) is four times 2K (2048 x 1080) and QFHD (3840 x 2160) is four times HD (1920 x 1080). So it is possible to buy a 4K camera system and work in today’s environment. The following are just a sample of the most widely accepted cameras currently in the market.

The Blackmagic Production Camera 4K is promoted as the world’s most portable 4K digital film camera by the manufacturer. An extension of the 2K Blackmagic production camera, it is one of the newest entries into the 4K market. The camera Blackmagic Production Camera 4K shoots Ultra HD TV or 4K feature films using a large Super 35 size sensor with a professional global shutter. The Blackmagic Production Winter 2014

Camera 4K creates visually lossless compressed 4K CinemaDNG RAW and 4K ProRes 422 (HQ) files that are recorded internally. These readily accepted file types are perfect for editing and grading on existing editing systems. The camera control system and record interface are provided by a user friendly touch screen display. The camera utilizes EF mount lenses. Using the EF mount allows the user a great selection of high quality cost effective lenses. At $3,995 list price this is one of the most cost effective entries into the 4K world of production.

Canon has moved from just being a lens manufacturer to one of the major players in camera systems. The Canon EOS C500 utilizes design features from the popular EOS C300 camera system to generate a camera system supporting both 4K and 2K imaging.

Canon’s own Super Canon C500 35mm, 8.85-megapixel CMOS image sensor and DIGIC DV III Image Processor provide recording and output options specifically for 4K and 2K image acquisition. The camera supports both forms of 4K origination. Feature and other large screen program production can select DCI (SMPTE 2048-1:2011 standard) at 4096 x 2160. Television product can utilize QFHD (SMPTE 2036-1:2009 and ITU-R BT.1769 standards) source image formats at 3840 x 2160.

Recording is accomplished using the uncompressed Canon RAW output for both 4K and 2K recording. The Canon RAW output is delivered to external recording systems via built-in dual 3G-SDI ports. Although 4K cannot be recorded internally, Canon has partnered with several manufacturers to provide off-board recording capability. HD content can be written to dual onboard CF cards simultaneously to provide proxy video for offline editing or as your primary content for HD projects.

Red started both the more K and the RAW revolution in production cameras. They have a full line of cameras that are 4K and above. The Red Epic Mysterium-X camera features a 35mm 5K sensor that is capable of capturing 1 to 120 frames per second at full resolution. Dynamic range is increased by using HDRx technology expanding performance to 18 stops.

This small 4lb package provides a high level of performance in a modular package. Control options and monitoring options allow the end user to build the camera to better meet his needs. The Epic can use a variety of lens systems due to the wide selection of interchangeable mounts. The most common are PL or EF mount, but many of the still lens offerings are available for the camera.

Red has added the Red Epic Dragon to the Epic product line. According to Red bigger is better and the new 6K Camera OperatOr: Hi Def witH Jeff

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Dragon sensor is larger than the typical super 35mm image sensor. The new sensor provides 100 fps at 6K and can be sub sampled to lower resolutions to achieve speeds up to 150 fps.

The camera uses the Red Epic same modular design of the Epic M and X cameras so all the available accessories may be used with the Epic Dragon. The new color science of the Dragon sensor expands the capabilities to produce subtle variations in color not available in the previous models.

The Red Scarlet is the little brother of the Epic line of cameras from Red. The Red Scarlet is designed to replace the wave of DSLR cameras that have moved into video production. The Scarlet can shoot 5K stills in bursts of 12 frames a second or 4K video and stills up to 30 frames a second. The camera uses the same Redcode of the other Epic cameras but is limited to 30fps at 4K. HDRx technology is utilized to expand performance from 13.5 to 18 stops. The Scarlet uses the same modular design and interchangeable lens mounts to further expand the capabilities of the camera.

Sony entered the “Beyond HD” market with the F65 camera system. The camera contains a new 20 megapixels, wideband color gamut, super 35mm 8K image sensor that contains a full complement of green pixels to provide a full 4K image. No Bayer pattern decoding is required to produce a 4K image from the F65. The image sensor design with its high density and interlocking pixels provides a level of anti-aliasing unmatched in most camera designs. Rolling shutter issues seen in many CMOS image sensors are addressed with a true mechanical shutter assembly that operates between 11.5 and 180 degrees. When recording 16 bit RAW you receive the full 8K data from the image sensor.

