British Cinematographer - Issue 19

ISSUE

19

JANUARY 2007

A DEEPER BOND #20: #28: CAMERA CREATIVE AS CASINO ROYALE BECOMES ANOTHER EON BANKER, PHIL MÈHEUX BSC DISCUSSES HIS ACTION-PACKED WORK

INSIDE #08: PRODUCTION NEWS NEWS— —BBC BBC DROPS DROPS HD BOMBSHELL, PLUS THE LATEST INDUSTRY NEWS #14: CLOSE-UPS CLOSE-UPS— —BEHIND BEHIND THE SCENES WITH OLIVER STAPLETON BSC, BARRY ACKROYD BSC, FRANK PASSINGHAM, DAN MULLIGAN, TIM PALMER AND MARTIN HILL #23: GRAINS vs PIXELS PIXELS — — WHAT WHAT LEADING DPs REALLY THINK ABOUT WORKING WITH THE D-20, GENESIS & VIPER CAMERAS #28: SHOOTING THE FUTURE — INNOVATION AND CREATIVE TECHNOLOGIES ABOUND AT IBC AND CINEC

RRP: £3.50

CONTENTS Pinewood Studios, Iver Heath, Buckinghamshire SL0 0NH, UK Tel: +44 (0) 1753 650101 Fax: +44 (0) 1753 650111

>> CONTENTS

PUBLISHERS Alan Lowne Tel: +44 (0) 1753 650101 Stuart Walters Tel: +44 (0) 121 608 2300

UK

EDITOR Ron Prince Email: ronny@dircon.co.uk SALES Alan Lowne Tel: +44 (0) 1753 650101 Email: alanlowne@britishcinematrographer.co.uk Stuart Walters Tel: +44 (0) 121 608 2300 Email: stuartwalters@britishcinematrographer.co.uk DESIGN Paul Roebuck, Open Box Publishing Ltd, info@openboxpublishing.co.uk contact: Stuart Walters Tel: +44 (0) 121 608 2300 PUBLICATION ADVISORY COMMITTEE Alex Thomson, Tony Spratling, Joe Dunton MBE, Mike Fox, Simon Mills, Alan Lowne, Stuart Walters, Ron Prince BRITISH CINEMATROGRAPHER covering International Cinematography is part of Laws Publishing Ltd, Pinewood Studios, Iver Heath, Buckinghamshire SL0 0NH, UK The publishers wish to emphasise that the opinions expressed in BRITISH CINEMATOGRAPHER are not representative of Laws Publishing Ltd but the responsibility of the individual contributors.

Cover Photograph: Image from Casino Royale Casino Royale 2006, Danjaq, LLC and United Artists Corporation and Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. All rights reserved.

>> Editorial Team Ron Prince: has many years experience working in the film, TV, CGI and visual effects industries. He is the editor of British Cinematographer magazine and runs an international communications company (www.princepr.com).

Carolyn Giardina: is senior editor of post production at SHOOT newsweekly in the US; she previously served as editor of monthly Film & Video. Carolyn’s work has also appeared in The IBC Daily News, Digital Cinema, Post, Below The Line, and in the second edition of the book The Guide to Digital Television.

Madelyn Most: is an experienced camerawoman, filmmaker and journalist who writes about production and cinematography for a variety of European and US magazines.

Kevin Hilton: is a freelance journaist who writes about technology in film and broadcasting and contributes film reviews and interviews to a variety of publications.

Ian White: is a journallist who has specialised in film and television production and post-production for over 20 years. Now based in Bath, he is a regular contributor to leading television trade magazines.

John Keedwell: the GBCT’s Eyepiece Editor, is a documentary and commercials cameraman who has worked on many productions over all the world’s continents. He crosses over in both film and tape productions and has great knowledge of the new formats and their methods of production.

Annette Zoeh is a translator and commercial correspondent who has worked for many years in the film business as a freelance journalist and photographer for national newspapers and magazines in Germany.

Paul Wheeler BSC FBKS GBCT spent over 25 years with BBC Film Department before finding he also enjoyed shooting digits. The second edition of his book “Digital Cinematography” publishes during Spring 2007.

ISSUE 19

BRITISH CINEMATOGRAPHER

P03

Presidents’ Perspectives: Gavin Finney BSC

P05

Presidents’ Perspectives: Trevor Coop GBCT

USA P17

Letter from America: ASC president Daryn Okada calls for DCI endorsement

P18

F-Stop Hollywood: the great and good of the LA scene

P06

Letters: BSC statement following BBC's HD Day

P08

Production News: the latest worldwide news concerning DPs

P11

Who’s Shooting Who?: a great way to find out what's going on

P28

P14

Close-Ups: go behind the large and small screens with leading DPs

Shooting The Future: the next best thing to attending IBC and Cinec

P30

P38

John Keedwell: essential tips and tricks from the GBCT on how to stay employed

Camerimage Diary: a tale of planes, train and automobiles

P34

Imago News: insight into Norway, land of promise for DPs

IBC

Book Review: The Camera Assistant’s Manual

IBC

Family Matters: Dunton… a name with which to conjure!

FEATURES P20

Camera Creative: how Phil Méheux BSC shook up 007

P23

Grains vs Pixels: Gavin Finney, Seamus Deasy and Trevor Coop on the leading HD cameras

P35

Post & Techno News: technological tales from Soho and beyond

EUROPE

British Society of Cinematrographers – Board Members: President, Gavin Finney. Immediate Past President, Phil Méheux. Vice Presidents, Joe Dunton MBE, Alec Mills, Sue Gibson. Governors, John de Borman, Harvey Harrison, Chris Howard, Tony Imi, Nina Kellgren, Chris Seager, Tony Spratling, Mike Southon, Derek Suter, Alex Thomson, Robin Vidgeon, Nigel Walters. Secretary/Treasurer, Frances Russell.

Guild of British Camera Technicians – Board Members: Trevor Coop (Chairman), Steve Brooke-Smith (Vice Chairman), John Keedwell (Vice Chairman), Jacob Barrie, Suzanne Clegg McGeachan, Mike Fox, Jamie Harcourt, Peter Hughes, Walter Kennedy, Keith Mead, Darren Miller, Barney Piercy, Tim Potter, Caroline Sax.

Flushed away?

Dear Readers: The pilgrimage to Poland for the Camerimage festival of cinematography is well worth it, whatever the weather. The immersion into the world and concerns of today’s cinematographer in such a relaxed atmosphere is unique, to which most DPs will readily attest. Next year will see the 15th edition. Something a bit special and a magnetic event, even for Joanna, a Polish family friend who hails from Lodz, now lives in England, and has precious little do to with the business.

Except that she is just crazy about films.

Camerimage 2007 will be unmissable in another respect – as a milestone to record the progress of the battle raging between film and digital, and the consequences for the cinematographer and beyond. One gets the feeling that change is happening more rapidly than we realise or desire. In our last edition, we reported, “digits are everywhere and innovation is exponential, but there’s no getting away from the beauty of film.” Nor its practicality.

But the BBC doesn’t see it that way. Now that the ASC is

joining the BSC in the fray over S16 and MPEG compression, we’re expecting the war to reach new and more dizzying heights.

Perhaps unpalatable for the cinematographer, the director Mike Figgis put the case into sharp focus in Lodz, “The cinematographer of the future is going to be the person who can adapt to the changes in technology, whilst staying connected to the principles of filmmaking.” Echoed a few evenings later by John Mathieson BSC during his award-winning acceptance speech at the BSC Operator’s Night, when he wondered whether Phantom of The Opera might just be the last film made on British soil that is all about film and filmmaking skills.

We will be watching next November, when DPs, crews and film-lovers congregate again, to see how much closer digital has pushed film to edge of the cliff, as some are predicting, or whether there’s life in the old girl yet. An intriguing year lies ahead. Long live cinematography!

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presidents’ perspective

Super 16 under fire!

Film is st i l l t h e o n ly u n i ve rs a l ly a g re e d u p o n a n d f u l ly f le x i b le fo r m a t . I t c a n a l s o b e c h e a p e r. Let

s

j u st n o t t h ro w o u t s o m e t h i n g j u st b e c a u s e i t a p p e a rs o l d - fashioned,

or

j u st b e c a u s e t h e co d e c s a ren

t good

enough.

As you will read in this issue, the BBC has come to a somewhat ill-informed but unilateral decision to drop Super 16mm film-originated projects from their new HD channel.

Television companies seem to be running scared, and are desperately searching for new novelties with which to entice back their haemorrhaging audience. A similar thing happened to cinema in the early ‘50s when it was faced with this new-fangled thing called television. Wide screen Cinemascope, 3D, Technicolor, Smell-o-vision, vibrating seats, anything to give the audience a novel experience, but often forgetting in the process to ensure the content was actually worth watching. Now TV is facing a similar threat, this time from the Internet, a surfeit of TV channels diluting audiences, video games, and ironically, the cinema, as people rediscover the joy of a shared big screen experience in much improved surroundings.

The latest novelty with which TV is hoping to win back audiences is High Definition. (High Definition only in relation to the current broadcast standard definition of 625 lines, HD is still comparatively Low Definition when compared to film scanned at 4K). Although flat panel LCD and plasma screens have plummeted in price as quickly as they have improved, their picture quality is still inferior to the old CRT screens where analogue transmissions are concerned. HD broadcasts, though, will look much better on a flat panel than analogue does, but there is confusion over how to present this material. For engineers and accountants who like to measure things (and to whom the TV execs seem so in thrall) ‘better’ is more detail, more sharpness and more colour – these are measurable things, quantifiable data, unlike how it looks aesthetically.

The same type of people tried to influence things in the early days of Technicolor. You had to have a Technicolor technician to advise on costume and make-up and to ensure the cinematographer made everything BRIGHT and COLOURFUL. This ‘advice’ was roundly ignored by such artists as Jack Cardiff who used great paintings rather than engineering spec. sheets as his inspiration, and went on to win countless awards as a result. Cardiff recounts a story in his book “Magic Hour”.

The chiefs at Technicolor deemed some of his footage in Black Narcissus to be unusable and had to be re-shot at great expense, in this case without the fog filters Cardiff had used for a dawn sequence. As he sat in the dark with director Michael Powell and the assembled Technicolor chiefs, he felt sick – his job was on the line, but as the images came up he “…felt a rush of relief.

They were good. They were bloody good.” At the end of the screening, Powell told Technicolor that what he had seen was just what he had wanted: why on earth had they made such a fuss? They had been worried that the fog effect would seem out of focus in some cinemas.

Gavin Finney BSC President BSC

The engineers’ goals of sharpness, contrast, colour and reduced noise or grain are not necessarily shared by the people who actually use this equipment. Give a DoP the newest, sharpest lens, the finest film stock or video data, and watch as he loads filters in front of the lens, pushes, pulls, cross-processes in the lab or skews gamma, de-saturates and adds noise in the DI suite, in order to tell the story by engaging the imagination of the viewer through poetic, not scientific, imagery. Film should be, and must remain, part of that palette. Remember HD is a broadcast format; an HD camera does not necessarily have to be used to produce HD footage (a fact of which many producers seem to be unaware). Scan 16mm film on an HD scanner and output to HD Cam SR tape and it is, by definition, HD. Imagine how great some of the BBC’s back catalogue of film drama would look if re-scanned in this way (a joy that the film phobic engineers at the BBC are apparently to deny us). With new cameras being introduced every six months with different specs, codecs, lack of inter-compatibility and even questionable broadcastability, film is still the only universally agreed upon and fully-flexible format. It can also be, listen to this producers, cheaper.

As the BBC HD Open Day report says, we all embrace new technologies. In the last six months, in addition to 16mm and 35mm film, I’ve shot on the ARRI D-20, the Panavision Genesis, the Sony 750 and 900 and the Panasonic Varicam all with good results. I thoroughly enjoyed shooting Hogfather in HD and the images are terrific.

Cinematographers love gadgets and new toys to play with and there is some fantastic work being produced on these new cameras – bring them on. Let’s just not throw out something that works just because it appears old-fashioned, just because it’s not ‘new’, or just because, in the case of the BBC, their codecs aren’t good enough.

Gavin Finney BSC President British Society of Cinematographers

“Rubbish,” said Powell. “Black and white films have had much heavier diffusion than this for years and no cinema has complained. You really must allow Technicolor to have some art.”

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BRITISH CINEMATOGRAPHER

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presidents’ perspective

What a coincidence Every now and then we all experience one of those eerie coincidences that turns into a life re-evaluating moment. Even as I closed the door behind me and watched the driver put my cases into the car, the adrenalin started to flow, and by the time we were halfway to Heathrow I was feeling an almost Euphoric buzz.

I had been on the recces, done a fair amount of prep, but despite being a drinker all my adult life, having smoked for 25 years and in my younger days, dabbled with drugs, I have never found anything to date that gives me quite the same buzz as actually starting on a new movie.

After checking in I settled at the airside bar in Terminal 1, the rest of my crew joined me one by one. Nothing was said but I could feel the buzz was mutual.

The time of passing on my father’s death certificate was 3.40 pm, it was also one calendar month, to the day, after his 61st birthday.

We didn t see Marie again fo r t h e re st o f t h e f l i g h t .

I do hope she was not too t ra u m a t i s e d b y t h e e x p e r i e n ce a n d m a y b e eve n g e t s t o d i n e o u t o n i t o n e d a y.

The pilot opened the throttles and released the brakes. As I was pressed firmly back into my seat I looked out of the window and watched the runway lights accelerate past us. At the point of no return, just before rotation, I looked at my watch, not a casual glance, but a calculated inspection to confirm what had been praying on my mind ever since I received my flight details.

My trusty timepiece, a joint Christmas present from my three sons, informed me that it was 3.40 pm Monday 16th October. One calendar month, to the day, after my 61st birthday!

Quaffing the excellent Australian Shiraz (recommended by our hostess over the French Merlot) helped to keep my outward show of emotion down to a single tear running down one cheek, but then I was already on the second bottle and it was only 15 minutes into the flight. As Marie, our hostess placed the third bottle on my table she leant forward to enquire whether I would like the fish or the pasta as a main course with my in flight meal as the chicken had now all gone.

Trevor Coop Chairman, GBCT

in my life that his death had created, I could hold back no longer and at the very instant of her question, burst spontaneously into tears, spraying a mouthful of the Aussie red all over the back of the seat in front and all over Marie’s uniform.

I wish I had had a camera handy to record her expression. Within seconds the chief steward was hovering over me and, in a tone of voice that would have done justice to an irate headmaster, explained that they could only carry a certain amount of each choice and every passenger in the rows in front of me had chosen the chicken and it was in no way Marie’s fault. The broad smirk that spread across my face lifted his anger level to ‘imminent eruption’ until I recounted the events of the last 25 minutes and indeed those of the last 25 years, after which he became dutifully apologetic.

We didn’t see Marie again for the rest of the flight. I do hope she was not too traumatised by the experience and maybe even gets to dine out on it one day.

As I washed down the overcooked pasta in an indescribably bland sauce with a swig of the Merlot (they had run out of the Shiraz), I mused the possibilities for the rest of my life, a final phase which my father had not been gifted.

I silently vowed to be more tolerant of the failings of others, to be more aware of my own (if, of course, I ever develop any.) But above all to be blessed with enough time to experience that magic buzz many, many more times.

A fruitful 2007 to you all.

The quarter of a century which had elapsed since dad’s sudden and untimely departure from this mortal coil had obviously done little to fill the large hole

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BRITISH CINEMATOGRAPHER

Trevor Coop, Chairman, GBCT

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letters

HD-Day On 28th September, approximately 150 invited directors of photography, directors and producers gathered at BBC Television Centre to hear the BBC’s ‘Road map for HD’. The morning began with an introduction from Alan Yentob, creative director of the BBC. He began by saying he didn’t know too much about the subject of High Definition. This might explain why he struggled somewhat to repeat accurately the information he had been given by the ‘white coats’ at the BBC’s research facility, Kingswood Warren. The bombshell was dropped early though, and this at least was clear. Here it is, “Drama on film has got to stop” Jane Tranter, controller, BBC Fiction, was next and admitted she didn’t know much about the subject either. This was confirmed by the following two comments meant to be in defence of HD against film: “With HD you can move more quickly and less encumbered”. Multiple strands of cables running to a plethora of HD record decks and HD monitors that take two people to lift; blacked out tents for the much enlarged video village; waveform and vector scopes; digital imaging technicians; constantly re-collimating lenses…. Less encumbered? We don’t think so.

“With HD cameras we can do anything we want them to”. Well try to ramping from 25 to 150fps at the touch of a button with no loss in resolution or need for expensive post processing (as you can on film), or try to pull back highlight detail that has clipped into oblivion (as you can’t on HD). Indeed her very arguments for HD were the exact arguments one would use in support of film.

Yo u c a n n o lo n g e r s h o o t on Super 16 because the BBC s M P E G 4 co m p re s s o rs a ren t good enough

The main villain of the piece (if you represent Kodak or Fuji) or evangelist (if you make HD cameras) was Andy Quested, BBC’s principal technologist. He aimed his bombshell right on top of Alan Yentob’s with laser-guided precision: “There will be no Super 16mm on the HD channel”. Now we were to learn why.

It is not because Super 16 is an inferior capture medium, far from it, as anyone who has done a Spirit HD scan on film can attest. Indeed the American Company HBO apparently still requests HD material shot on Super 16. The problem lies with the MPEG 4 compressors the BBC uses to squeeze HD into a limited broadcast spectrum. These compressors have difficulty handling the random grain pattern of film, particularly on high speed, pushed and/or underexposed material. This results in blocky artefacts and a general softening of the image that the BBC ‘white coats’ think the audience at home will find unacceptable.

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Mr Quested then showed an example of Super 16mm projected in HD before and after compression. Of course he had found the grainiest material he could to demonstrate this. Actually, after the eyeball-searingly bright, hard, and ultra sharp HD originated images we had seen at the start of the presentation, you could sense a lot of the DP’s in the audience thinking: “Well it looks pretty good to me!” And here is the nub of the matter, the engineers think that the audience only wants to watch super, shiny-bright and ultra-sharp images on their new flat screen TV’s. It’s a numbers game. ‘Look how many hairs you can see on the actress’s moustache! See the black heads in her pores; look you can see the writing on the back of the set that says ‘DHS hire’! One was reminded of the geeks in the early days of CD music waxing lyrical about hearing the creak of the 1st violinist’s chair, or the rumble of the pianist’s stomach, rather than whether it made listening to the music any better.