This is recorded to the SRW-R4 using the very fast SR-Memory cards which allows operation up to 120 fps. The camera system can operate at 1920 x 1080 or 2K using SStP recording of the SRW tape format.

The PMW-F55 uses a new Sony 4K image sensor that captures a true 4K 4096 x 2160 DCI-standard cinema image.

Its 4K CMOS sensor features 11.6 megapixels (total) and 8.9 megapixels (effective). The “Frame Image Scan” technology used by F55 sensor eliminates Sony F55 flash band and image artifacts common to conventional CMOS sensors. This sensor captures with an impressive 14 stops of exposure latitude with excellent sensitivity and low noise. The F55 image sensor is also equipped with the same advanced color filter array technology used in Sony’s flagship F65. The internal recorder records to SxS Pro+ cards XAVC at 4K, 2K and HD,

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SStP at 2K and HD, and MPEG 422 at 50mb at HD. Attach the AXS-R5 recorder and you can expand that ability to record to 4K 16 bit RAW. Dual recording capability is provided internally at 4K XAVC and HD MPEG 422/50 or when using the RAW recorder at 4K you can record internally 2K or HD formats. There is also high speed shooting up to 240 fps RAW 2K and 60 fps in RAW 4K recording onto the AXS-R5.

The Sony F5 camera system records super-sampled HD and 2K images with its 8.9 megapixels Sony 4K image sensor.

You get superior super-sampled pictures with noticeably higher contrast, rich color reproduction and greater clarity.

The camera offers robust built-in recording modes, all with vibrant 4:2:2 color space. Attaching the AXS-R5 recorder adds 16-bit linear RAW 2K/4K recording and high speed shooting at up to 180 fps. Multiple recording formats includes HD/2K on SxS memory and 16-bit RAW 2K/4K on AXSM™ media Multiple recording formats include MPEG-2 HD422, MPEG4 SStP*, XAVC 2K/HD and 16-bit RAW 2K/4K. You can have simultaneous recording on internal high-speed SxS PRO+ memory cards and RAW 2K/4K recording on AXSM™ memory cards using the optional AXS-R5 RAW recorder.

The Wave of the Future These are just eight of the 4K camera options in the production market today. The upcoming NAB will see that number easily double. The amount of available hardware from so many sources makes it hard to refute that 4K production is really here. If you have not considered the move to 4K you need to start educating yourself so you do not get left behind. At this point in time any project that has any archival value needs to consider 4K production. Be it a Natural History project, documentaries or television shows going to syndication, production in 4K has to be a consideration. Sony Pictures has already demanded 4K delivery from many of their new productions. Of course that is to be expected due to their attachment to both the professional and consumer electronics companies. But that is not the only reason they have made the move to 4K. They see value in utilizing 4K production to protect the long term value of their program library.

“4K is inevitable, just like HD was inevitable back in the late ’90s,” said Michael Price, director of photography on Trophy Wife, a sitcom produced by ABC Studios at the Disney lot in Burbank. “More people are shooting in 4K to future-proof their projects,” he said.

“When the shows go into syndication, the lifespan will be much longer.”

That alone is why we are seeing an unnamed company that delivers very compressed 720P demanding that all future production deliveries be supplied in 4K. Is 4K coming? All indications are that it is already here.

Winter 2014

ANNE MARIE FOX

“Race you to the corner!”

Grayson Austin SOC on the set of Lee Daniels’ The Butler

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Winter 2014

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SOC Roster Society of Camera Operators Current as of 1/26/14

ACTIVE Peter Abraham Jonathan S Abrams Michael R Alba Derek M Allen Bret Allen Robert Reed Altman Jack Anderson Colin Anderson Kevin W Andrews Francois Archambault Joseph Arena Will Arnot Ted Ashton Jr Mark August Grayson Grant Austin Paul Babin Randall B Baer Christopher Baffa Lonn Bailey James Baldanza Jerry Banales Christopher Banting Jeff Barklage Ricardo Barredo Angel Barroeta Tom Barron Parker Bartlett  Paul Basta  Gary H Baum John James Beattie Guy Norman Bee Tim Bellen Michael Benson  Nils Benson George M Bianchini Lukasz Bielan George Billinger Howard H Bingham Bonnie S Blake Jason Blount Bob C Boccaccio John Boyd Katie Boyum Kevin D Braband Gerard Brigante Hilaire Brosio Garrett Brown Pete Brown Kenny Brown Scott Browner Robin Buerki Gary Bush Stephen S Campanelli Jose A Cardenas Peter Cavaciuti Dave Chameides Lou Chanatry Joe Chess Jr Jeffrey R Clark Anthony Cobbs Craig Cockerill Steven Cohen Marcis Cole Steve Conant  Kris A Conde Andrew Glenn Conder Michael Condon Brown Cooper Dan Coplan Luke Cormack Javier A Costa Richard J Cottrell Jeff Cree Rod Crombie Richard Crow Jeff L Crumbley Richard A Cullis Grant Culwell Joseph C D’Alessandro Nicholas Davidoff Markus Davids Richard W Davis Mark G Dawson Michael S Dean Andrew A Dean Jim Denny Kris Andrew Denton Joel Deutsch David E Diano Troy Dick Alfeo Dixon Rick Drapkin Scott C Dropkin Mitch Dubin

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Simon Duggan, ACS Louis R Duskin Allen D Easton William Eichler David E Elkins Jason Ellson David Emmerichs Kevin J Emmons Steve Essig Brant S Fagan Tom Faigh Diane L Farrell Dianne Teresa Farrington Jesse Michael Feldman Michael Ferris George Feucht Dick Fisher Lance Fisher Aaron Fitzgerald Eric Fletcher Michael Flueck Houman Forough Felix Forrest Ian Forsyth Ian Fox Steve G Fracol Keith Francis Nick Franco David J Frederick Michael Frediani Michael A Freeman Steven French Samuel “Buddy” Fries Mick Froehlich Jeff Fry William Jay Gahret  Paul M Gardner David Gasperik Anthony Gaudioz Rusty Geller Mark Gerasimenko William Gierhart Laurie K Gilbert Harvey Glen Mark Goellnicht Daniel Gold Allen Gonzales Robert Gorelick Afton M Grant Bruce Alan Greene Chad Griepentrog David Allen Grove Robert Guernsey Pedro Guimaraes John C Gunselman Chris C Haarhoff Jess Haas John Hankammer Peter Hapke  Tim Harland Joshua Harrison Kent Harvey Chris Hayes David Haylock Dawn J Henry Alan Hereford Steven F Heuer Kevin Hewitt Dean Holmes Abe Holtz Jerry Holway Casey Hotchkiss Colin Hudson Philip Hurn Frederick Iannone Dave Isern Christopher Ivins Eugene W Jackson III Francis G James Alec Jarnagin Simon Jayes Steven Jones Kurt Jones Christopher D Jones Jacques Jouffret John H Joyce David Judy Mark Jungjohann David C Kanehann Mark Karavite Adam T Keith David Kimelman Douglas H Knapp Dan Kneece Rory Robert Knepp David T Knox Robert Kositchek Bud Kremp Kris Krosskove

Per Larsson Jeff Latonero Eric Leach Sergio Leandro Silva Richard Leible Sarah Levy Jimmy W Lindsey Abigail Linne Hugh C Litfin Patrick Longman George Loomis Jessica L Lopez David Luckenbach Greg Lundsgaard Kenji Luster Bruce MacCallum Rob Macey Vincent C Mack Paul S Magee David Mahlmann Giuseppe Malpasso Kim Marks Cedric Martin Johnny Martin Philip J Martinez Parris Mayhew William McClelland David B McGill Michael P McGowan Christopher TJ McGuire Aaron Medick Alan Mehlbrech Jack Messitt Duane Mieliwocki Marc A Miller Andrew Mitchell William Molina Raphy Molinary Machado Lawrence P Moody Mark Emery Moore Denis Moran Josh Morton Manolo Rojas Moscopulos Jeff Muhlstock Michael James Mulvey Scott T Mumford Riggs Murdock Chris Murphy Sean Murray Dale Myrand Leo J Napolitano Jay Nefcy  Rik Nervik  Robert Newcomb Julye Newlin Leigh Nicholson  William R Nielsen Jr Randy Nolen Austin Nordell David B Nowell, ASC  Ryan Michael O’Donnell William O’Drobinak Mark D O’Kane Michael D Off James Olcovich Andrew William Oliver John Orland Rafael Ortiz-Guzman Brian Osmond Georgia Tornai Packard Heather Page Mario Eugene Page Nick Paige Victor J Pancerev Andrew Parke Patrick J Pask Christopher T Paul Douglas Pellegrino Karin Pelloni John Perry George Peters Matthew A Petrosky Jonathan F Phillips Alan Pierce Theo Pingarelli S Jacob Pinger Jens Piotrowski Joseph Piscitelli Robert Presley Louis Puli Ryan Purcell Elizabeth Radley Yavir Ramawtar Juan M Ramos James B Reid George Richmond Alicia Robbins Ari Robbins Peter Robertson