So there it is, you can no longer shoot on Super 16, because the BBC’s MPEG 4 compressors aren’t good enough, and then only in the event of high-speed under-exposed stock. This is true; we are not making it up. This is the only technical reason. A member of the audience suggested that MPEG 4 compression will invariably improve and will soon have no problem with film grain. Yes, that’s correct admitted Mr. Quested, but the intention is to use better compression to squeeze even more channels into the available spectrum, rather than to improve the technical quality of what is broadcast.

“What about the BBC buying in HD programmes from abroad that were originated on film, such as a lot of HBO’s product?” came another question. “No, we won’t even buy it if it was originated on film in another country”, came the reply from Mr. Quested.

During the tea break, one of the BBC engineers was asked about electronic gain on HD cameras. What if you switched in maximum gain, doesn’t that produce a lot of noise that would trouble the compressors?

“Yes it would”, came the reply.

“So does that mean we can’t shoot HD?” “Well, er, no, not exactly”, came the reply of a man sensing a trap.

“So are you going to tell us we can’t use gain in HD?” “Possibly yes”, came the reply. “Yes, we’ll do that” “So”, we continued, “If the director asks for a scene to have a grainy, gritty look (a not uncommon request) what then?”

“Oh, you won’t be able to do that” was his response.

“So, we’ll only be allowed to shoot non-grainy images, whatever the aesthetic requirements?”

“Yes.” Later on, DP Matt Grey commented that it was a shame the BBC was ditching Super 16 just at the time it had reached a peak, with great advances in stock and new cameras on the market. Martin Hammond of Kodak also made the point that 22 drama productions were shooting on 16mm this year.

If the dire c t o r a s k s fo r a s ce n e t o h a ve a g ra i n y , g r i t t y look what then?

Oh, yo u w on t be able t o do that , c a m e t h e re p ly Interestingly, Susanna White, director of the excellent Bleak House, who had been invited to talk of her positive experiences of shooting HD, admitted she had shot her subsequent production Jane Eyre on Super 16mm because she didn’t think HD could handle the bright daylight exteriors so well.

No one was being a die-hard film ‘flat earthist’. Most of the DP’s present had shot on HD with generally very good results.

Amongst the clips shown were some excellent examples, and many of us are happy to embrace this new technology – when it works. But there is a distinct sense of throwing the baby out with the bath water. If you can’t use gain on HD, but you can still use HD, why not say you can’t push 500asa film, but you can use anything up to 250asa for instance? No one had an answer for this, except that all the advice given to the BBC bosses seems to have come from electronics engineers who only understand and feel comfortable with their own subject.

‘We don’t know film, so let’s get rid of this messy organic process and spend lots and lots of money on shiny new kit’. The reliability of which is such that, as one delegate said, “ If it were an aeroplane, I wouldn’t get on board!” Even Mr. Quested said “Do not buy an HD camera, let the rental companies take the risk”!

In many ways, the BBC is to be applauded for making this an open event and for seeking a response from the invitees. The day was well organised and the afternoon session in a studio with lit sets and a wide range of new cameras, presented a tremendous opportunity to learn about some of the new technology emerging that many cinematographers will soon be using. But this was no consultation process, they had already made up their minds, and they and us and the audience will be the poorer for it.

Report from the British Society of Cinematographers on 28 September 2006, in response the BBC’s High Definition Day.

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production news

New 007 Stage to open in 2007 Pinewood Studios is to open its brand new 007 Stage in March 2007, after the previous site had to be demolished following a serious fire on July 30, 2006.

The stage will sit on the same footprint as the old one but, because of more efficient design, the total square footage will rise from 45,000 to almost 58,000sq/ft. New features will include wider gantry walkways, double the number of runway beams, a vehicle ramp into the tank, aircraft hanger-style loading doors, increased electrical power and sound insulation.

The new 007 Stage will also include a new extension, built close to the Stanley Kubrick production building, that will house a catering facility, toilets, showers, disabled lift access and production offices on four floors.

Pinewood Shepperton plc, which owns Pinewood, Shepperton and Teddington Studios, also recently announced significant new cash funding for Shepperton Studios. Around £20m is being put towards redeveloping the studios over the next 10 years, including the development of around 100,000 sq ft of new production accommodation, offices, workshops, dressing rooms, wardrobe and make-up rooms.

Pinewood, the focal point for British and international productions including the James Bond and Carry On series, Superman, Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, The Da Vinci Code and Children of Men, will continue to mark its 70th anniversary as a film production studios, with events and screenings in 2007. Recently, a time capsule was placed by Shaun Woodward MP, the Minister for Creative Industries & Tourism in the Studio's ornamental gardens. Sealed for 100 years, it includes a chronological filmography from 1936, plus with scripts of films being made at Pinewood, such as The Bourne Ultimatum.

The Studios also celebrated with screenings of films shot during seven different decades; Pygmalion (1938), The Red Shoes (1947), Genevieve (1953), Carry On… Up the Khyber (1968), The Spy Who Loved Me (1976), Batman (1988) and Interview with The Vampire (1994).

BBC drops HD bombshell on S16 The BBC has announced that Super 16 will not be part of its high definition (HD) production process, due to be fully implemented by 2010. The announcement was made on September 28th, 2006 at the broadcaster's HD Day event, only a few days after IBC 2006, where some manufacturers showed a fresh commitment to Super 16 for HD acquisition.

The significance of HD Day was shown by 300 TV professionals - DPs, directors, producers and graphics artists - vying for only 200 places.

The chief conclusion of those attending was that the BBC's chosen compression format, MPEG4, would have difficulty handling the random grain pattern of film, particularly on high speed, pushed and underexposed material.

Andy Quested, principal technologist at the BBC, told British Cinematographer that the policy was not based on the old film versus tape or versus electronic argument. “This is about image size and noise,” he said. “We could be blowing up Super 16 by five times for HD transmission, which means five times more noise. MPEG2 has high data rates but MPEG4 is friendlier to pictures and there can't be artefacts or blocking as viewers find that objectionable.” He added that formats such as Super 16 would still be used for the BBC's standard definition services.

Gavin Finney, president of the BSC, commented that HD does not have the flexibility or contrast range of Super 16, adding that compression was being used to deliver more TV channels rather than provide technical quality. Trevor Coop, chairman of the Guild of British Camera Technicians, said the move would not affect his members unduly as a large proportion does not work for the BBC. He pointed out that HD could be more expensive than 35mm and highlighted the difficulties in transmitting full HD pictures.

Both Aaton and ARRI introduced new Super 16 cameras at IBC and see the format as viable for HD workflows with a datacine or digital film scanner. John Bowring of Aaton observed that

many things can cause problems for MPEG4 compressors, including 16mm and 35mm archive material, +12 gain on HD video cameras and “anything with too much detail and camera movement”.

Marc Schipman-Mueller, product manager for film cameras and lenses at ARRI, expressed surprise at the BBC's decision. “Five years ago everyone thought 16mm was dead,” he said, “but three years ago there was new interest in the format. Super 16 is so much better than what went before, and there is also a great selection of de-graining software if there are any problems.” Stock manufacturers are likely to be affected by this move. Kodak was approached for a comment but did not respond.

The BBC has said that it is following a trend set

by American broadcasters in moving away from 16mm acquisition. While this has certainly happened, companies such as ARRI report continuing use of 16mm for drama, both in America, where some productions are moving away from 35mm for TV movies and series, and in Europe.

ASC Technology Committee chairman Curtis Clark ASC, observed that in this time of rapid technological change, decisions such as the one made by the BBC might have a sweeping impact on the industry. In making these important decisions, he told British Cinematographer that he encouraged industrywide efforts through open discussion and collaboration with cinematographers, directors and producers to come up with the best possible approaches to issues such as this.

He cited as an example the success story of the Hollywood consortium Digital Cinema Initiatives' (DCI) Recommended Digital Cinema Specification. Here, DCI sought the input of cinematographers and brought in the ASC in an active consultancy capacity to help analyse imagery and collaborate on setting its Digital Cinema Specification, which today is the standard in the US, and is moving in the direction of being adopted around the world.

Reporting by Kevin Hilton, Carolyn Giardina and Ron Prince.

Double wins in Poland Barry Ackroyd BSC won the award for European Cinematographer of 2006 at the European Film Awards in Warsaw on December 2nd, for his work on The Wind That Shakes The Barley. Dick Pope BSC picked up the Silver Frog award at this year's Camerimage Festival in Lodz, Poland for The Illusionist, a film hotly tipped for an Oscar nomination.

Ackroyd wins gong for Wind That Skakes The Barley

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production news

New UK film commissioner Colin Brown has been appointed British Film Commissioner.

Brown, who recently stepped down from a 10-year tenure as chairman of Cinesite (Europe) Ltd, replaces Steve Norris who left the UK Film Council after six years in the role. Brown said, “With the new tax reliefs, there are some fantastic opportunities to capitalise on the UK's skills, expertise and ability to attract film production.”

BSC Operators’ Night

Ealing Studios’ £50m development

Fuji films New Line Cinema's The Golden Compass is being entirely shot on Fujifilm 35mm Eterna 500T 8573 and 35mm 250D 8563 stocks. The production, lensed by Henry Braham BSC, has been filming on location and at Shepperton Studios, and is the highly anticipated adaptation of the first of British author Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. Other productions filming on Fujifilm include Mister Lonely, I Want Candy and Miss Potter.

Panavision buys AFM Panavision Inc announced recently that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire the AFM Group, including its lighting, camera and studio rental operations. The Office of Fair Trading is considering the proposed purchase, and Panavision and AFM expect the acquisition to be completed in the next few months

British film test green light The new cultural test for British films has been given the green light by the European Commission, and comes into force on 1 January 2007. The test determines whether films can qualify for the new system of tax relief announced by Chancellor Gordon Brown in May 2006. There are four sections in the test, which together measure the extent of a film's British cultural content and contribution, plus the use of local crew and facilities. Film makers are awarded points in each category and must score a minimum of 16 points out of a possible 31 to pass the test.

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Photograph by Richard Blanschard

Ealing Studios has won consent for the £50m redevelopment of 25,000sq/ft of multi-media office space. Construction is due to complete at the end of 2007. The aim is to revitalise the studios as a production facility and as a producer of films, as it was under Michael Balcon in the 1940s and 1950s. This year Ealing released Alien Autopsy and romantic comedy Imagine Me And You. Releases for 2007 include Fade to Black and I Want Candy. Ealing is beginning production on St Trinian's to star Rupert Everett.

Operators Night award winners are l/r: John Matheison , Lester Dunton, Billy Williams and Geoff Boyle The 2006 BSC Operators' Night was held at Elstree Film and TV Studios, on Friday 8th December. Over 250 guests enjoyed a dinner of smoked salmon, roast beef, chocolate bavarois and a cheeseboard, along with the usual banter that accompanies the evening. The society's president, Gavin Finney BSC, gave the welcome speech and the first two of four awards, before being joined by Alex Thomson BSC who presented the other two.

The ARRI John Alcott Award went to Lester Dunton, and the Bert Easey Technical Award went to Geoff Boyle. John Matheison BSC won the BSC Cinematography Award for his beautifully photographed Phantom Of The Opera. In his

stirring acceptance speech, Mathieson said he hoped Phantom had not been the last of its kind - a 35mm, anamorphic lensed film, with great lighting and camera work, without too much to fix in post, nor digital knob twiddling to adjust the colours, after his crew had done a great job.

Then finally came the BSC Lifetime Achievement Award to Billy Williams, who took to the podium to a standing ovation.

Between the awards, clips from Phantom and a number of Williams' films were shown. Raffle prizes were donated by, amongst others, Panavision, Lee and Deluxe, the proceeds of which will be donated to the Cinema and Television Benevolent Fund and Great Ormond Street Hospital.

When Larry visited the BSC Gaffer Jim Wilson, Jimmy Devis BSC, Les Ostinelli BSC, Alec Mills BSC, Alan Lowne (publisher of British Cinematographer), Larry Parker and Remi Adefarasin BSC

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who’s shooting who?

Super Cool: ICM's Simon Coull mounted 35mm cameras on remote Libra heads on Jetskis for a BBC ident job in Mexico

Caramba: DP Natasha Braier with her British gaffer Mitch Spooner and her Spanish focus puller Alvaro Fernandez in Argentina

Natasha Braier wrote in about her exploits in Artgentina… “I’m shooting a really nice project here, about a teenage hermaphrodite girl and everything that adolescence and hormones start waking in her. It’s a small Agentinean/Spanish coproduction which, due to the beauty of the script, ended up with the most amazing Argentinean cast (who usually get paid ten times more than what they pay them in this one). The girl playing the main part is an incredible actreess, I worked with her in an Argentinean/British film I shot here last year called Glue, and she is just amazing. Glue was shot on mini DV on the Panasonic DVX100A, and the blow up to 35 blew up my mind. It’s my favourite work. It has just started the round of festivals and it’s winning everything. I love it, and highly recommend it. Please say hello to my dear mentor Joe Dunton.”

was BAFTA nominated. The new production is shooting on Fuji 250D and 250T using Arriflex cameras from Ice Films in London, which Simon says is producing excellent results and helping to get the best from a good looking cast, including Natalie Press, Olivia Williams, Brendan Coyle and David O’Hara.

Meanwhile, at ICM, Simon Coull just finished shoots with Kirk Jones and Shane Meadows, and this summer lensed Football and Surfer, two of the brand new BBC

Berlin Associates’ Robin Vidgeon BSC has been working with ITV Granada on City Lights the London-based continuation of Northern Lights. This second series, directed by Tony Smith, sees overly-competitive brothers-in-law Colin and Howie – played by Robson Greene and Mark Benton – relocate to the capital.

Casarotto Marsh’s…Julian Court was responsible for the recent Prime Suspect starring Helen Mirren and directed by Philip Martin, with whom Julian has collaborated twice before on Bloodlines and Hawking. Mike Eley’s work was recently seen on BBC’s Sunday evening’s Jane Eyre, directed by Susanna White, shot on location in Derbyshire.

Over at Dench Arnold, Simon Kossoff BSC has been lighting Flesh And Blood, a film set in the executive and fashion worlds of modern Ireland, written and directed

by Aisling Walsh who previously worked with Simon on Fingersmith for which she

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Ireland: Simon Kossoff BSC (centre) on the set of Flesh And Blood with writer and director Aisling Walsh (left) and camera operator Ciaran Kavanagh

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release of Blood And Chocolate, Katja von Garnier’s werewolf movie, shot with live wolves in the studio in Romania and lit

by Brendan Galvin. Danny Boyle’s Sunshine, lit by Alwin Kuchler BSC, will be released in the UK and USA simultaneously on 16 March 2007. Simon Richards shot the Fallen Angel trilogy for Granada, once again working with director David Drury. Peter Suschitzky BSC has commenced work on David Cronenberg’s new film Eastern Promises, shooting in London. Tony Slater-Ling is collaborating once more with director Kenny Glenaan on a single television drama called The Good Samaritan. He has completed the new World Productions series Goldplated.

Marcel Zyskind is in India shooting Michael Winterbottom’s The Mighty Heart, the story of the murder of American journalist, Daniel Pearl in Pakistan. Haris Zambarloukos has finished Death Defying Acts, a story set in Edinburgh about Houdini. The film stars Guy Pearce and Catherine Zeta-Jones and is directed by Gillian Armstrong.

Peter Middleton BSC has just completed Lewis, the Kevin Whately Morse spin-off, directed by Sarah Harding. Alan Almond BSC continued to keep busy in Ireland on Mike Mahon’s Strength & Honour, followed by production on Knife Edge. Danny Cohen is grading Dominic Savage’s eagerly anticipated drama Born Equal and is in preproduction on the new Untitled Poliakoff Project which will shoot in London over the winter. Andrew Dunn BSC has just returned from Vancouver where he spent the summer shooting the action comedy Hot Rod for director Akiva Schaffer.

Decisions, decisions: DP Tony Miller savouring every moment on Oliver Parker's I Really Hate My Job

i-dents. Surfer was the first time 35mm cameras mounted on remote Libra heads on Jetskis have been used to shoot at the foot of such big waves. Oliver Curtis completed shooting the $12m film Death At A Funeral, directed by Frank Oz, set in real time over the course of one day, documenting a funeral going horribly wrong. Ben Davis, Jess Hall, Dan Landin have all been jetting around the globe working on substantial TV ad campaigns, whilst Ed Wild has been working on documentary projects with Coast recently, as part of a collection of films called The Energy File.

directed Funny Games, shooting in North Carolina and starring Naomi Watts with a $15m budget. John Mathieson BSC is attached to the low-budget feature Boogie Woogie which is scheduled to start shooting late 06/early 07. Sam McCurdy will shortly complete his stint on The Hills Have Eyes II, which has been shooting exclusively in Morocco with a $14m budget. He is confirmed on the next Neil Marshall project Doomsday, a futuristic political action thriller set in the north of England with an estimated $30-35m budget.

Barry Ackroyd BSC is in Vancouver with actor turned first time director Stuart Townsend on Battle in Seattle, an account of the events surrounding the shutting down of the World Trade Organization in Seattle in1999. The cast includes Charlize Theron and Michelle Monaghan. Barry also got the opportunity to shoot a commercial in Vancouver prior to starting the prep on Battle in Seattle, for Rexona (men’s deodorant) using the new Alien Revolution steadicam rig.

Since completing work on the Matthew Vaughn directed Stardust and grading on the Hannibal Lecter prequel Hannibal Rising, Ben Davis BSC has been on commercials.

Roman Osin BSC has been working in Norway on the Asif Kapadia film True North, taking in boat trips out to the Arctic, shooting on frozen glaciers in sub-zero temperatures. Dick Pope BSC has been in America’s deep south lensing in the cotton fields of Alabama for John Sayles’ R&B Honeydripper.

Set during the 1950s, it’s about a struggling African American bar owner who mortgages his future in the hope that a single gig from a famous guitar man will save him from financial ruin.