Camera OperatOr: SOC rOSter

Brooks Robinson Randall Robinson  David Robman Andy Romanoff Peter Rosenfeld Andrew Rowlands Dave Rutherford P Scott Sakamoto David M Sammons Joel San Juan Bry Thomas Sanders Martin Schaer Ron Schlaeger Mark Schlicher Mark Schmidt Gregory J Schmidt David Jean Schweitzer Fabrizio Sciarra Brian David Scott Michael Scott  Benjamin Semanoff Barnaby Shapiro David Shawl Osvaldo Silvera Jr Jamie Silverstein Teddy Smith Needham B Smith III Roger Smith  John Sosenko Mark Sparrough Benjamin Xavier Spek Sandy Spooner Michael St Hilaire  Lisa L Stacilauskas Robert Starling Ray Stella  Meagan Stockemer Michael R Stumpf David L Svenson Christopher Taylor Peter Taylor David James Thompson Richard Tiedemann Henry Tirl John Toll, ASC David Tolsky David Roy Tondeur Remi Tournois Neil C Toussaint Michael Tsimperopoulos Chris Tufty Rick Tullis Dan Turrett Brian Tweedt Joseph F Valentine  Matt Valentine Paul D Varrieur Ron Veto Ron Vidor  Andrew Voegeli Stefan von Bjorn Rob Vuona Bill Waldman Michael J Walker Timothy N Walker Adam S Ward Gareth Ward Gretchen Warthen Aiken Weiss Mande Whitaker Kit Whitmore Ken Willinger Chad Wilson Dana D Winseman RL Wise David A Wolf Bill Woodbridge Ian D Woolston-Smith Peter C Xiques Brian Young Chad Zellmer ASSOCIATE Christina Adams John Addocks David S Adelstein Brook Aitken Jamie Alac Ana M Amortegui Andrew B Ansnick Jillian H Arnold Daniel Asmelash Jacob Avignone Ryan Vogel Baker Tyson Banks Eddie Barber Josh Barrett Stephen Blanor Jeffrey D Bollman

Peter Bonilla Jean-Paul Bonneau David Boyd Jennifer Braddock Manuel Branaa David Brooks Rochelle Brown Donald Brownlow Clyde E Bryan Sasha D Burdett Anthony Q Caldwell Jordan Cantu Bruce Cardozo Paul Case Marc Casey Damian Church Gregory Paul Collier Mack Collins Gareth Paul Cox Richard P Crudo, ASC Anthony Deemer Russ DeJong Enrique Xavier Del Rio Galindo William B Demeritt III Ronald E Deveaux Jorge Devotto Twojay Dhillon David Dibble Keith Dunkerley Brian James Dzyak Christopher Ekstein David T Eubank Allen Farst Paul Ferrazzi Kristin Fieldhouse Nichole Fleit John C Flinn III, ASC Mark Forman Tammy Fouts-Sandoval Bryan Fowler Fred M Frintrup Nicole Fuchs Juan Pablo Fuentes Hiroyuki Fukuda Hank Gifford Michael Goi, ASC Wayne Goldwyn Al Gonzalez John M Goodner Nikki Gray Brad Greenspan David V Gregory George Eric Griffith David E Grober Robert Guthrie W Adam Habib Bob Hall James Hammond Anthony Hardwick John Hart Jennifer Ann Henry Anthony P Hettinger John M Hill Jr David Hirschmann Alex Hodge Scott Hoffman Chris Horvath Rachel A Hudson Carrie Imai Toshiyuki Imai Andrew Antal Irvine Gregory Irwin Haley Jackson Quenell Jones Henry Bourne Joy IV Lacey Joy Jessica Jurges Brett Juskalian David Kane Timothy Kane Frank Kay Mark H Killian Douglas Kirkland Adam Kirschhoffer Robert La Bonge Laurence Langton Dr Thomas Lee Aaron Leong Alan J Levi Mark Levin Howard Levine Justin Liang Adrian Licciardi Stuart T Lillas Rachel A Lippert Gordon Lonsdale Jasmine Lord Christopher Lymberis Dominik Mainl