Dominic Clemence, John Daly, Cinders Forshaw, John Ignatius, David Odd, Ben Smithard and Mark Waters are all lensing a wide variety of TV dramas for the BBC, ITV and Channel4.

Seamus Deasy has been working on a feature in Ireland called Summer of the Flying Saucer, a low budget teen romance directed by Irishman Martin Duffy and produced by Gerry McCoigan in association with Magma Films. All shot in Galway. Martin Kenzie has completed his work on the second season of the phenomenally successful Rome, and provided additional photography for the feature Amazing Grace, directed by Michael Apted, the story of William Wilberforce’s long struggle to abolish slave trade in 1807.

Darius Khondji is deep in production on the Michael Haneke

The news from PFD is that… Daniel Bronks has shot Gary Love’s film Sugar House Lane on location in London. Eduardo Serra AFC, ASC recently lit Claude Chabrol’s latest film in Lyons before going on to LA for the grading of Ed Zwick’s Blood Diamond, which is due to be released in December.

The film, starring Leonardo di Caprio, is already causing controversy with strong reactions from the powerful diamond industry lobby. Paul Sarossy BSC is shooting All Hat in Toronto. Charlotte Bruus Christensen shot and lit The Mechanic for director Ian Sellars. We are awaiting the UK

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The ladies at Sara Putt Associates updated us about…

Peter Greenhalgh, who has just finished on This Life special for World Prods, directed by Joe Ahearne, and produced by Tony Garnet. Derek Suter BSC just finished shooting HD on A Class Apart, and Peter Edwards has been lighting Come Fly with Me one of the afternoon plays for BBC Birmingham, directed by Ian Barber, with Will Trotter producing. David Higgs is currently shooting Britz, a two-part Mentorn TV

Abroad: Wizzo's Shane Daly, shooting 2nd Unit on Hostel II in Prague.

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PFD's Haris Zambarloukos in action on Death Defying Acts in Edinburgh, with director Gillian Armstrong and actor Timothy Spall.

production for C4, directed by Peter Kosminsky, produced by David Snodin. Daf Hobson is due to start shooting Bad Mother’s Handbook, a Ruby Films show for ITV, directed by Robin Shepherd, produced by Alison Owen. Chris Howard continues on eight episodes of New Tricks, for Wall To Wall, and David Marsh is shooting historical documentary Civilization on locations in China, Turkey, Italy, Belgium, Madrid, Greece, Egypt, Turkey and Switzerland. It’s a four times one hour series for Seneca Prods for C4. Before that shot the highly-acclaimed Fear of Fanny for BBC4. Doug Hartington recently shot A Harlot’s Progress a Touchpaper North/Hardy & Sons production for C4, whilst Jeremy Humphries has shot a Digi-Beta doco for BBC Science Journey Into The Ring Of Fire, directed by Jeremy Philips.

McKinney Macartney Management’s camera people have been busy as ever. Mick Coulter is working with director Roger Donaldson on the British crime feature film Baker Street which reveals exactly what happened during the famous 1971 London bank robbery, starring Jason Statham.

John de Borman’s Fade To Black for Oliver Parker is currently doing the festival circuit and John has also been grading on Tsunami, which hit screens just before the second anniversary of the natural disaster. Gavin Finney BSC’s latest work, the long-awaited adaptation of The Hogfather based on Terry Prachett’s fantasy book, which will be shown on Sky at

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Christmas time. Graham Frake’s most recent work on Robin Hood with Richard Standeven screened on BBC1 and has proven to be a smash for the BBC. Sue Gibson BSC is preparing to shoot The Prescott Diaries based on the events surrounding John Prescott’s muchpublicized affair, with Andy Wilson directing for Mentorn and ITV. Richard Greatrex BSC has joined actor-turned-director David Schwimmer on Run, Fat Boy, Run, with Simon Pegg starring as an overweight man who decides to win back his ex-girlfriend by running a marathon. Nina Kellgren BSC has been grading the musical opera Buzz On The Moon and will be shooting Sam Liefer’s new comedy Stuck.

John Pardue has gearing up to work on the feature comedy Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel for director Gareth Carrivick which deals with the problems and consequences of seeing the future as a group of friends are trapped in a time worm hole – fortunately it’s in a pub. Ben Butler, Denis Crossan, Jake Polonsky, Clive Tickner, Michael Wood and John Lynch have all been busy working on commercials and promos. David Tattersall is in Croatia for director Richard Shepard shooting Springbreak in Bosnia starring Richard Gere and Terence Howard about journalists trying to catch a war criminal.

Recent signings to the Wizzo drama department are the DPs Shane Daly, Malcolm Maclean and Philipp Blaubach.

Shane Daly, who recently lit the acclaimed Alpha Male is working on a horror thriller in Prague called Psych 9. During the prep time he managed to shoot 2nd Unit on Hostel 2 in Prague, and a front title sequence for Nicolas Cage’s latest film Bangkok Dangerous. Malcolm Maclean shot The Blunkett Diaries for Juniper. Angus Hudson is lighting Sean Ellis’ second feature with the working title of Broken, through Ugly Duckling Films. Peter Hannan BSC ACS completed work this year as 2nd Unit Cameraman and 2nd Unit director on The Children of Men. Donal Gilligan has just shot a documentary on street children in Brazil for RTE and has recently finished shooting a two-part drama for director Kieran Walsh starring Eddie Izzard through Ecosse in Dublin called Kitchen. Rob Hardy is currently shooting Dogging - A Love Story for Vertigo Films, and recently shot two short films After The Rain for Gaelle Denis through Passion Pictures and Hesitation for director Virginia Gilbert. Jan Richter-Friis recently shot The Magician of Samarskund on HD for Nick Willing at BBC/ Jackanory. The action adventure film he lit last year called Treasure of The Temple of Knights participated in this years 50th London Film Festival. Ben Cole has now completed shooting the feature documentary The Man Upstairs on HD for director Nigel Cole.

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close ups

Close-ups were researched and written by Ian White, except United 93, which was transcribed by Madelyn Most.

DP Oliver Stapleton BSC

DP Tim Palmer

The Water Horse

Robin Hood

The original “hoody” is back in BBC's new hit series Robin Hood, brought to you in glorious high definition (despite tape thefts in Budapest) by a couple of Panasonic VariCams, and a handful of directors and DPs including Tim Palmer, Graham Frake and Paul Bond.

The first two episodes were directed by John McKay with Tim Palmer as DP, the pair having worked together before on other big BBC series including Life on Mars and Canterbury Tales. So, why use VariCam? Hurdles: Olly Stapleton had a special lighting barge and massive bluescreens built for The Water Horse Most feature films these days involve at least a few bluescreen shots for CGI elements but The Water Horse presented DP Oliver Stapleton BSC with a daunting combination of water, water all around and a central character which, for the most part, is a computer creation. Directed by Jay Russell (Ladder 49) and shot over 90 days at locations in New Zealand and Scotland, the film tells the story of a boy's close encounter with the Loch Ness Monster.

And, of course, water is always a challenge when it comes to lighting. In this case, the main question was how to get the lights offshore.

“The point of contact between a (CGI) creature and water is one of the most difficult things to get right in visual effects,” says Stapleton. “We were dealing with that all the time. I'm not accustomed to shooting a movie where the central character on set is a stick with a tennis ball on the end of it.

An advantage for us was that we were working with the Weta Group which has a 10-year advantage having worked on Lord of the Rings and King Kong - they know what they're doing when it comes to creatures. We just had to work out how to give them as much good material as possible in terms of the interaction between the boy, the creature and the water.”

Stapleton used a mixture of film stock - Fuji 500 for the night scenes, Kodak 200T for the bluescreen work (night and day), Kodak 50 daylight for the exterior landscapes and Fuji 250D for some of the darker daylight and interior scenes.

“We used a biggish barge with a generator on it and six 18k lamps through 40 x 24ft of silk,” answers Stapleton, conjuring up an impression of an ethereal sailing ship. “It took four anchors and a constant team of guys in wetsuits to keep the thing in one spot.”

“You always have this problem about how to light water at night and the answer is that, basically, you don't,” says Stapleton. “You shoot the landscapes in day-for-night, then match the background to the foreground (shot at night) on the computer.”

With shooting over, Stapleton is currently at home in England reviewing the composites via an Apple Power Book and monitor set-up to match those of the Weta studio, freighted over from New Zealand. “It's crazy that, in this day and age, that's the only way you can do it,” he comments.

CREW LIST DP A Camera Op B Camera Op A Camera 1st AC B Camera 1st AC 2nd AC 2nd AC Truck Loader Camera Trainee

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Oliver Stapleton Peter McCaffrey Rob Marsh Brenden Holster Andrew Stroud Helen Ward Phil Smith Dusty Millar Nigel Nally

“The big advantage was the slo-mo facility,” answers Palmer, “but we also felt it had a better look than the Sony (HD camera). The film gamma curve in its CineGamma software seems to have a more natural filmic look.”

Robin Hood was shot as winter turned to spring in locations near Budapest, Hungary. “I was brought in four weeks ahead of time,” says Palmer. “That got extended to six weeks because of actor-availability which was fortunate because Budapest had an unexpectedly long winter - if we'd begun filming on time, there would have been over two feet of snow on the ground. We had these great tall trees in the forest and there were no leaves to block the light (that became an issue for successive blocks of shooting).

“This was going to be a single-camera shoot with an occasional second when we started but it was long before two-camera shoots became the norm almost every day over the four weeks we had. I operated the B camera as much as I could but, this being HD, I had to keep a close eye on the monitor. With depth-of-field, the fall off from sharp to soft is greater. When video is edgy, it's definitely soft and the operator can't see it because of the terrible black-and-white monitor.

“Sparks (a Hungarian camera/lighting company) provided the lighting and were very good. All the equipment was brand new and there were no loose clamps or dodgy barn doors. I worked with their top gaffer, Jozsef Szucsik, who was great.

Inevitably, Robin Hood features a lot of candlelight and firelight which Palmer has his own way of handling. “I like to keep the colour a stop down and then light it in,” he says. “I have my own special little lights mounted on strips of plywood with wire and tracing paper over the top. I call them my wagon trains. They're small, thin, long and easy to hide.”

Director DP Gaffer

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John McKay Tim Palmer Jozsef Szucsik

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close ups

DP Barry Ackroyd BSC

United 93 The 91-minute film United 93 is, coincidentally, the exact duration of the doomed United flight 93. The script was essentially the timeline of that fateful journey. “We took what was known about that day on the plane and on the ground, and reconstructed it as precisely as we could,” says DP Barry Ackroyd BSC. “My contribution was to say let's shoot it in long overlapping takes that will allow the performance and the camera to feel uninterrupted.”

Time was short, just six months from start of shooting at Pinewood Studios to the Cannes premiere in May 2006. Two thirds of the action takes place inside the plane, with added shots from Newark airport for the exteriors. Pieces of an old Boeing 757 were shipped and reassembled as full sections, and these were mounted on moving gimbles on the stage. A “rock & roll” style computerized lighting rig was built, with lights suspended on a computerised pulley system allowing them to move up, down, left, right and diagonally. The motion the viewer sees in the film is a combination of the plane vibrating and the rocking on the gimble, with the lights moving up and down on wires, and the cameras and their operators fighting hard to hold onto the cameras.

“We set up 20K tungsten lights along 50 ft. beams on both sides of the plane,” recalls Ackroyd. “One side they were focused or spotted for the sharp, direct sunlight effect coming through the windows, whilst the 20Ks on other side were diffused, to bring ambience to the lighting. Many shots had the lights in picture and flares coming into the lens. We used this as part of the effect, removing the mattebox to capture the flare outside the cabin. Spacelights above the rig kept an overall daylight effect and the existing fluorescent tubes inside gave an overall greenish cast to the interior plane.

“The ceiling was cut in half, and opened for 50ft lengths. We ran a dolly above and suspended a camera off bungies so we could run up and down the centre aisle without seeing any other equipment. We shot with the cameras overlapping: one camera would start shooting and after two minutes, another camera would come in. The first camera reloads and so on.

This allowed us to keep running until the action fell apart.”

On his camera, Ackroyd used mostly an Optima 24-290 zoom for tight shots, with a monopod to take the weight, and kept the camera on his shoulder when possible. The operator, Klemens Beckers did the wide angles tracking along the plane. “The long takes and struggling camera moves is what makes the film feel so real,” Ackroyd says. “Very quickly we got a rhythm going. The actors could sustain about three takes a day each about an hour long. They would get psyched up and we would shoot just before lunchtime, then we'd break and shoot again at around 4pm, and then we'd get in another take at the end of the day. We did this over 6 or 8 days, and shooting for all of us was intense.”

The director Paul Greengrass watched monitors down on the stage, directing Ackroyd and Klemens through headphones.

“The actors were free to do whatever they needed to do, so every take was different: different angles, different camera moves, different motions, but it somehow looks consistent.”

Shots looking directly out of the windows were all rotoscoped

by VFX house Machine in Soho, placing sky, landscape or airport in those frames. In the digital grade Ackroyd saw to it that the levels inside the plane were lifted, to make it feel clean and new.

“The combination of the actors' performances, the directing style, the camerawork and lighting, SFX and VFX all contributed to it feeling real,” he says. “The skill was to make the audience take the journey along with the passengers , crew and bombers, and to understand a little more about United 93.”

DP Frank Passingham

Flushed Away What does a director of photography do when he's working on a production in which there is no photography in the accepted sense? Well, Frank Passingham recently spent three months in Hollywood overseeing the lighting on Flushed Away, Aardman Animation's latest feature which has been entirely computer-generated.

“Whilst it's a 100% CGI production,” says Passingham, “Jeff Newitt, who supervised the character animation, wanted to keep some of the look and feel of our stop-frame animation style, so similar techniques such as using replacement mouths (for speech and expression) have been used. The CGI characters are also clad in a plasticine-like texture - on some of the close-ups, you can even see thumb prints (a device used for the CGI sequences in Wallace & Gromit The Curse of the Were-Rabbit).”

One of Passingham's first tasks was to build up a reference library of colours, lighting conditions for different times of day, and so on.

“They gave me some rough models to light, but the

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geometry was very basic so you couldn't get much of an idea about how they would finally look,” he says. “Normally, Dreamworks won't actually light at the rough layout stage (the studio has two separate departments for layout and lighting) so that's something that we introduced. We could use up to seven lights on a rough layout and that made it much easier for the directors to visualise the emotion and drama of a scene.”

perspective is 'real', unlike the false-perspective we often have to use in a stop-frame animation studio. I was having to write down depth-of-field notes.”

So how does one go about throwing light onto a computer screen?

“They have a 'hero' light in CGI, that is a slave light which travels with a particular character. That's a great idea but it means that the light that's washing over the environment is not having such an effect on the characters. So we got them to ease off on that. But then all of the textures and surfaces will have a degree of luminance - this is a totally different world.” The end result, however, has Aaardman's unmistakeable human touch running right through it.

“In the computer environment, you can get bounce lights and soft lights but you can also build lights, set the focus of several lamps and group them together,” says Passingham.

“There are some great advantages in that all the lights are invisible - there are no stands to get in the way - and the

In many ways, Passingham's role was to enter this virtual world and 'keep it real', as they say. For example, he would make sure that the camera moves were “grounded”, as he puts it and that the lighting was believable.

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DP Martin Hill

Camera operator Dan Mulligan

Film Four Idents

Last of the Summer Wine

To an eerily slow, shuffling soundtrack, a woman hits and then falls through the shattered glass of a skyscraper window in super slow motion. The smoothness of this physical effect could only have been achieved by shooting it with a high-speed camera capable of shooting 1,000 fps or more. For this shot, one of a series of idents for Film 4, DP Martin Hill used not one, but three Photo-Sonics 4C 35mm cameras over five days in July 2006.

“The brief was that it had to look like a scene from a feature film, but at the same time be unique so that people might think, 'what film did that come from?',” he says. “I knew it had to be shot on film because I haven't found a tape camera that I like for slo-mo quality-wise. I did use a Panavision for the Six Nations Rugby Tour but, with that, we incorporated the fact that it didn't produce great quality images, into a stressed look.

“The nature of the Photo-Sonics camera and its prizm system means that light is a big issue. You have to have a lot of it to use that sort of camera at that sort of frame rate (830 fps). You lose seven stops of light at that level so you need as much light as sunlight. We lit the woman falling from the side to that it looked like sunlight and we used black drapes all around the crash mat to minimise reflections.”

For another slo-mo shot, in which two Cadillacs crash head on, Hill used the available south London sunlight, but still needed the security of a crane standing by with two huge lights hanging overhead.

“We got all the Photo-Sonics gear from one8six,” he says, “It was very reliable and there were no camera jams at all. I used Vision 500T film, and I would have liked to use faster lenses but, with the Photo-Sonics system, you have to use Pentax still lenses to get the coverage and that restricts the amount of light you can use. Dan Chase (the director) and I had to make sure everything was going to work, down to the last millimetre and we could only have a few takes for each shot. Technically, this was quite a challenge.”

CREW LIST Director DP/operator Camera operator 3rd camera operator First AD Producer

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Dan Chase Martin Hill Andrew Speller Jim Joliffe Julian Richards Jamie Davis

The pastoral peace depicted in the BBC sitcom Last of the Summer Wine may look timeless, but the latest series is being shot with 21st century digital technology in the shape of Thomson's Viper Filmstream camera. The show's producers switched to Viper after what camera operator Dan Mulligan (whose company Rogue Element Films supplies the series with its shooting equipment) describes as “disappointment” with the Sony HDW-750 HD cameras used on the last series.

“Because of the camera's ENG legacy, you have to put a tape in the recorder and that suffers from heavy compression,” he comments. “It means that when you come to grade, you can't really push the blacks anywhere because the highlights clip very quickly we had a lot of problems with windows in sets. Once you look into ways of recording uncompressed, you realise that you have to record externally so you might as well use a better camera. We did a lot of research into the Viper and, with Zeiss Digi Prime lenses which are superb, it proved itself to be a lot better for us.

“The Viper has a higher dynamic range and gives you much more exposure latitude. It records what it sees direct from the CCD chip, there's no in-camera processing. With the Sony and the Panasonic cameras you have a lot of menus but, when you switch the Viper into raw mode, it works like a film camera - you just expose, frame and capture - and

you know that what you're seeing is what you're getting. In real terms, it gives you a 9 to 10-stop range of exposure. The Sony would give us 4 to 5 stops.”

Until now, the Viper's relatively high cost in comparison to other HD cameras has meant that it has been used almost exclusively for feature film productions, but Mulligan argues that it can make economic sense for television series' shot on less lavish budgets.

“The costs are about the same as film but there are workflow benefits,” he reasons. “With Viper, you don't have to worry if you've set the gamma curves correctly or if the highlights are clipped and having that confidence makes shooting times a bit quicker.

We're wrapping, on average, 50 minutes earlier per day. Alan Bell (the director) has been over the moon with the rushes. Plus Viper gives you four times as much information for the grade and saves money in post.”

CREW LIST Director DP Camera op 2nd camera

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Alan Bell Pat O' Shea Dan Mulligan Sam

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USA

letter from america

Digital Cinema - the hope for a large screen future?

Daryn Okada argues that the unilateral endorsement of the DCI’s specifications, plus better movies, will help to preserve large-screen production for cinematographers working today and tomorrow.

A n a u d i e n ce i n a dark theater i m m e rs e d i n a w o n d e r f u l st o r y w i t h t h e f i n e st p i c t u re a n d s o u n d i s a h a rd e x p e r i e n ce t o duplicate

The competition for a share of the public’s entertainment time has never been fiercer, putting a greater threat to feature film exhibition than even the advent of color television. We are truly approaching another crossroads of technology, art and business. 1920 x 1080 pixel displays are available for the home. Finding programming with the wide color gamut, displayable contrast and dynamic range of theatrical film, that can playback at the full potential on home displays is a challenge, but these are being aggressively pursued by the manufacturers.

We, as the worldwide creative entertainment community, need to act now to ensure large screen feature films are in our future. This form of projected light and sound must remain the highest form of accessible quality motion picture presentation to the public. With technically healthy movie theaters, the high-quality big screen experience always inspires a new level of visual storytelling in formats other than feature films, such as television, cable, satellite and even the Internet. How many times do you hear the phased used, “It looks just like a movie”, to describe a production on another display format?

But how do we get the public energized to buy admission when they may choose to avoid the hassle of going to a theater only to gamble on not getting a first rate experience elsewhere? The first answer is too easy. Better movies.

Daryn Okada ASC Second, just as with advent of sound, so to were color, widescreen, higher resolution pictures and 3-D used as marketing tools to get the public’s attention. Even though the technology that was developed did not satisfy every need at first, it received better engineering, justified by increased ticket sales, and these ultimately became creative tools for cinematographers and directors. With the present collapsing development time from digital technology for large screen to the home screen, there are parallel and complementary development paths for both markets.

We need to act as the motion picture creative community to endorse the first version of standards for Digital Cinema set forth by the Digital Cinema Initiatives (DCI). It has been demonstrated that the overall image quality described in this version of the specification provides a high image and sound quality target that manufacturers and theater owners can aim for and attain. I have heard the comments on frame rates that are not included in this initial specification. Investigation and testing of other frame rates can be incorporated in new versions of the spec. It’s part of the process in every technical standards organization after adoption of a specification that the work continues with version enhancements issued as needed. We must be careful not to slow down the financial confidence it takes to update a theater screen into DCI performance specifications. The international exhibition industry needs the endorsement of the entire creative motion picture community throughout the world.

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What about that magnificently high-resolution technology we presently have for projection called film? The theaters that find that they cannot afford to switch to state of the art digital to compete, should be able to afford to clean up and improve their film projection and sound, and maybe make the auditorium space more comfortable for their patrons. By just raising the bar in a new technology, we may yet see some of the best exhibition that film projection has to offer. The only theaters left behind will be the ones that do not care or have little pride in the art of showmanship.

An audience in a dark theater immersed in a wonderful story with the finest picture and sound is a hard experience to duplicate. It is a performance that leaves you laughing, crying and perhaps with a different view on the world and humanity.

In addition, we all know how important mankind needs different points of view, and the many avenues to have these expressed. Art has always provided that. Let’s do our best to keep our largest, most powerful canvas for the current and future generations to paint their stories on.

Daryn Okada ASC is president of the American Society of Cinematographers.

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Allen Daviau, ASC to receive the ASC Lifetime Achievement Award The American Society of Cinematographers has selected director of photography Allen Daviau, ASC to receive the ASC Lifetime Achievement Award at the 21st Annual ASC Outstanding Achievement Awards on Feb. 18, 2007, writes Carolyn Giardina.

“Allen Daviau is still in the prime of his career, but he has already created an innovative body of work that will stand the test of time,” said Russ Alsobrook, ASC, who chairs the organization’s Awards Committee. “He is an awe-inspiring cinematographer who has earned the admiration of filmmakers around the world.”

There s a lo t w e don t k n o w a b o u t h a rd d r i ve s .

We don t kno w h o w lo n g t h o s e m a st e rs w i l l k e e p .

T h ey m a y s u r v i ve j u st f i n e , b u t I h a ve t h i s t e r r i b le feeling A l le n D a v i a u A S C Daviau has earned five Oscar nominations, for ET The ExtraTerrestrial, The Color Purple, Avalon, Empire Of The Sun and Bugsy. The latter two films also took top honors at the ASC Awards, and Empire Of The Sun won the BAFTA cinematography award. In addition to his highly-regarded work, Daviau has also participated in pioneering efforts to test new digital tools and techniques, including early DI finishing on Van Helsing. He also served as director of photography on the Standard Evaluation Material (known as StEM), created by the ASC and the Hollywood studio consortium Digital Cinema Initiatives (DCI) for evaluating the performance of digital projectors and other elements of digital cinema

systems, in order to maintain the integrity of the art form. The film, featuring an Italian wedding has been used for countless tests and demonstrations around the world.

“It was a collaborative process with the ASC; there were directors of photography everywhere,” recalls Daviau. “It was very good in that everyone was looking for things that would be meaningful tests [i.e. fire, confetti, rain, different times of day]. It was essential that the tests worked for everything.”

When asked about areas where he sees challenges ahead, Daviau identified archival longevity. “There’s a lot we don’t know about hard drives,” he says. “We don’t know how long those masters will keep. They may survive just fine… but I have this terrible feeling that with the speed digital is changing… we have to keep track of what we have and how we are storing them and when we need to copy them to a different format.”

In other ASC Awards news, the ASC announced that Gerald Hirschfeld, ASC will receive the 2007 ASC Presidents Award in recognition of his contributions to advancing the art and craft of filmmaking. Hirschfeld compiled more than 50 feature film credits during his career, including Fail-Safe, Cotton Comes to Harlem, Young Frankenstein and My Favourite Year.

He also authoured a textbook called, “Image Control - Motion Picture and Video Camera Filters and Lab Techniques,” that was awarded a prize for excellence by the Kraszna-Krausz Foundation, which honoured him at The Museum of the Moving Image in London.

Reflecting the outstanding film work being done for television, Donald M. Morgan, ASC will receive the first ASC Career Achievement in Television Award. Morgan has earned nine Emmy nominations resulting in five Emmy Awards for his

Allen Daviau ASC will receive lifetime achievement award cinematography on the television movies Something The Lord Made, Out Of The Ashes, Miss Evers’ Boys, Geronimo and Murder In Mississippi. He also earned six ASC nominations resulting in four wins.

“I never consider myself a television cinematographer or a feature cinematographer,” Morgan says. “I’m a cinematographer and I take projects that I like. I’ve been blessed with really good projects and directors who are very talented.”

Lately, he says he has been active in movies made for television and cable, most of which he says is shot on film. His most recent titles, Walkout (HBO) and Sybil (CBS), were both shot on Super 16.

On Location At press time, Newton Thomas Sigel, ASC, was lensing an upcoming Alan Ball (American Beauty) project on the Warner Bros. Hollywood lot and on location in Los Angeles. He relates that it is a coming of age story about a 13-year-old girl who

Pioneer: Daviau has consistently tested new digital tools and techniques, including early DI finishing on Van Helsing

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lives in Houston with her father. The story includes settings in three neighbourhood homes. “Each home represents a different part of the drama and has a different colour tone,” Sigel explains.

This feature is being lensed with Panavision’s Genesis digital cinematography camera (Sigel previously used the Genesis on Superman Returns). Sigel is also using Technicolor’s recent introduced Digital Printer Lights system, a method of emulating in the digital realm exactly what a release print would look like at given printer lights settings when using a Hazeltine console in a film lab.

“It’s great because one of the things about the Genesis is the material has more dynamic range and latitude than you can display on a monitor; in order to see what ultimately it could look like you need to do some manipulation,” he says.

ASC president Daryn Okada also recently used the Digital Printer Lights on his latest feature. “Being able to work with a calibrated system of adjusting the image and having it be repeatable… I’ve never seen that before [in digital]. I used Digital Printer Lights on Sex and Death 101. I was so confident in the Digital Printer Lights, I didn’t feel the need to first print dailies.”

Iconic: Daviau has earned five Oscar nominations one for ET The Extra-Terrestrial At press time, Wally Pfister, ASC (Batman Begins, The Italian Job) was wrapping his latest feature, The Prestige, directed

by Christopher Nolan. The film is about two rival magicians in London and takes place in the early 1900’s. The film stars Christian Bale, Hugh Jackman, Scarlett Johannson and Michael Caine.

The Prestige was shot on film. When asked about digital cinematography, Pfister is cautious. “I think some of the new digital cameras look good on smaller screens. I am less impressed with the results on a large theatrical screen,” he relates.

“35mm film with anamorphic lenses yield a far superior image quality. I do like the portability and convenience of the smaller, three-chip 24p cameras that Panasonic and Sony make.”

Meanwhile, Bill Bennett, ASC, in collaboration with ARRI, recently experimented with shooting 65mm for wide shots, scanning in 6k, and during the DI process converting to 4k, to be mixed with close-ups lensed in 35mm. “It’s an example of how to get the ultimate in image quality to the screen in present day cinemas,” Bennett says of the test.

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Honours In other awards news, BAFTA/LA held its 2006 BAFTA/LA Cunard Britannia Awards on Nov. 2. Four-time Academy Award-winner Clint Eastwood (Unforgiven, Million Dollar Baby) received the Stanley Kubrick Britannia Award for Excellence in Film; two-time Academy Award-winner Anthony Minghella was bestowed the John Schlesinger Britannia Award For Artistic Excellence in Directing; Rachel Weisz earned the Britannia Award for Artist of the Year; and twotime Academy Award-winner Sidney Poitier was awarded the Cunard Britannia Award for Lifetime Contributions to International Film.

A day earlier, ASC members participating in the inaugural Hollywood Post Alliance (HPA) Awards, during which ASC president Daryn Okada and Nancy Schreiber, ASC, presented the first award for Outstanding Colour Correction in a Film that went through a Digital Intermediate process (a category that was judged on 35mm film in Encore Hollywood’s DI theatre).

The first recipient of this award was EFILM veteran colourist

Steve Scott for the film The Illusionist. The other finalists in the category included David Cole for King Kong and Mike Sowa for Stay.

Lastly, at the recent eDIT 9 Festival in Frankfurt, its highest recognition, Festival Honors, were awarded to U.K.-based filmmaker Terry Gilliam and visual effects pioneer Ray Harryhausen.

As well, as special achievement award was bestowed on Andy Serkis, the actor who gave the motion capture performances that were the basis of CG characters Gollum in The Lord of the Rings trilogy and Kong in King Kong. On this special award, festival organizers said Serkis “showed the filmmakers of our time how to excite life and soul in animation characters.”

The awards presentation occurred during a gala, attended by an estimated 1500 including Hessian Prime Minister Roland Koch, which received much media attention.

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2006, Danjag, LLC. United Artists Corporation and Columbia Pictures Industries Inc. All rights reserved

FEATURE

A Deeper Bond Each new James Bond film has been keenly anticipated since the series first became a licence to make money back in the early 1960s, writes Kevin Hilton. As times have changed 007 has been reinvented for different political and social times. That last happened in 1995 when Pierce Brosnan took over the mantle in Goldeneye and now in Casino Royale Daniel Craig has succeeded him as a darker and altogether grittier Bond for the 21st century.

The task of capturing the iconic images of the secret agent on both films fell to cinematographer, and former president of the BSC, Phil Méheux. Since Goldeneye technology and the way films are made have moved on, and Méheux has been at the forefront of directors of photography dealing with high definition dailies, digital intermediate post-production and new cameras and lenses, all of which bring benefits and difficulties almost in equal measure.

From the earliest days of film the DP has worked in conjunction with the other technical and creative principals on a production, but these days the remit stretches far beyond the set and the lab. Like many of his contemporaries Méheux

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In t e r m s o f h a n d l i n g w e g a ve m o re i m m e d i a c y t o what is going on the c a m e ra i s i n t h e a c t i o n w i t h lo t s o f h a n d h e l d s e q u e n ces — Phil M heux BSC now finds himself liaising with the DI colourist as well as the special and visual effects artists, the production designer, the picture editor and the director.

Martin Campbell has directed both Méheux’s Bond films. The relationship goes back to the late 1970s, Méheux having worked on all but one of Campbell’s films as both director and producer. These include the feature version of Scum, No Escape, The Mask of Zorro and its sequel, The Legend of Zorro.

Back to basics Before starting work on Goldeneye Méheux and Campbell watched all the previous Bond films to pick out what worked well. Méheux describes the preparations for Casino Royale as an extension of that process.

“Our Bond is a rough diamond, not the suave, debonair playboy that has been seen before,” he says. “We’ve had to update the character from the book, so this is not a period piece, but Bond is at the beginning of his career, an ex-naval officer who was trained to fight with his hands, who can use modern weapons and has a penchant for high living.”

Ian Fleming’s novel Casino Royale is a terse, no-nonsense story and while that has been opened up and modernised for the film, Méheux says it did influence the shooting, marking a move away from the familiar structure of the previous films.

“In terms of handling we gave more immediacy to what is going on,” he explains. “The film isn’t made up of set pieces; the camera is in the action with lots of handheld sequences, which add to the reality of a lot of what happens.”

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camera creative

2006, Danjag, LLC. United Artists Corporation and Columbia Pictures Industries Inc. All rights reserved

and handheld sequences and the 435 for high speed and rig work. The “workhorse” 435 and a Studio camera were also used for second unit shooting. Primo lenses have been part of Méheux’s regular kit, but these gave way to Cooke Optics S4s and Angenieux Optimas for zooms, which were recommended by his focus puller.

“I tend to choose equipment that suits the purpose,” Méheux explains. And if new camera lenses come out I’m interested to put them through their paces, so this was a good opportunity to give the S4s a good seeing to. I thought they were terrific, very well designed. But to my knowledge they only fit on the Arriflex, so that dictated the choice of camera.”

Casino Royale is the first Bond film not to be anamorphic, which was partly Méheux’s decision but is in keeping with Martin Campbell’s preferences. “Martin gets slightly frustrated with anamorphic,” Méheux explains. “His is a very kinetic style and for Casino Royale we wanted several handheld sequences with the cameras close to the action.

Martin also likes to use the zoom on the crane for making slight adjustments to the frame. In general anamorphic zooms need a lot more light than ‘flat’ lenses.”

This led to using Super 35mm with a DI workflow, which Méheux and Campbell had used successfully on The Legend of Zorro. “However, if you’re using a widescreen picture on a small budget without a DI I would recommend the tried and tested anamorphic and photochemical process,” Méheux says.

This was a good opportunity t o g i ve t h e C o o k e S 4 s a g o o d s e e i n g t o . I t h o u g h t t h ey w e re t e r r i f i c , ve r y w e l l designed. — Phil M heux BSC On film Bond has become associated with fantasy violence but in the books, particularly the earlier works, there was a brutality to the action that had a truer ring to it. This is reflected in several sequences of the new film, notably a fight with fists and a machete down a flight of stairs and the infamous torture scene. The first of these is a clear return to basics, inspired in part by a confrontation between Sean Connery and Robert Shaw that featured in From Russia With Love.

Menacing atmosphere

Much is often made of actors performing their own action, but Méheux says that in most cases, and this one in particular, the use of doubles is essential. To disguise the fact that Daniel Craig and Eva Green, playing the mysterious secret agent Vesper Lynd, are not in the scene all the time the set was arranged with coloured glass on some levels, giving the impression of corridors beyond, and set-up so the majority of the fight could be performed either back-lit or in silhouette.

This allowed a seamless transition between Craig and his double, Ben Cooke, and Green and stunt artist Nicola Berwick.

What remains is the atmosphere of menace, emphasised by low-level lighting, provided by a kerosene lamp in the room and ambient light to give a sense of distance and size.

Digital intermediate Méheux acknowledges the flexibility DI brings and says each time a DI negative is produced it is “a new negative” and so an exact replica of the original; but he still has reservations about the mechanics of the process. “DI isn’t like handing over

Raymond Chandler wrote that the torture sequence in the novel of Casino Royale haunted him. The villain of the piece, ‘Le Chiffre’, has captured Bond and subjects him to a night of brutality involving a wicker chair with the seat cut out and a carpet beater. For the film a hunk of hot rope is used instead and the location moved from a remote chateau to an abandoned barge.

2006, Danjag, LLC. United Artists Corporation and Columbia Pictures Industries Inc. All rights reserved

“We wanted to make the scene claustrophobic,” says Méheux. “Daniel’s close-ups are very tight, almost as though he’s in limbo. When we cut to Mads Mikkelsen [as Le Chiffre] there’s more background.”

Méheux’s approach is not to load up with too many specialised lamps for the duration of a shoot. This, he points out, can be unwieldy and expensive, particularly as Casino Royale was shot in four countries over 120 days. “My theory is not to be too specific about what I carry,” Méheux comments. “If I need something out of the ordinary I make a lamp out of what I have already, using flags or trace paper.

From country to country I keep the list of lights in a similar vein but work ahead, so I’ve got what I need when I arrive at a location. The idea is to be ready for anything, particularly if the schedule changes.”