Darin Mangan James Mathers Jim R Matlosz Colin P McDonald Hilda Mercado Lowell A Meyer Jonathan Miller Charles Minsky, ASC K Adriana Modlin-Liebrecht E Gunnar Mortensen Matthew C Mosher Natasha Narkiewicz Michael Nelson Natalie Newman Micah Newman Kurt Nolen Russell C Nordstedt Casey Burke Norton Crescenzo GP Notarile, ASC Obie Kim Palmer Larry Mole Parker Steven D Parker Jeremy Parsons Florencia Perez Cardenal Mark W Petersen Jon Philion W S Pivetta Ted Polmanski Robert Primes, ASC Barnabas J Prontnicki Liz Radley Richard Rawlings Jr, ASC Marcia Reed Bill Reiter Brian Reyes Elizabeth Reynolds Lawrence M Ribeiro Claudio Rietti Peter J Rooney Sam Rosenthal Melissa Roth Jordi Ruiz Maso Danny Salazar Steve Saxon Terry G Schroth Carl Martin Schumacher Sr Christian Sebaldt, ASC Christopher Seehase Stephen Silberkraus Charles A Simons Guy Skinner Michael Skor Jan Sluchak Dan Smarg Rob Smart Robert F Smith Dean Robert Smollar Brian Sowell Brent A Spencer Don Spiro Owen Stephens Aymae Sulick Jeremy Sultan Tara Summers Andy Sydney Tiffany Taira Ian S Takahashi John Twesten Caitlin Rae Tyler Daniel Urbain Jose Val Bal Sandra Valde Thomas Valko Dale Vance Jr Breanna Villani W Thomas Wall Leonard P Walsh II Justin Watson Alex White Simon Wolfe Tim Wu Santiago Yniguez Tim Yoder Vilmos Zsigmond, ASC HONORARY John Bailey, ASC Tilman Büttner James Burrows Alexander Calzatti Trevor Coop Roger Corman Dean Cundey, ASC Bruce Doering Clint Eastwood Jack Green, ASC Tom Hatten Ron Howard Ron Kelley Kathleen Kennedy-Marshall Jerry Lewis Penny Marshall Larry McConkey A Linn Murphree MD Diana Penilla Steven Spielberg Robert A Torres George Toscas

Roy H Wagner, ASC Haskell Wexler, ASC RETIRED Aldo Antonelli Gary-Olyn Armstrong Eugene Ashbrook Lou Barlia  Al Bettcher James Blanford Vee Bodrero Donald R Burch  Jerry G Callaway  Bruce Catlin Jim Connell  Ivan Craig George Spiro Dibie, ASC Sam Drummy  Joe Epperson  Robert M Feller Ron Francis  Jerry Fuller Gil Haimson  Wynn Hammer Ken Hilmer Gary Holt Robert C Horne Bob Keys  Norm Langley  Thomas Laughridge  Steve Lydecker  Heather MacKenzie James Mann Owen Marsh  Bob Marta  Stan McClain Michael McClary Ron McManus Mike Meinardus Emmanuel Metaxas Robert “Bob” Moore Ed Morey  Lee Nakahara  Sol Negrin, ASC King Nicholson  John G Nogle  Dan Norris  Wayne Orr  David L Parrish Aaron Pazanti Ernie Reed  Arnold Rich  Sam Rosen  Frank Ruttencutter Richard Salvatore Chuck Schuman Philip D Schwartz Bob Seaman  Hal Shiffman  George B Stephenson Phil Stern Gene Talvin Joe Tawil Ben Wolf STUDENT Jeff-Steven Arevalo Mojica Quaid Cde Baca Joseph Blankinship Ziryab Ben Brahem Mary Brown Terrence Laron Burke Mark Calver Jessica Campbell Stewart Cantrell Richard Castaneda Nick Centera Petr Cikhart Sabrina Cullen Briana Del Giorno Yaquelin Di Crystal Billy Dickson Jr Laura DiFiglio Timothy James Dolan Adam Ducharme David Duesterberg Edwin Escoto Julian Amaru Estrada Thomas Cole Fedak Kyran Ford Jerry Franck Michael A Garcia Joshua Gary Jonathan Goldberg Christian T Hall Rita Hansen Tobias Winde Harbo Benjamin Hardwicke Donovan Hennberg-Verity Carolyn Scott Hunt Preston Lane Jeter Timothy Kang Brandon Kapelow Crystal Kelley Andrew Kendall Jeff Kulig Michael Lemnitzer Ari Linn Amy Linsamouth