Much of Méheux’s recent work has been shot using Panavision cameras, but in this case he used Arriflex Arricams; the Studio for sound work, the Light for Steadicam

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Méheux’s criticisms are aimed more at the technology and the media rather than those that use it. “Kodak needs to work on making the DI negative more like a camera negative in its density,” he says. The DI for Casino Royale was processed at Framestore CFC, with the print produced by the Deluxe labs at Denham. “Adam Glasman, the colourist, has a background in photography and he was very helpful, very accurate and very fast. Maria Stroka, the producer, was also very accommodating. But with DI in general there is a danger of grading by committee, with everybody coming into the suite and making changes there and then. The DP needs to be involved otherwise someone else will make those changes and ultimately say that the cinematographer isn’t needed.

That would be a sad day for all of us.”

2006, Danjag, LLC. United Artists Corporation and Columbia Pictures Industries Inc. All rights reserved

the cut negative to the senior grader at the lab,” he says.

“These guys have enormous experience and may have worked on your dailies. Making the first print will take about three weeks and the DP will see this at his convenience. Any changes will be applied to another print overnight or a day or two later. The advantage is that you’re seeing the complete finished product each time. DI can take three weeks to load the material into the computer and the DI colourist usually hasn’t seen any of the dailies. So the DP is working from scratch with the colourist, shot by shot, and it can take three to four weeks sitting together in a darkened room for eight hours a day to get the desired result.”

praises the “fine work” of visual effects and model unit supervisor Steve Begg and the “giant three-storey rig” built on the 007 Stage by special effects co-ordinator Chris Corbould.

Special effects Casino Royale also used high definition (HD) dailies, provided as part of the editing package by London Editing Machines, which Méheux views as another way to produce the rushes, but he feels that film still has its place. “One film I worked on was an 18-week shoot and the studio insisted we had film rushes for only the first two weeks, which I thought was a bit near-sighted,” he says. “There can be technical issues with HD as it doesn’t resolve like film,” he says, “so focus problems can slip through and it doesn’t deal easily with low key scenes.”

The Bond films are famed for their effects and although Casino Royale does deliver on that count the call for more reality has seen a reduction in some of the more extravagant images.

“There was the feeling that the last Bond relied too much on visual effects and this time CG has been used mostly for wire removal and image enhancement,” Méheux observes.

CG did play its part in creating Miami airport, as the filmmakers would not have been granted permission to film at the real location, so Dunsfold Park Aerodrome provided the physical foundation. But the real effects wizardry comes through the miniatures and model work. The standout scene is at the end of the film; the destruction of a villa, which falls into a Venetian canal (in reality a tank at Pinewood). Méheux

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As the outside of the villa is shown to collapse Méheux had to show the interior of the building sinking as well. The room twists and turns into 12 to 15 feet of water, the constant movement making lighting the scene difficult. Working with production designer Peter Lamont, Méheux had skylights added to the set in order to bring light from above as most of the set would end up underwater and using window light was not practical. At its maximum height the set stood within eight inches of the girders that hold up the roof on the 007 Stage and the lighting rig had to be above these and also

provide enough light when the set had sunk to its lowest level.

Gaffer Eddie Knight worked out a rig of dinos (24 x 1K bulbs in a housing) pointing straight down through two grid clothes, all fed to a dimmer panel so that more light could be added as the set tilted and fell. The scene took three weeks to shoot but lasts for only minutes in the finished film.

But that encapsulates the extravagance of the Bond films and gives those that work on them, like Phil Méheux, immense professional satisfaction. Casino Royale may not have received universally good reviews, but it has done excellent ”box office”, and has given the franchise a new twist that is likely to skake fans and stir new audiences alike when Bond reappears next time.

Main Unit Operator: Roger Pearce; 1st AC: Leigh Gold; 2nd AC: Sam Barnes; Loader: Stephen Andrews; Grip: Kevin Fraser.

Second Unit Director/ Cameraman: Alexander Witt; Operators: Clive Jackson, Roberto Contreras, Rodrigo Gutierrez (not sure who was key operator - probably Clive); 1st AC: Keith McNamara; 2nd AC: Charlie Herranz; Loader: Ed Jones; Grip: David Appleby.

Phil M heux — Filmography Casino Royale The Legend of Zorro Around the World in 80 Days Beyond Borders Bicentennial Man Entrapment The Mask of Zorro The Saint Goldeneye No Escape Ghost in the Machine The Trial Ruby Defenceless Highlander II: The Quickening Renegades The Fourth Protocol Apology (TV) Act of Vengeance (TV) Morons from Outer Space

(2006) (2005) (2004) (2003) (1999) (1999) (1998) (1997) (1995) (1994) (1993) (1993) (1992) (1991) (1991) (1989) (1987) (1986) (1986) (1985)

Max Headroom (TV) Those Glory Glory Days (TV) Lace (TV) The Honorary Consul Who Dares Wins The Disappearance of Henry (TV) Experience Preferred... but not Essential (TV) Omen III: The Final Conflict The Long Good Friday Scum The Music Machine Out (TV series) Black Joy Spend Spend Spend (TV, Play for Today) The Emperor of Atlantis (TV) Let’s Get Laid The Elephant’s Graveyard (TV, Play for Today) Just Another Saturday (TV, Play for Today) All My Loving (TV)

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(1985) (1984) (1984) (1983) (1982) (1982) (1982) (1981) (1980) (1979) (1979) (1978) (1977) (1977) (1977) (1976) (1975) (1968)

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FEATURE

grains vs pixels

The Chips Are Down what DPs really think about shooting HD We asked cinematographer Paul Wheeler BSC to interview three DPs about their experiences of working on long-form productions using three of the leading cameras designed for digital motion picture production. What you are about to read are their responses to a set of questions designed to elicit their experiences and genuine opinions, with no other added colour or views introduced.

Clearly, the time taken by each to address the subject of digital cinematography shows their unstinting enthusiasm for their art and this project. So much so, that we will expand on the subject with a roundtable discussion in our next edition, together with replies from the camera manufacturers themselves. If you are a DP, or working as part of a camera team, with experience in shooting HD, we invite you to get in touch now and be part of our roundtable discussion in 2007.

Gavin Finney BSC — Hogfather / Arriflex D-20 Initially the project was to be shot on 35mm. It's very good high definition, but there is a cost element, especially over a long period of shooting. We shot the equivalent in screen time of 450,000 feet of film. On this project that represents around a £220,000 saving, and on a tight budget that's a lot. So there was a cost element involved in the decision to move to HD. Also, as there was going to be a lot of CGI work, if you are on HD already there are advantages here. Working in the digital medium, the composites we have seen worked really well. I really didn't want to shoot on one of the 750 or 900 cameras because I didn't think their 'look' would suit the project. The D20 is different in a good way that we liked. The D-20 has not so much a softer look, but a gentler look, as opposed to the razor sharp image of, say, three-chip cameras such as a Sony, or a Viper. Whilst that look can be appropriate to some subjects we wanted something gentler. The look of the D-20 meant there were no issues with prosthetics, wig lines, etcetera, on Hogfather.

HD: the crews embraced working with the D-20 on Hogfather Paul Wheeler: Gavin has shot with HD before, with the Panavised HDW F900 on Inquisition and on several commercials, using both the Sony 750 and 900 cameras. This year he used the Arriflex D-20 to shoot Hogfather, Sky One and RHI Entertainment's 2 x 120” production of Terry Pratchett's worldwide best-selling fantasy fiction novel.

Gavin Finney: “One of the issues with digital movie making is the storage of the information. Especially if you want to work in a 4-4-4 environment, the amount of data you need to store for a feature film is beginning to make a lot of people in Soho think seriously. For instance, the opening shot of Hogfather took nine days to render out at 1080p. More lineage than that and you are into serious problems, needing more storage and faster computers.

The crew reacted to the Arriflex D-20 very, very well. What I insisted on when we had decided to go with this digital camera was that the crew had a week's soak-in with the kit,

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as well as the normal testing. They spent a great deal of that time building and stripping down the camera, and then building that camera back up until they were at least as fast and proficient as with any film camera. That includes all the cables and set-ups - I just did not want people looking at manuals - this is the key to the thing. I was at a meeting last week where one of the reasons being suggested for shooting on HD was you need less crew, I said immediately. 'No, you do not. What you need on HD at present is more crew, especially intelligent top crew and the better they are on film the better they will assimilate with the new technology'. We had two crews on Hogfather, the first assistant on first unit Iain Struthers, and on second unit Mark Barrs, and their loaders Alice Hobden and Mark Nutkins. To their credit they all just embraced it. They got completely on board and were happy to learn it so it just wasn't a problem. We had the full standard 35mm crew - operator, focus puller, 2nd assistant and trainees on both crews. That's how we did two features in nine weeks - very intelligent top people who knew what they were doing.

The amount of dat a yo u n e e d t o st o re fo r a fe a t u re f i l m i s b e g i n n i n g t o m a k e a lo t o f p e o p le i n S o h o t h i n k s e r i o u s ly — Gavin Finney B S C The ability to use 35mm lenses was important as it gives you the shallow depth-of-field which adds to the dramatic look, and you have a much wider choice of lenses, all the ones you are used to when shooting 35mm. Vadim Jean, the director, who has worked a lot with HD was very keen that we did not have to collimate lenses on set, so this pushed us away, again, from three-chip cameras. This was partly because we simply did not have a second in the day of breathing space. A problem with the back focus on three chip cameras is that no light comes on when it drifts out, someone has to be watching a 24” HD monitor all the time. Having had cameras that don't have this problem for over 80 years, why tolerate it, is my argument? I grant there are devices that you can put on the front of the lens and re-collimate in a minute or so, but by then you may have blown the best take, and that's not acceptable to me. It's only fair on the camera crew that they can satisfy themselves during the test period that all the lenses are good, and not to have to worry about these matters for the next three months.

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FEATURE

DP Gavin Finney: judging the focus was like a film camera

We used Cooke S4 prime lenses and an Angenieux Optimo 11:1 zoom - a lens combination that worked very well, though we worked with the primes most of the time. All these lenses suited the Arriflex D-20 very well. We used the HDCAM SR recorder in 4-4-4 mode with SQ on the decks, so we were using 440 rather than 880Mbits. We used standard rather than extended range on the D-20, and linear as apposed to log recording. From our perspective the issue we had with log was you don't see what you get on the monitor, though you can with an on-set look up table (LUT), though I am not sure we wanted to work with one. As we were ending up in linear effectively, it seemed the obvious route to go. With log it needs another box to see the real pictures, and I was happy with the tonal range I was getting in linear. I was also much happier seeing the image that was going down onto tape without any bits or boxes in the way. It was also reassuring lining up the monitors and knowing that was what I was getting.

The only thing that was clear in choosing all these parameters was that 4-4-4 gave us a much cleaner key than 4-2-2, and we had a lot of bluescreen work to do, so we went down that road. We had a very good run-up period - five weeks prep and we had extensive special effect meetings, I kid you not, sometimes 'til one or two, in the morning and every frame was analysed, mainly for budgetary reasons. The budget was so tight we had to make sure we knew what we could afford, and if we could not afford it we cut it or found another way of doing it. So, in fact, we did a lot more in camera, which is always the best way. But, the bluescreens did work very well.

If they hadn't we would have been back on film, but we found that by lighting the screens with blue tubes we got very, very clean keys. Problem solved.

I am halfway through grading now and am finding that the 44-4 colour space is giving me much better secondary colour

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grains vs pixels

Cabling: can still be a problem

I am halfway thro u g h g ra d i n g n o w a n d a m f i n d i n g t h a t t h e 4 - 4 - 4 co lo u r s p a ce i s g i v i n g m e m u c h b e t t e r s e co n d a r y co lo u r co r rection — Gavin Finney B S C correction. If you want to change a secondary, or do that kind of tweaking, you have more range and cleaner keying when you're grading, and there's no trade off. And it doesn't cost more money.

Back to the camera, the nice thing is it's built like a film camera, very, very solid just like all ARRI cameras. So for the crew there is basically no difference and for the operator the look-through is just like a 535. This look-through is probably its unique selling point. I don't look at a monitor - I am happy to not even have an HD monitor on set. We didn't need a DIT (Digital Imaging Technician) on set, I can't think of a shorter lifespan for any grade in the history of filmmaking. You don't need them with the D-20, you don't need big monitors and all these blacked out tents. I shot the whole of Hogfather using an Astro waveform monitor This is a high-def picture monitor on the camera with a waveform overlay where the picture and waveform match up. That, plus lighting by eye, felt more natural to me. If you are lighting a bluescreen all you need to do is light the background until you have a blue straight line on the waveform at 50%, or whatever, and you're there.

The look through on the D-20 is great with the “over scan” you expect on a film camera's viewing screen. Judging focus is very good - exactly like a film camera. The only trade-off is the reflex shutter takes away some light so the camera is roughly 200 ASA, which could be improved upon, and we shot the bluescreen at the equivalent of 100 ASA for a cleaner key.

The camera seems to roll off the highlights, rather than clip them which is a good thing. When we had candles in shot, you could see the wick! I think we were getting around four and a half stops over and about three and a half stops into the shadows. Nine weeks of night shoots at 200 ASA was a bit of a challenge. But we had lots of scenes in the studio, which was not such a problem.

Good and bad things? The camera we used was heavy, very heavy but has now been adapted to remove the optical assembly to make it lighter for steadicam work. ARRI redesigned the menu system while we were shooting, which improved things. The cabling issues are still a problem, though I'm told a lighter, simpler, more robust method is on its way.

The camera we used would only go up to 30fps and you really need 60fps on a studio camera. It seems the camera can do 60fps but the recorder, at present, cannot. The chip is the equivalent of full frame 35mm, which is good and begs the question of being able to use conventional anamorphic lenses.

The camera has passive cooling, no fans, so the sound department were OK. You still have to check the gate, but you are looking for dust on the chip. My crew devised a technique of holding a lightbox in front of the lens and stopping down to reveal any dust that may be present.

On Hogfather the savings on film stock, etc. were put in front of the camera, which is the way to do it. On the whole I enjoyed using the Arriflex D-20, and it ended up being a good choice for a production like Hogfather.”

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grains vs pixels

Seamus Deasy — The Tiger’s Tale / Panavision Genesis Paul Wheeler: I had heard that Seamus enjoyed using the Genesis on The Tigers Tale with John Boorman and given they were both experienced film men I had certain expectations as to Seamus's views. Seamus confounded me by preferring the Panavision's electronic viewfinder simply because it allowed him to, in effect, use a much wider opening than the traditional 180 degree shutter, and therefore get shots in a street, in Dublin, at night, he would otherwise not have been able to shoot without a lot more lighting.

Seamus Deasy: “The Tiger’s Tale was my first Genesis shoot.

I did a film about two years ago using the Panavised Sony F900. There’s no comparison between the two cameras. I was wary after my experiences with the 900 – it’s all the back focus problems, where you spend ten minutes every time you change your lens, or five minutes when you are more used to it. I ended up using the zoom much more so that the lens stayed on the camera. We ended up with two bodies, one with the longer zoom and the other with a wide lens, so that most of the time we would swap bodies rather than swap lenses.

While the Panavision Digital Primo lenses on the 900 were terrific, the length of the camera with a zoom and a matte box on the front, and the converter box and battery on the back, is about three foot long. The comparison with the Genesis is incredible – there’s no comparison.

I decided we were not going to worry about waveform monitors, and all that kind of thing. I would just shoot it as if it was film. We did some tests to determine the ASA rating, and I just shot it with an exposure meter with the camera set on pre-set and used conventional filters, which I felt was the best option for later in post where we had that flexibility in grading. We filtered exactly as if it was a film camera, with the exception of using the menu to switch between Tungsten and Daylight whereas with the 900 I used an 85.

Eye, eye: Seamus Deasy lining up a shot on Sandymount Strand

My mes s a g e t o p ro d u ce rs would be — yo u n e e d e x a c t ly t h e s a m e c re w a n d l i g h t i n g a s f i l m .

P ro d u ce rs think it s g o i n g t o b e a lo t c h e a p e r , it s not. — Seamus Deasy The big advantage for us was being able to use any of the Panavision lenses that we normally use on 35mm film without any hassle. You just change a lens as you would with a film camera and it takes exactly the same time.

We got the kit through Panavision Ireland, which is a small operation but they have the backup of London, and over the years they have looked after me marvellously. We did consider the Arriflex D-20, but at the time it wasn’t quite ready for production. We could have had it for tests, but they weren’t certain it was ready for a full production. So once we had decided to go digital, and we did early on, there wasn’t any choice but the Genesis.

Family: Seamus Deasy and focus puller Shane Deasy (son)

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The Tiger’s Tale is a relatively low budget film and a lot of it was, initially, to be shot at night in real streets. John Boorman (the director) and I had looked at Collateral (director Michael Mann) – they shot a lot of that with available light at night in the streets. In The Tiger’s Tale there are some night scenes in the Temple Bar area in Dublin, which is a centre of nightlife, and we shot there during normal opening hours. We didn’t shut the place down; we just shot there in the evening with lots of stag parties and hen parties going on. We used three 1k Chimera balls on high stands, each with its own little 2k generator, and nothing else, but the available light it worked incredibly well. We went in there and shot when needed at the key times, whereas if we were pulling in cranes with Wendy’s, or whatever, it would have been a huge expense, etcetera. There were all kinds of lamps, fluorescent, sodium street lighting, pubs and everything. It all worked incredibly well.

In the end the system we set up was with a traditional crew,

though I was operating myself. So we had a focus puller, a loader and a trainee and the trainee’s job was to watch the monitor so that he would notice if there was anything wrong - whether it was focus or anything else, he would let us know.

Because I was operating, I wasn’t able to watch the monitor very much. It was a comfort to know that we could watch playback from the camera, but we did not do that very often, perhaps half a dozen times. We had a conventional playback crew so that took care of checking the performances.

One disadvantage of the Genesis is that you can’t get a lightweight version yet, though I believe they are working on this. We tried on one occasion splitting the camera body and the magazine, but it was so much hassle with all the cabling we didn’t bother again. You can get it on the Steadicam, and we did, but you can’t transmit HD pictures. So we ended up watching on a little clamshell, which makes it very hard to judge the pictures. The other disadvantage is that our camera would not go beyond 30fps, though they say they are working on that as well.

I shouldn’t be criticising it really, because I was very pleased with the Genesis, but one other problem is you can get vertical smear with it from lights like headlights and things like that. It’s not unlike the smearing you get with anamorphic lenses, except its vertical instead of horizontal. Some people like it, I don’t, but think they are working on that as well. For this smearing to happen you have to be directly looking at a strong source like a headlight at night.

The current viewfinders are also a disadvantage compared with film. We had two sorts to play with and I find, indeed I have always found, colour electronic viewfinders quite difficult

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to see if something is in focus or not. However, the Genesis has the best I have ever seen. It’s almost better to be looking at a black and white image. The mounting of the viewfinders was also a problem; one in particular always seemed to be working loose. There is an argument for a reflex spinning shutter, but if you had one it limits you to a 180 degree opening. We went much more than that several times at night in street lighting and it worked really well. We couldn’t have done that with a mechanical shutter.

To be fair to Panavision they have had conversations with us about the viewfinders and the smearing and they certainly have listened.

We made two negatives from the cut master, one on acetate base and one on polyester. All the release prints are made from the polyester copy, so all those prints are only one generation away from the digital intermediate, and you can run as many as a thousand prints, apparently, from this kind of negative. There is no need for inter-positives or internegatives so you get terrific prints. If you compare these prints with the conventional route of inter-positive / internegative the difference is unbelievable, and in many ways this more direct route to the release is one of the biggest steps forward. These polyester negatives had all the characteristics of an acetate negative without the extra generations.

My message to producers would be – you need exactly the same crew and lighting as film. Producers think it’s going to be a lot cheaper, it’s not. And to directors watch out for bad habits, like letting the camera roll between takes. John

Witnesses: John Boorman director with Seamus Deasy, watching the end of film?

Boorman is very happy to buy a first take if it is good enough, and that has to be a good thing. We decided right from the beginning that we would treat it like film – to use the clapperboard and everything. If anything went wrong we cut and started again. I think there were only three days we went onto a second tape.

John Boorman said, “I think we are witnessing the beginning of the end of film”, and I think we are. Effectively you get out of a Genesis a digital intermediate straight away. I think the next generation will give us a 4K DI, and when they get to that stage I don’t see any reason to shoot film again. I think the Genesis and its pictures are as close to shooting on film as is possible at present.”

Trevor Coop GBCT — Second unit on Highlander: The Source / Thomson Grass Valley Viper Filmstream system Paul Wheeler: I was particularly keen to talk to Trevor as second unit work can place more stress on equipment and kit. If digital cameras can’t stand up to treatment that is quite normal, and acceptable, for a film camera this might limit there usefulness. At the time of writing, Trevor was on a new shoot in Marrakech, and his e-mail replies made up the following discourse…

Inevitable: "Don't say I didn't warn you", says Trevor Coop

Trevor Coop: “My first feelings when approached to shoot 2nd unit on Highlander: The Source were, initially, overwhelming joy – for I have always been a believer in the adage ‘change with the times or die’ – followed by total panic – when I realised that I knew sweet F.A. about digital photography let alone HD.

For myself, and the crew, it was very much ‘in at the deep end’ and good luck, particularly as I joined the production only a week prior to principal photography. The first unit DP was Steve Arnold ASC. The Viper is physically quite compact, but this is partly because the recording device (the magazine?) is separated from the camera by an umbilical cord. When the lens is mounted the camera as a whole, particularly with a zoom lens mounted, becomes very front heavy and, therefore, difficult to balance on a conventional tripod head.

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The ra w , g re e n a n d f l a t i m a g e s , eve n w i t h o u t a n y LUT s , w e re a b s o l u t e ly superb —Trevo r C o o p G B CT

The camera body is just an enlargement of domestic Handycam-type products and is, compared to the film cameras we are used to, very flimsy – particularly the viewfinder assembly. This definitely needs some serious modification to be able to cope with the rigours of 14 hours-a-day, six days-a-week compared to 10 minutes at a Sunday barbeque for which it currently seems to be designed.

We used Zeiss primes and zooms, which performed very well. But the whole business of having to check the back focus when changing lenses, and even when keeping the same lens in the kind of circumstances we were shooting under – camera mounted on improvised tracking vehicles and often travelling over rough terrain – proved very time consuming. Even if it’s only a couple of minutes each time, then it comes to more than an hour per day, one day per fortnight or one week per three months. So add 8% to your shooting budget before you start.

The main unit director, Brett Leonard, and DP Steve Arnold designed a colour progression theme through the picture by the time I joined the production. This theme started with a deep red bias at the scene-setting start of the movie, progressing through deep blue during the build up, lightening to blinding white as the story progressed towards the characters finding the source of their powers. The Thomson Grass Valley Viper Filmstream system is

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FEATURE

grains vs pixels

My first fe e l i n g s w h e n a p p ro a c h i n g t h i s s h o o t w e re ove r w h e l m i n g j oy— fo r I h a ve a lw a y s b e e n a b e l i eve r in the adage or die

change with the times

— Trevo r C o o p G B CT

the only system, to my knowledge, that allows you to compose your own LUTs (Look Up Tables) to suit your individual taste, as compared to other systems which give you built in packages such as ‘day interior’, ‘night exterior’ etc., which you cannot alter. We also enhanced this process with, sometimes, quite heavy filtration in front of the lens.

Despite not having a chip the size of a 35mm film frame, and not being able to give us standard 1.85:1 or 2.35:1, it can give 16 x 9 or 2.37:1 which are close to the aspect ratios we love. It’s the only system that records full 4-4-4, and the raw, green and flat images, even without any LUT’s, were absolutely superb.

The biggest drawback of the package is that the D.Mags we were using only recorded 32 minutes of information, which takes six hours plus to download to a state where the Avid can assimilate the data. In practical terms, this meant we were forever chasing our tails to maintain enough recording space to enable us to work at a realistic pace. Add another few percent to your budget.

The chip is rated at 320 ASA (ISO) and as a general rule that is an accurate estimate of its ability. As with all electronic image gathering devices, the highlights begin to blow at two stops over, but its ability to eat into the shadow detail goes on forever and ever. Don’t get your hopes up producers, this does not mean you can reduce your lighting budget. It just means smaller lamps and more staff – you are moving towards a more ‘black and white’ style of lighting.

The limitations of the system include the umbilical cord – most restricting. No problem when you have a static camera, but if you want to shoot hand-held or particularly Steadicam or, yet again, a tracking vehicle, you are forced to have a sack barrow caring a small fridge (the S2 recorder) following you around.

Highlander – The Source is about superhuman beings doing superhuman things – very physical, very rough. This is not the system to throw around in the snow, in the woods, at night and in the winter in Lithuania. Or anywhere else, come to that.

Because of the lack of ability to cope with contrast, compared to film, you have to be very much more pedantic when shooting greenscreen, of which we did a vast amount. Our Digital Film Technician (DFT) had amongst his toys a waveform monitor and, although I used my meter to establish the balance on set, I used the waveform monitor more and more to determine overall exposure.

The Viper system does not do slow motion, so we resorted to a good old ARRI 435 and old-fashioned film for some 20% of the picture.

What improvements would I like to see? The physical robustness of the camera. Get rid of the umbilical cord, I gather flash mags are just around the corner with ten minutes of recording on each one, but I gather they are likely to be prohibitively expensive. I would like an optical viewfinder, do buts, an absolute essential.

And a message to producers: HD is where we are all going sooner or later, like it or not.

But don’t even think of going there unless you are prepared to budget for a full and comprehensive DI, and that can add 20% to both your budget and your schedule. One day costs may be comparable to film, but for the foreseeable future it is only for those with deep pockets. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

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shooting the future

IBC 2006: Innovation Continues The International Broadcasting Convention (IBC), held in Amsterdam during September, may be something of a distant memory now but the new products launched and technologies introduced will have an influence on the film and TV business for some time to come, as Kevin Hilton reports.

This year high definition (HD) began to show maturity, as broadcast services in Europe are now on air and cinematographers are coming to terms with the technology for the production of dailies. The main innovations break down nicely into four subject areas.

Digital film recorders The advent of viable electronic digital and HD cameras for film-style shoots has called for a new form of recording.

Leading the way at IBC was the British-designed Codex Digital media recorder, which can acquire digital images and data at rates of up to 700Mb/s. The unit can be configured according to the needs of the shoot, accommodating Grass Valley Viper at up to 60fps, with the capability to record two such cameras simultaneously, and the Dalsa Origin at up to 36fps.

The Codex recorder is based on a ten drive RAID array, works at 2 and 4K and has been designed to be familiar to both video and film people. A feature of the unit is its Virtual File System, which enables it to connect to distribution services such as Sohonet, making for a whole range of interesting new propositions for cinematographers, editors, producers and directors.

Cameras Just to prove that film can play this game too, digital film recorders made appearances in the form of the Celco Fury 4K and Digital Film Systems Definity. The Fury 4K is the latest in Celco’s range and records 10-bit log, 4K images onto Kodak 2242 colour intermediate negative stock, using a new electromagnetic beam control system to produce sharper images.

The Definity records onto a 1TB S-ATA RAID array, runs on Windows XP Pro and can save film in a variety of file formats.

The central processing unit works at a resolution of 7680x2048 pixels and records from 35mm cameras using 400, 1000 or 2000 feet split magazines, with fixed 3-pin registration and VistaVision configuration.

Lenses, filters, accessories and hardware Lenses continue to develop as cameras diversify. Cooke Optics introduced the CXX 15-40mm zoom lens, which works with S4/i motion picture intelligence system. This gives information on settings, focusing distance, aperture and depth-of-field.

Glass for HD is now a priority, and Fujinon displayed the costeffective X series, with 13 and 17 times magnification optics.

Band Pro had a range of HD digital cinematography tools, specifically for 4:4:4 RGB acquisition. Also new were the Zeiss DigiZoom 17-112mm lens and the 16X9 0.7X wide-angle converter.

A new location lighting control system was shown by Matthews Studio Equipment. Road Flags consists of two frames, a single scrim, silk diffusion and a solid flag and can recreate full studio illumination in any situation.

Digital cameras and HD video have been the talk of IBC for the past few years, but film sustains and this year Super 16 got a huge vote of confidence, after many had written it off as HD became established.

French manufacturer Aaton launched the Xtera Super 16 camera, which offers a progressive scan video tap, twin battery junction box, followfocus rod and a large display on the battery side, which the company calls “a camera-assistant’s dream”. The other stalwart of film has not been forgotten, as Aaton showed a prototype of the Penelope 3-perf and 2-perf instant 400-foot magazine 35mm camera, which should be available by 2007.

Also in the 16mm re-launch club is ARRI, which showed the Arriflex 416. This has a 35mm-style viewfinder, low sound levels, a mirror shutter that can be adjusted from 45 to 180 degrees and a variable speed from one to 75fps. Both manufacturers say footage shot on their cameras can be telecined or data-scanned for HD or DI post-production, which puts film back in contention as an acquisition format in the new data age.

Digital cameras were not pre-dominant; the Dalsa Origin made a cameo appearance on the Codex stand, while the ARRI D-20 was seen in HD and data modes. The Red digital camera was an exhibit in its own right, but was still in prototype form. Among the products displayed by P+S was the compact high-speed digital Weisscam HS1, designed by DP Stefan Weiss.

Workflow and manipulation With 3D stereoscopic films helping to put impressive numbers of bottoms on cinema seats, US digital intermediate (DI) specialist Assimilate made a bold statement by collaborating with Cobalt Entertainment to produce a real-time stereoscopic/3D digital workflow and connectivity system.

Cobalt’s digital 3ality camera system was used to acquire demo material, while its imaging tools have been integrated into the Assimilate Scratch workstation. Through the combination of the dual-DVI outputs on the nVidia Quadro FX cards and the Scratch CONstruct conform tool, a timeline can be

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created with right-eye material on one layer and left-eye material on another, making additional processing unnecessary. These two clips can then be edited as a single item and then colour graded, or have other effects added.

With the use of DPL projection, 3D stereoscopic reproduction is now considered a viable proposition, which Hollywood is eyeing closely. Working with Cobalt, Assimilate has positioned itself with an easyto-implement and cost-cutting workflow to post-produce suitable images.

were in abundance. Autodesk re-branded its colour correction system as Autodesk Lustre 2007, adding GPU-accelerated colour grading and improved interconnection with other Autodesk products, plus interlaced or progressive workflow.

Impressive colour grading and repair tools

The Foundry’s Forge dust-busting software

Pandora introduced its Revolution real-time software-based colour correction, which is claimed to do away with rendering, and Quantel moved further into colour grading with the Revolver secondary colour corrector for Pablo.

has been upgraded to full product, after being used in the background by a number of post houses, including Framestore CFC. Based on the Furnace package Forge uses infrared (IR) technology to achieve results.

Cintel prefers optical manipulation to IR, as shown by the D/SCO (pronounced “disco”) dust buster for the dITTo data scanner. This works by reflecting light away from a damaged frame and then replacing it. The Pixel Farm expanded its range of software tools for restoration and colour correction, which also feature test and measurement facilities for quality control.

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shooting the future

Cinec: Creative tools for captivating images Cinec 2006 opened its doors in Munich in September too, to host an ever-increasing number of exhibitors, and again proved itself a significant meeting point and market place for news and innovations in film technology, writes Annette Zoeh.

This time, the fair’s mantra was dedicated to the “future of cinematography”, a definition encompassing both digital and film at equal levels, offering a wide range creative choices to cinematographers across all budgets. This was the overall message of this year`s exhibition, underlined the presence of renowned personalities among them Eberhard Hauff, chairman of Bavarian Image & Art Association, and DP Jon Fauer ASC. As many as 141 international exhibitors showcased innovative products ranging from film camera technology with the Arriflex 416 to HD technology with the Weisscam HS, to crane and grip equipment, from ABC products` mini crane to Cartoni with P90 2-stage pedestal, lenses and lights with Angenieux`s HD 19x7.3 lens and Gekko LED ringlight to Nesys color3 light range and Desisti.

Groundbreaking innovative solutions in post production and digital editing came in the form of the Codex Digital field recorder and Kodak’s look-management software. Afternoon demos provided detailed information on Purplelink hassle-free HD, the high-speed digital Weisscam HS1 and shooting 4K/2K with the Dalsa and Viper data-centric workflows. In addition, more insight was given on Blue-ray technology, the wireless digital video transmitter DWV 1, the new HAWK V-plus anamorphic lenses and ARRI equipment.

Belgian DP Louis-Phillipe Capelle, awarded with the Bronze Frog in 2005 at Camerimage for his film Dark Night (Nuit Noire) shot using Viper on a budget of 1.3m Euros, discussed the creative process in digital cinematography.

As a perfect answer to latest market requirements, ARRI

demonstrated the new Arriflex 416 Super 16 film camera, together with a new set of ultra 16mm lenses covering the full Super 16 format with 6, 8, 9.5, 12 and 14mm focal lengths.

Always omnipresent these days was ARRI`s digital flagship, the D-20, shown in HD and data mode, as well as its latest lighting development, the ARRIMAX 18k.

Further innovative highlights and presentations during the show, beside Panavision’s Genesis, Aaton`s 35 XTR prod, 35III and extremely small Super 16 Minima, was a new Aaton multi-track digital sound recorder Cantar-X. Vantage`s hallmark is anamorphics; their latest lens set, the more lightweight HAWK V-plus series, includes improved optical performance in contrast and flare. Being telecentric, they are suitable for HD use too. Another new item was the Vantage Blue-Vision, which introduced blue flares as a creative effect.

The legendary Joe Dunton demonstrated a new set of small, spherical high speed T1.2 and T1.3 lenses, the Xtal Express, ranging from 14.5mm to 17.5, 21mm and further up. Sachtler introduced its new fluid head Cine 30 HD, which utilises the Snap & Go system and also features a sideload mechanism for camera plates to ensure quick and easy camera set up.

An advanced crane system was demonstrated by the Czech company Technocrane who received a technical Academy Award last year. Their programmable camera crane, the Technodolly, has been developed and designed for motion control operation.

Mole Richardson introduced a new 12/18k daylight fresnel for film, TV and event professionals. A double-walled sheet metal and aluminium cast eliminates spill light, the 24”Borosilicate fresnel lens combined with 16”Brytal alu reflector provides max. light output. A beautifully designed, lightweight LED ringlight system was shown by David Amphlett of GekkoLight.

This flexible, versatile high output ringlight system includes

the Kisslite 3200K and 5600K, the Lenslite 6000K white light source and Kicklite series of 3200K and 5600K white light luminaries. Maxilight Micro is the latest softlight innovation by Finnlight. Six 75w par 16FL lamps ensure high output, while six illuminated switches offer versatile output control without affecting colour temperature. Another new illumination was the Toplight integrated hanging lighting system, a 6k par overhead softlight.

Successfully represented were French lens designers K5600 with their new Alpha 18k and a complete range of lights from Alpha 2,5/4K to Black Jack 250/400, while crane manufacturers JL Fisher eagerly demonstrated the model 10 and model 11camera dollies together with the new model 6E base for microphone booms, which feature a full back swivel seat driven by an electric pump system for hydraulic lift.

Spanish developers Servicevision introduced the fast, easy and effective Scorpio stabilized head. Also new was the Scorpio Combo DHD hard disc recorder for video assist, offering up to 6-hours recording.

Videortechnical demonstrated the new generation and musthave tools from Formatt Filters – a range of ultra-high quality glass filters, designed for HD filming. Optical perfection is the highlight of this filter range which employs Schott super white, precision-polished optical lens glass to guarantee optimum performance and purity of image.

Further equipment innovations were presented by precisionmanufacturers Denz with a new 35mm finder and a Smartgrip, Videoassistech with a new version of its portable video and VFX preview system, the Cockpit 3, Cineparts with a new modular camera roll cardanic grip, Ruge rent with the Easylook mini HD camera and video assist, PMT Professional with Spidercam, the filmlook-adapter by Movietube, Cmotion with a re-designed and improved version of the wireless radio control, RTS Rail & Tracking with Supertower 20 and Zeiss telephoto digizoom lens 17-112mm T1.9 at BandPro.