Jose Del C Martinez Reginald I Masingale Megan McCarthy Sam McConville Marcus Allen McDougald Raquel T McKuen Yngve Moberg Fabian Montes Moira Morel James Nagel Christian Nash Anh Nguyen Benjamin Kirk Nielsen Lorenzo Pace Jonathan Hyun Park Jessida Putkaew Elson Ros Tiye Rose-Hood Daniel C Schade Maggie Schwab Alexandra Schwartz Dawn Suhyun Shim Davin Swade Stanley Megaera Stephens Michael Street Naeem Washington Anthony Wells Amanda Winner Christina Wolf Anthony Worley Roana Alyssa Wullinger Jhasmine Young Terry Zellers CORPORATE 3ALITY TECHNICA Sakae Manning ABLECINE Andrew Shipsides AJA VIDEO SYSTEMS Jeff Way ARRI Bill Russell BAND PRO FILM & VIDEO Letticia Stafford BERTONE VISUALS Gianluca Bertone BIRNS & SAWYER William Meurer BLACKMAGIC DESIGN Christine Peterson CAMADEUS FILM TECHNOLOGIES Sebastian Lumme CAMERA DYNAMICS Jim Davis CANON USA Tim Smith CARL ZEISS MICROIMAGING Richard Schleuning CHAPMAN/LEONARD STUDIO EQUIPMENT Leonard T Chapman Christine J Huenergardt CLAIRMONT CAMERA Mardrie Mullen DIGIHOLLYWOOD Chol Kim FILMTOOLS INC Stan McClain FUJIFILM NORTH AMERICA Sandra Kurotobi GEO FILM GROUP George Nolan GPI PRO STABILIZER SYSTEMS Jack and Michelle Bridges HISTORY FOR HIRE James Elyea HYDROFLEX Matt Brown JL FISHER Jimmy L Fisher KESLOW CAMERA Robert Keslow MARK BENDER AND ASSOCIATES Mark Bender MATTHEWS STUDIO EQUIPMENT Ed Phillips PANAVISION Bob Harvey POLECAM Perry Drogo SCHNEIDER OPTICS ~ CENTURY DIVISION David Contreras Bill Turner SIM VIDEO LOS ANGELES Marty Meyer TERADEK Michael Gailing THALES ANGENIEUX Eva Paryzka TIFFEN Rick Booth  Denotes a Charter Member

Winter 2014

C A N O N C O L L A B O R AT I O N S

T H E CI NE MA E O S C 5 0 0 PL AS C ON F I GU RE D BY T H E CRE W OF HUM A N VOI C E

EDOARDO PONTI

DIRECTOR

// RODRIGO PRIETO, ASC, AMC

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY

// ZORAN VESELIC

FIRST AC

TV LO GIC O NB OA RD MO NITO R

C I N E TA PE M EASUR E C ONTROL

CINERO ID EV F4 RV W A NTO N B AU ER D I O N I C H C BAT T E RY

CA NON 1 5 . 5 - 4 7M M C I NE ZOOM

2K 12 B IT RGB 4 :4 : 4 / 4 K R AW O U T PU T

CO D EX O NB OA R D S R E C O R DE R

P R E STO N D M2 DI GI TAL M OTOR INTERNA L ND F I LT E R S

A RRI REA DY-TO -S HO OT KIT 15M M ST U DI O S U PPO RT CA NON 4 K SUPER 3 5MM CMOS S E N S OR

Collaboration is at the heart of the Canon Cinema EOS C500 PL, a camera designed for maximum compatibility with industry standards. When configured with a 2K 12 bit recorder, EVF/LCD, camera support, FIZ system, power distribution, and a Canon 15.5-47mm Cine Zoom Lens, the EOS C500 PL enables efficient workflow while providing the freedom to quickly switch from studio mode to handheld. It’s just one more way Canon can help you bring your story to life.

Watch the Human Voice crew discuss this configuration at cinemaeos.usa.canon.com/C500configured

GO WHEREVER THE STORY TAKES YOU © 2014 Canon U.S.A., Inc. All rights reserved. Canon and EOS are registered trademarks of Canon Inc. in the United States and may also be registered trademarks or trademarks in other countries. All other products and brand names are registered trademarks, trademarks or service marks of their respective owners.