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camerimage 2006

Camerimage 2006 Diary

by Ron Prince Tuesday, November 28th, 1:30pm: “Sorry. All flights to Warsaw are cancelled,” says a laconic Lavinia from behind the BA helpdesk. “A blanket of fog is covering the country, and it's dangerous for flying.” It takes less than an instant to decide whether to come back to Heathrow tomorrow and brave the squads of machine-gun touting police again, or to try another route now. They're hosting 360 cinematographers from 36 countries in Lodz, so we just have to get there. Lavinia books us to Prague and suggests the overnight train to Warsaw. We can get a lift to Lodz from a Camerimage chauffeur.

21:00pm: After an uneventful two-hour flight we find ourselves dealing with dismissive Czech rail employees at a station filled with wretched homeless, drunks and junkies and their abject aromas. Texts, message and calls from other Camerimage pilgrims are reaching us through the murk, with tales of similar displacements to Berlin and Vienna. A ham and cheese baguette, washed down with Staropramen, and we get down to the business of trying to sleep in a tiny six-berth compartment. Polish border guards break our slumbers at 3am to check passports.

Weather still looks bad.

Wednesday, November 29th, 7:30 to 10:15am: Planes, trains and automobiles. We have sliced though the Polish fog in a supercharged Volvo SUV, and arrived at the Centrum Hotel in Lodz… a little haggard and, would you believe it, in sunshine!

Concerned that we have missed important meetings, but at least we can get breakfast. Restorative scrambled eggs, thick local

sausage and onions, plus a nice cup of “herbata”, i.e. Rosie Lee. Right now many BSC are scattered across Europe. I wonder quite what this truncated trip has in store?

But looking up there's Nina Kellgren munching on toast. Phil Méheux and Roman Osin are engaged in conversation over the old “herbata” with Panavision's Hugh Whittaker. Nic Knowland has made it too. And is that Mike Figgis over there in the opentoed sandles with some students? We bump into Siobhan from ARRI, and later Bob Williams from Film Gear, on the way for a shower.

11:30am: Over to the Forum, to register, check out the exhibits, and find Robby Müller, this year's lifetime award winner. Mild for the time of year. The imposing Cold War town hallski is draped with a Golden Frog banner, and plastered with sponsors logos.

“Must be a bigger, better show this year, hey Kazic?” “Right now, it's a fucking disaster,” he says disgruntled. The early part of the festival has been “fogged up”.

A quick look at the Camerimage timetable. Damn! We missed Seamus McGarvey, Robby Müller, Nancy Schreiber, Istvan Szabo, John Myhre and Daniel Pearl. But we're going to see Ben Davis in action, and attend Mike Figgis' acting workshop. David Lynch is here. He presented Inland Empire, on the opening night, and performed a music concert with Marek Zebrowski before the screening. Is there enough time to catch Haskel Wexler's Who Needs Sleep? or Dick Pope's work on The Illusionist?

Upstairs, this year's exhibitors include K5600, ARRI, Filmgear, Panavision, P+S Tecknik, Finn Light, Litepanels, Sony, J L Fisher and Sachler. I get the briefest of chances to tell Phil Méheux how much I liked his work on Casino Royale. Nick Shapley of Film Gear offers a beer in the bar. “To meet some of the greats in such a relaxed setting is priceless,” he says. Then a blow. Ben Davis is not coming, due to a family bereavement.

Global warning: John Mathieson BSC was quite frank in his comments about digital

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12:00pm: Robby, looking not unlike the late Robert Altman, has begun his official Camerimage interview to a rapt audience, broadcasting live on TV screens around the bar. “How do you compare your work with Wim Wenders, Jim Jarmusch and Lars Von Trier?”. Robby pauses for much longer than is decent for a pregnant pause, before delivering…“I'm sorry. I'm not good at giving soundbites.” However, when asked about shooting HD, he says, “With HD you can shoot perfect pictures, but I'm not for perfection. Lower grade cameras are enough for me.”

Pea souper: Alan Lowne with his suitcase at 7am in Warsaw

Wherever you may wander: Seamus McGarvey BSC is thankful that some words travel internationally

Golden boot: standing on the shoulders of giants

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EUROPE

camerimage 2006

Thursday 30th November, 9:00am: Watched the toaster to prevent Dick Pope's toast from burning. Nigel says there are no films from UK students in competition at Camerimage perhaps due to the cost of making a 35mm print. Why? And how come other students can find the money? Fuji and Kodak are supportive of new filmmakers, but have they spotted quality elsewhere? This must be a shock for British DPs here, wondering where the next generation is coming from.

10:00am: Share a taxi to the Opus Studio with John Mathieson BSC on his way to the Panavision workshop. It's jam-packed, Steve Hylen (pronounced “Hugh-Lane”) is giving a very nice demo of his in-camera effects system. Then John gives a fascinating insight into shooting and lighting anamorphic, (his favourite is the E-Series) and how to avoid the mumps. During the Q&A, the inevitable digital question comes up. John rubs his hands together and offers, “Digital is upon us. These dark days are not going to go away. It's a bit like global warming.” Joe Dunton pipes up from the back reminding everyone about creating “emotion with emulsion”.

Forum: ...and now a word from our sponsors!

The Berlin posse, including Gavin Finney, Joe and Lester Dunton and Jeff Allen from Panavision, has made it! Not sure about the Viennese victim. Some people will go through thick and thin fog for the love of cinematography.

2:30pm: A sturdy late lunch with Kishaw Ladwa from Technicolor, before a trip back to the Centrum to catch Nigel Walters BSC speak on behalf of the BSC at the IMAGO summit.

4:30pm: Nigel's topic is “HD Broadcast, quality or quantity?

Preserving the vision”. He's informing IMAGO about the BBC's decision to ditch Super 16-originated productions. The daylong session has taken in all sorts of topics - the cinematographer's rights in Europe and Latin America, working conditions, updates on authorship in Poland and Scandinavia. But Nigel isn't there!

Kees Van Oostrum ASC says the ASC technology committee is going to investigate the BBC's directive, and will reply to Auntie in due course. “Whatever happens, we must take this very seriously and act together,” he says. There's talk of a petition. John Mathieson has agreed to stand in for Ben and do a session on lighting for anamorphic. Dana Ross from Technicolor in LA, says there was full house for Tony PierceRoberts' session on Viper and insights into his work on Home of the Brave. We talk about the digital workflow emerging from Technolocor's digital printer lights, the Color Decision List, digital dailies and DI. 6:30pm: Who needs sleep? I do. A snooze before the Panavision party.

5:00pm: Back to the Forum, and we bump into Nigel on the way. Turns out he was switched to 9am, when we were in the Volvo. We chat about the reactions of IMAGO and the ASC to the BBC directive. A film has just finished and the mezzanine starts filling up. Have a laugh with Jon Fauer ASC recalling Gordon Willis' memorable performance in Cinematographer Style and his opening remark about DP's being “visual psychiatrists”.

8:30pm: Drinks and laughs at The Rooster, with Ian Robinson of Deluxe, Neil Mockler of Arion, Lester Dunton and Dave Tresize of JDC/Hatfactory, and Jan Maxa from Avion Post in Prague. The Panavision party is a Who's Who of DPs - Michael Seresin, John Mathieson, Nancy Schreiber, Phil, Gavin, Tony Pierce Roberts, John de Borman.and Dick Pope some of the jewels. Word has it Dick's work on The Illusionist is Oscarworthy. Chatted to Robby about his life in Amsterdam.

Emotion with emulsion: Joe Dunton paints it like it is!

Visual psychiatrist: Jon Fauer ASC is a man with style

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2:00pm: Mike Figgis arrives at the Opus. His VIP dog tag number is 007. When he enquires about the previous event, he says 'Mine will be very different to that.' With the audience huddled round, he relates his up-down career, in and out of favour in Hollywood. Riveting. Standing on a minimal set, with one light bulb and a digital camera fixed to his Fig Rig, he says, “Cinematography is dead, long live cinematography. We're in a mess, because of the transition from film to digital. The cinematographer of the future is going to be the person who can adapt to the changes in technology, whilst staying connected to the principles of filmmaking.”

6:30pm: Back at the Centrum, whacked. So much to take in.

Drinks at the Irish Pub, and then on to a late Chinese dinner hosted by the Camerimage festival directors. Many leading DPs here. We give hearty congratulations to David Samuelson, here to receive a special Camerimage award for his innovative Louma engineering.

12:00pm: Taxi back to the Centrum with Jerzy Zielinski, who says there are no films from Italian, Spanish and French students in competition either. Gavin is clearly having a ball in Poland and says, “Camerimage works as an event because it's informal”. Happy accidents everywhere. He also observes that crew - gaffers, camera ops, focus pullers - ¬ have come in greater numbers this year.

2:00am: Centrum lobby. Excitement amongst the students.

Chris Doyle is about to give a late night presentation to upstairs. Ivana, my guide, who is not in the film business, cannot resist going. That's the power of cinematography for you!

Minimalist: Mike Figgis and his £7.99 Habitat brass lightbulb fitting

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camerimage 2006

Camerimage Awards 2006 MAIN COMPETITION AWARDS: • Golden Frog: Pan's Labyrinth, DP Guillermo Navarro, dir.

Guillermo del Toro • Silver Frog: The Illusionist, DP Dick Pope, dir. Neil Burger • Bronze Frog: The House of Sand, DP Ricardo Della Rosa, dir.

Andrucha Waddington

• Camerimage Special Award to the Association of Polish Filmmakers Jacek Bromski - President of the Association • Special Award from Swedish Society of Cinematographers (FSF) to Camerimage Film Festival Marek Zydowicz Camerimage Director

SPECIAL AWARDS: • The Lifetime Achievement Award: Robby Müller • Special Award to the Director with Unique Visual Sensitivity: Istvan Szábó • Lifetime Achievement Award to the Director with Unique Visual Sensitivity: Ken Russell • Special Award to the Director with Unique Visual Sensitivity (Camerimage 2000): Wim Wenders • Duo Award: Cinematographer-Director: Frank Griebe and Tom Tykwer • Special Award for Award Outstanding Cinematography Achievements in the Field of Music Clips and Videos and Advertising Spots: Daniel Pearl • Krzysztof Kieslowski Award: Julia Ormond • Award to the Production Designer with Special Visual Sensitivity: John Myhre • Lifetime Achievement Award to the Production Designer with Unique Visual Sensitivity: Dante Ferretti • Special Award to the Polish Cinematographer for Immense Contribution to the Art of Film: Andrzej Bartkowiak • Special Award for Innovative Achievements in Motion Picture: David Samuelson • The David Samuelson Student Award - Special Award for Best Picture Technique in Student Film Competition, founded by PANAVISION: Pawez Dyllus for Best Cinematography for Wild Duck Season, dir. Julia Ruszkiewicz

STUDENT FILMS COMPETITION • Golden Tadpole: Wild Duck Season, DP Pawe_ Dyllus, dir. Julia Ruszkiewicz, Wydziaz Radia I Telewizji Uniwersytetu Zlzskiego, Poland • Silver Tadpole: Road Marks, DP Imri Matalon, dir. Shimon Shai, The Sam Spiegel Film & TV School, Israel • Bronze Tadpole: Firn, DP Kolja Raschke, dir. Axel Koenzen, Deutche Film und Fernsehakademie, Germany

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POLISH FILMS COMPETITION: Saviour Square, cin. Wojciech Staroz, DP Krzysztof Krauze, Joanna Kos-Krauze, EUROPEAN DEBUTS COMPETITION: The Cave of the Yellow Dog, DP Daniel Schönauer, dir.

Byambasuren Davaa NOKIA MOBILE MOVIE COMPETITION: Alone Together - Boris Dobrovolski, Academy for Film Screenwriters and Directors (VKSR), Russia Audience Award NOKIA MOBILE MOVIE COMPETITION: 5 Tunes of Nokia - Jzdrzej Bzczyk, National Film School in Lodz, Poland

Camerimage Juries: Main Competition: Michale Chapman Bruno Delbonnel Ryszard Lenczewski Peter Levy Phil Méheux Polish Films Competition: Mark Rydell - President of the Jury Louis - Phillippe Capelle Manuel Alberto Claro Robbie Greenberg Dick Pope European Debuts Competition: Lech Majewski - President of the Jury Igor Klebanov Piotr Kukla Kramer Morgenthau Guillermo Navarro Jost Vacano Student Etudes Competition: Rolf Coulanges Seamus McGarvey Peter Strietman Jerzy Zielinski Bruce Finn Ken Fisher Nokia Mobile Movie Competition Peter Strietman Jerzy Zielinski Jerzy Zelnik

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EUROPE

imago

Norway Norwegian would: DP John Christian Rosenlund and his crew on the set shooting the feature film Factotum

Norway, a country with fewer than five million inhabitants, had 21 theatrical feature film releases last year, and these films had a total of 1,330,000 admissions, grossing about NOK99m (approx. €12,400,000 Euros / £8.400.000 GBP). In addition, six feature films were coproduced with foreign film companies.

There were a total of 11,314,000 theatrical admissions in Norway last year, and the most seen film was Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which had 746,000 admissions, with six Norwegian feature films in the top 30 most-seen films. Of the total of 230 films released in Norway last year, 119 came from the USA, 21 were Norwegian, 16 Swedish, 13 Danish, and 11 from the UK, with France, Germany, China, Spain, South Korea, Japan and Italy following closely.

A typical Norwegian feature film has a budget of approximately €2 – 2.5m Euros, and the highest budget in production is at the moment about 6m Euros.

Feature films produced in Norway are generally all supported by state funding, on average by about 50-60% of the total budget.

The Norwegian Film Fund, which administers the state funding for feature films, has an annual budget of approximately €33m Euros for this purpose. In addition, there are foundations that support Scandinavian co-productions, both theatrical and television releases, and there’s also separate government funding for short and documentary films. Regional film centres with local individual funding for film production were established in the 1970s, and the system is being expanded.

Still: a scene from The Bothersome Man, DP John Christian Rosenlund. © Norwegian Film Institute

Moved: from the Norwegian feature film Reprise, lensed by DP Jakob Ihre. © Norwegian Film Institute

company has all rights concerning theatrical rights, both national and international, and distribution on DVD/video.

The TV companies are also generating a lot of work for cinematographers. At the moment there are four major TV channels in Norway, in addition to many local TV stations, but more digital channels are planned. Most of the new TV channels will be specialised channels for children, sport, news, nature, etc., and this will create further job opportunities for cinematographers.

For TV distribution, an organization of 33 authorship organizations, Norwaco, pays authors a yearly sum, based on which authors are involved, and how many of their films have been distributed on cable television channels. The yearly sum is based on negotiations between the film workers organizations and the cable networks. A yearly sum is then paid collectively to the film workers’ organizations, which in turn distributes this to the authors as grants. The collective idea has been strong in social democratic Norway, but a discussion about whether the author’s payments should be changed from a collective payment to direct payments to the authors involved, has been going on for some years.

In addition, there is the “Feature Film Agreement”, where the production company pays an amount to the authors when feature films are distributed on video and DVD. Up to a box office net earning of NOK 500,000 (around €60,000 Euros) the production company pays approximately €10,000 Euros to the authors. The amount is divided the following way: Directors: Manuscript rights: Actors: Composers: Ballet:

To inspire audience-friendly films, theatrical releases are getting a box office bonus, 55% for each sold ticket, last year amounting to about €6.2m Euros, which is shared by the producers according to how many tickets are sold.

Cinematographers working conditions The Norwegian Federation of Cinematographers (FNF) has 95 members. Of these between 10 and 20 are more or less working full time with feature films, the rest with short films, documentaries, advertising and TV production. The working conditions in Norway are generally good, thanks to the long, good relationships and agreements between the Norwegian Film Workers Union and the Norwegian Film and TV Producers’ Association. Working days are rarely more than 8-10 hours, and a working week is usually five days, with a maximum of six days if on location.

A typical salary is around €45 – €55,000 Euros per film for the DP, and a typical shooting period is between seven and ten weeks.

Authorship of Norwegian DPs Norwegian cinematographers are accepted authors in Norway.

What is usually agreed in the DP’s contract is that the production

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N o r w a y m a y b e a s m a l l co u n t r y , b u t i t h a s a h e a l t h y f i l m p ro d u c t i o n i n d u st r y a n d c i n e m a t o g ra p h e rs e n j oy g o o d w o r k i n g co n d i t i o n s , a s Paul Ren Roest a d d i s cove rs .

29% paid directly to the author 29% paid directly to the author 10% paid collectively to the Actors Association 10% paid collectively to the Composers Association 2% paid collectively tot the Ballet dancers association

Other recognised authors including cinematographers, scenographers, sound designers and editors receive 10%, paid collectively to the Norwegian Film workers Union, and distributed as grants. Of this 10%, 4% is recognized as the right of the DP, whilst the scenographers, sound designers and editors get 2% each.

The Norwegian Government also pays a collective amount for the distribution of short films and documentaries in schools and libraries, which again is distributed as grants to the authors.

Working opportunities Apart from the 20 or so feature films that are annually produced, there are many co-productions each year in Norway. Industry and the Government are working to encourage more co-productions between European and Norwegian production companies. A central body, the Norwegian Film Commission, has been established, and regional film commissions are being established all over Norway (for more information, see www.norwegianfilm.com).

Many production companies tend to favour young newlyeducated directors. They in turn prefer to work with cinematographers who they have studied with or who are of their own generation. (In Norway directors over the age of 50 are hard to find) This in turn sometimes makes the number of jobs in the feature film business for cinematographers aged over 55 harder to find, so one will find many cinematographers over this age teaching, working in TV or on short films, advertising or documentaries.

Distribution and future challenges Norwegians are the world's highest consumers of DVD films. On average, every single Norwegian watches three DVDs per month.

Many have also advanced DVD systems and flat screens at home and this is, of course, a problem for many cinemas. Although varying from year to year, the numbers of cinema admissions have been reducing in recent years.

To battle this trend, and to get new releases out to more cinemas faster and cheaper (outside the seven or eight big cities, Norway is sparcely populated), digitalisation of more than 400 Norwegian cinemas is taking place. The Norwegian Film Institute and other institutions are also distributing short films and documentaries on broadband TV, with great success.

In the last few years, a conflict has been emerging between directors and cinematographers, based on the Directors Union's view that directors of photography earn too much compared to directors salaries, when compared to how many hours they each put into an assignment. The Federation of Norwegian Cinematographers argues that it is not the cinematographer's hourly earnings that are too big, rather is the director's hourly earnings that are too small. But this is a minor challenge that hopefully will be resolved in the foreseeable future.

All in all, the most significant battle for Norwegian and International cinematographers in the future will be to make sure that the quality of their pictures are maintained, and to secure their pictures from quality loss and unwanted use, in this age of digital distribution and copying.

Paul René Roestad is general secretary of IMAGO

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BRITISH CINEMATOGRAPHER

FEATURE

post and techno

Lustre restores Dr Strangelove Axis expands DI

Before

After

New York-based Cineric recently used Autodesk's Lustre system at 4K resolution to restore Stanley Kubrick's cult classic Dr. Strangelove. Restoration and re-grading of the B&W film posed unusual challenges for the digital artists, as much of the original material was missing, severely damaged, or simply not available. As B&W is sensitive to contrast, great care was needed to preserve the film's original look, and this meant that the gamma and density adjustments became a critical part of the Lustre work. Scanning in was done in colour, as there no B&W DPX standard, with desaturation achieved in Lustre to correct contrast shifts.

Casino Royale post Leading UK companies provided a range of technologies, services and facilities for the post production of Casino Royale. Dry-hire company LEM Digital was responsible for the digital editing and workflow technologies. Working with the film's producers and Bell Theatre Services, the company also took a lead in the UK market with the use of HD dailies and digital projection on the film, and now plans to roll out similar HD post production and finishing services to other filmmakers.

LEM Digital also kitted out Arion, the facility responsible providing the daily film transfers, with Avid systems.

Casino Royale was edited by Stuart Baird.

The complete DI product range from British manufacturer Filmlight - scanning, colour management and grading - was used by Soho VFX facility, Framestore CFC, which was also responsible for the opening title sequence of the film. The entire movie was scanned on Northlight using an infra-red scan option, developed by The Foundry. Baselight systems were used for conforming and VFX editorial and the master grade, which was overseen by DP Phil Méheux BSC. Truelight colour calibration was used throughout the project, to provide accurate print previews. Cutting Edge handled the negative cutting, and other VFX vendors included Baseblack, Cinesite, Double Negative, Peerless Camera Company, and MPC.

Gorgeous Labour of Love - directed by Stacy Harrison & has won best film at the Dubrovnic International Film Festival.

Is currently being considered for a Bafta Axis Post, the Shepperton Studios headquartered facility, has expanded its digital intermediate (DI) and grading facilities with the installation a Quantel Pablo colour grading system. The new equipment has already been used for a number of projects including commercials, TV dramas and feature films, the latest of which is Credo, a feature-length horror film, which also received a fullproduction package from Axis Hire and Axis Post including online post-production.

Axis Post is working with Vanessa Taylor on the initial deployment and set up of its DI offering. Taylor has extensive experience in compositing and DI having worked on numerous film and commercials in New Zealand, Australia and the UK. Axis Post is linked to Pinewood Studios and Soho via Sohonet. The company has additional offices in Glasgow and Leeds.

Pablo purchases Director Peter Jackson's Park Road Post, in Wellington, New Zealand, has installed Quantel's Pablo 4K non-linear color correction system, as part of its strategy to create a realtime 4K workflow. Pablo features a combination of purpose-built hardware in combination with colour correction software, as well as Quantel's TimeMagic rendering technology.

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A major factor in the company's decision to move forward with Pablo was the fact that Quantel's iQ DI system has been the mainstay of its DI operations for three years.

Cinecittà Digital, part of the world-renowned Cinecittà Studios in Rome, has also purchased a Pablo 4K system. “There were several key reasons for choosing the Pablo,” said Fabio Filoni,

Cinecittà Digital's facility manager, “but the most important was that the it is strategically fundamental to our future, and ideally suited to be the hub of our DI operation. With Pablo, we can complete an average feature film colour correction in just five days. It will also help us make inroads into the HD post business. With the increasing use of digital capture, this is a rapidly growing business opportunity.”

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FEATURE

post and techno

Gamma and Density 3cP Demo All too often in the modern digital post production environment the DP is left out of the vital final grade of the images they have crafted for the screen. With image consistency in a digital world a real challenge for today's cinematographers, the introduction of 3cP (Cinematographer's Colour Correction Programme) by the Gamma and Density Co. aims to improve the role of the cinematographer in the modern post-production process by providing simple grading tools and a unified image control standard from production to post, for both film and digital acquisition, writes John Keedwell.

3cP was developed by Yuri Neyman, a DP and Gamma and Density president. He recently demonstrated the system with his team to a very intrigued audience of industry professionals at ARRI Media in Uxbridge. 3cP attempts to solve the common frustrating problem faced by the cinematographer and colourists in having to view rushes on a wide variety of screens during production and post production, and attempts to accurately preserve and convey the “look” the cinematographer has in mind when on the set. 3cP provides an accurate reference for crucial colour decisions to be conveyed along the post production path.

3CP interface lay-out The audience was treated to a live output from an Arriflex D-20 camera, and this output was shown in a workflow as a live demonstration. This illustrated how the DP can grade the material, with all the colour “look” information (including LUT's) generated by the 3cP on set being exportable, and needing no further conversion to accommodate post production colour correctors - saving time and money whilst crucially preserving the original artistic vision the DP had on the set. For example, the DP could create a bleach bypass “look” in a non- destructive way, preserving the original as a RAW image.

Possibly one of the more important points about such a system was pointed out by Chris Seager BSC. He advised that looking at dailies after six months at the post production stage was not advisable for the cinematographer to achieve the look they originally intended. Once someone has fallen in love with the look, then to change it later on is

Panther Buddy dolly Panther has introduced a new basic dolly that displays the base of the sophisticated EvoPlus. The new Buddy Dolly can crab and steer, but does not come with the electro mechanical, computerized column.

It can, however, be used with the turnstile attachment or any riser or outrigger via the Euro adapter. The Buddy has a payload of 250kg / 550lbs and is an economic alternative to any of the fully equipped dollies.

potentially very difficult. If the look can now be created on set and the data then travels along the whole post production route, everyone in post production then gets used to seeing the images this way, and it will require little persuading that the dailies weren't the final look for the film.

Yuri Neyman was keen to point out that the system gives a “communication of intent”.

Although it offers grading tools, it isn't a complete final grade on set, but it is an extremely useful starting point for the DP to communicate their intention of the final finished piece, and to get very close to the final grade even if they are not able to attend for whatever reason. For more information take a look at www.gammaanddensity.com.

Carl Zeiss

HD extender

The biggest rig ever?

Mark Roberts Motion Control has just delivered an upgrade to the VFX Co's Cyclops motion control system, allowing it to carry a 9-metre long carbon fibre arm, almost doubling the original arm length on the original Cyclops. Cyclops is the largest motion control rig available from MRMC, and its new arm comes in three sections allowing it to be up to 9m long and giving a lens height of about 10m (30ft).

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Carl Zeiss has introduced the DigiMutar 1.4X Tele-extender, designed to complement its Zeiss DigiPrime and DigiZoom series, as well as all other high-quality 2/3” HD lenses. The new kit is manufactured at the Carl Zeiss Optics factory in Oberkochen, Germany and marketed worldwide by Band Pro Film & Digital. The Tele-Extender multiplies focal length by 1.4X with only a one F-stop loss. It weighs 422g (14.9 oz.) and mounts between the camera and the lens, adding 25.4mm (1”) to the camera package.

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UK

eyepiece gbct

Getting on in the business J o h n K e e d we l l G B CT o f fe rs s o m e i n d i s p e n s a b le a d v i ce o n h ow t o ke e p yo u r n a m e i n t h e l i m e l i g h t a n d yo u r j o b p ro s p e c t s t o p o f t h e b i l l .

One may be forgiven in thinking that this business is strange in many ways.

Apart from eating bacon rolls in the most unusual locations in the world, the long hours and inconsistency of work that many have to face, it is a great business to be in if you are working regularly. There are opportunities for international travel, to work with some great people and on some truly memorable productions that will be seen for years to come. The career path can be uncertain, however, and many talented people can find it hard, so much so that some do fall away and go into other businesses. The road can be tough if you are unknown, or new to the business, so let's look at various methods of attracting work.

Diary services and agents In the 1970s and early 1980s and onwards the big diary services were keeping many crews busy with the large volume of calls and film projects happening. There were many skilled grades represented from all areas of the camera crew, along with sound, script supervisors, production, grips, art department and even runners. To join the best diary services sometimes meant adding your name to a long waiting list before you were accepted. Business was booming.

Diary services and agencies can save a freelancer considerable time and effort. They will organise your diary and tell people when you are available and when you are booked. They are also a valuable resource for production companies and broadcasters, who contact them for CVs and they will put you forward for many jobs that you might not hear about. For technicians with a quick turnover of work they can be invaluable. Most charge a fee whether they find you work or not, so it is essential to find one that helps you earn more than they cost you.

The major DP's tend to employ agents who actively work on their client's behalf. The main difference is the diary service is just that, a method to keep a busy person's diary for them whilst they work on other things. It is a flat fee charged per month. The agents are allowed to be more active in their clients dealings, and take a percentage of the fees charged.

Undeterred by the minor inconvenience of early mobile phones being the size and weight of a brick, film and TV freelancers were some of the very first to adopt this method of communication. It meant they could be on a shoot in the middle of a field, or even a studio somewhere, and still be in touch with their diary services, or otherwise collect a message from home concerning the next shoot.

The logical progression from this was the freelancer taking calls directly to their mobile, thereby cutting out the diary service (and therefore the monthly fees). Whilst this method worked for some people, the diary service still has a definite place in the freelance world today. It may be inconvenient to take detailed notes about an upcoming shoot, and those details could be taken by the diary service and passed on later by either telephone, fax, or latterly by e-mail.

Generally it is not so time sensitive, and a call back the next day to the production company wouldn't normally lose you the job. Nowadays there is maybe an imagined need by some to find the answer to a question straight away, and this is where the diary service is still vital to answer the calls, provide information about crews to the production, and generally act as a point of information and reference. It is still true to say that the biggest ones with the better-experienced quality crews are the most favourable to join.

Directories Another method of self-promotion to hopefully get noticed is an advertisement or entry in one or more of the bigger book style directories such as The Knowledge, Kemps or others. A free entry in these books is done on a yearly basis, so if you miss the deadline for being included it is a long wait to get into the next one.

There is also the option to pay for an advertisement to help you to stand out from the crowd, although this needs to be researched thoroughly before committing. For major specialist companies such as lighting, grips, studios and camera hire they can be an

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important first point of call for production staff, but the lone freelancer is unlikely to gain any extra work by simply placing an entry in there by itself, and it can be a very costly error, with your money better spent elsewhere. I know from personal experience that a larger advertising entry in such a directory is not any guarantee of a return on the investment, and can cost a considerable sum if an advert is placed in more then one of them. It may not be very cost effective if no calls originate from the advertisement.

Whilst it is true that it is worth being seen in as many places as possible, it's important to be seen, of course! Many people only buy The Knowledge every other year or so, so it is a doubly expensive experience if you happen to be in the issue that the production DIDN'T have!

Word of mouth Word of mouth is probably THE most important area to get noticed as a freelancer. It is true to say that you can spend a small fortune on promoting yourself in many different ways, yet if your name isn't known to the production staff, you are quite unlikely to be booked for even the smallest of jobs. Most good camera crews have background training in either the major camera rental houses such as Panavision or ARRI, and will know many others through that route.

It is still quite a fragmented business, however, and in TV land it differs somewhat, and crews are becoming more isolated, as more are now freelance. This is where membership of various guilds or other organisations can help, and provide a good network of crews from all areas of the production. There is a good thriving network of people in TV who know each other and can recommend each other for specific work, which is invaluable.

Networking is essential also, and there are many events and talks organised by manufacturers and other companies all year round that can make introductions and get you known personally. Applying to becoming a member of the GBCT is a very good idea, as well as attending equipment shows such as IBC, the BSC show and others, and film showings. Keeping knowledgeable about new equipment, new techniques and finding new gizmos is vital for the camera crews.

Websites The Internet, e-mail and other forms of communication also hold massive potential for the freelancer. A well crafted website with correct contact details, a C.V, and ideally some form of show reel would be the ideal. Many professionals sometimes shy away from this route as the compression techniques used for the websites degrade the quality of the pictures, but the adoption of broadband, plus improving compression techniques, are going someway to negate that.

There are specialist website designers, and you can make your own site with some knowledge and software. There are good books available covering methods of compressing videos for use on the web without sacrificing too much in the way of upicture quality. One such book is “QuickTime for Film Makers” by Focal Press. Also, “Son of web pages that suck” published by Sybex, shows you how not to make a bad website.

I personally know a movie director who specifically only looks at websites first, then will maybe ask for a show reel to be sent if they are suitably interesting to him for that particular project. It is only then that the DP or art director will be asked to meet to discuss matters further. Whilst this may seem harsh, it saves sending out so many show-reels and is filter that if used correctly can save time all round. It is important to meet face to face ultimately, of course, and no amount of technology will replace that human contact and personality exchange in a meeting.

As long as it is current, well maintained, professional looking and is easy to navigate around, a website is a very important tool for self-promotion for most freelancers.

Keep show reels short, 3 - 5 minutes is the maximum length, and make them interesting. The concluding message is take a balanced approach. And don't give up!

ISSUE 19

BRITISH CINEMATOGRAPHER

UK

the camera assistant’s manual

The Camera Assistant s Manual The Camera Assistants Manual - 4th Edition

By David E. Elkins. S.O.C.. Published by Focal press

The work of the camera assistant on film and TV drama productions is possibly the most misunderstood jobs for people outside of the business to fully comprehend. Obviously vast experience and wealth of knowledge are required to do the job and keeping up with the various parts of different technology is a seemingly never-ending challenge. The physical side of what camera crews actually do on a daily basis is explored within this book, and it goes into some detail of the day-to-day running within the camera department.

The essentials are covered in the first chapters, with the examination of different film formats, aspect ratios, and even how the structure of film is made down to the detail of anti-halation backing and layers of the film. Then the various parts of the cameras are explained, along with photographic principles including the difference between F-Stops and T-Stops, colour temperature, filters and how cameras actually work. This is all essential basic information.

David then delves deeper into the full gamut of responsibilities of each camera crew member, from the DP, camera operator and then the more readily accepted terms of 1st A.C and 2nd A.C. The roles of each crew member are covered in detail, and this is a valuable insight to what each crew members responsibilities lie, how to set the camera car up, and even to the extent of having a good attitude being just as important as being a technically good assistant.

There is a small section devoted to the role of the technician in HD productions, as the terminology and roles required can be quite different to film productions. The writer emphasises the real need for a full crew when working on HD productions, and explains why that is a real requirement when many producers unfortunately believe that working on HD somehow requires less crew. He emphasises that many DPs feel that a second assistant is required more than ever when working on HD. The main motion picture cameras are then looked at in detail, and this is possibly where a book like this may come unstuck, simply because the business moves so quickly that new cameras will be introduced, making the book appear out of date even a few months down the line. For example the Arri 416 16mm film camera was introduced after the book was printed, and so is not included in the magazine lacing diagrams.

There is, a website devoted to the book at www.cameraassistantmanual.com, useful it if you want a threading diagram, a film can label or camera equipment checklist. There are also tables and formulas, and a wealth of very useful information in the form of links to other websites and documents.

The role of the focus puller or 1st AC is looked at in great detail, including the look at different ground glasses, lenses and the principles of depth of field, hyperfocal distance and focus splits. Some good advice is covered here, including when the DP gives an exposure reading for a particular shot, repeating it back to them so the DP is reminded what they say. There is also good advice about when they are physically altering the stop on a lens the best practice to observe. There are two Depth of Field Calculators specifically mentioned, including the Samcine Mk 2 and the GBCT 's own Guild Kelly Calculator also gets a mention, along with some software for use in a PDA. The problems and troubleshooting guide does a reasonably good job of the more common areas where a camera many not be quite functioning as expected. The camera threading diagrams cover the main manufacturers, from Aaton and Arriflex, through Bolex, Bell and Howell, Éclair and Krasnogorsk to Mitchell, Moviecam, Panavision and Photo-Sonics.

The book is written from a mainly USA perspective, so some areas such as union membership wouldbe mainly irrelevant, albeit interesting to know how the business works in the United States.

Booked review by John Keedwell.

ISSUE 19

BRITISH CINEMATOGRAPHER

page

39

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Entries must be received by midnight of 22nd January 2007. In the event that more than one correct answer is received the entrants who have answered correctly will be put in a draw. The first 5 names drawn from a hat will win the prizes in order of being drawn Terms and Conditions By entering you agree to abide by the terms of this promotion.

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ISSUE 19

BRITISH CINEMATOGRAPHER

FEATURE

family matters

Meet the Duntons T h e re a re m a n y fa m i l i e s , d y n a st i e s eve n , i n vo lve d i n t h e b u s i n e s s o f m a k i n g f i l m s , w h e re t h e e x p e r i e n ce o f d e d i c a t e d p e o p le i s h a n d e d d o w n b e t w e e n g e n e ra t i o n s . I n t h i s i n a u g u ra l a r t i c le , M a d e ly n M o st m e t u p w i t h a n a m e t o co n j u re with — Dunt o n .

Joe Dunton MBE, BSC, chairman of Cine Guilds of Great Britain, and vice president of the BSC, is one of the UK’s foremost pioneers in the invention, design, engineering, and manufacture of cameras and lenses for the motion picture industry. Joe worked with PYE Telecommunications on the first video surveillance cameras and in 1965, joined Samuelson’s Film Services where he became head of R&D, where video assist was created. Dunton’s “video assist” system celebrates its 40th year in 2007. Since the 1970’s and the formation of JDC, Joe has continued developing new series of anamorphic lenses for which he received the BSC’s Bert Easy Technical Award.

In 1989, he became a director of the Lee Group UK, which purchased Panavision Worldwide, that then became Panavision Europe. In 1991 he purchased the E.F. Moy company and in 1997, acquired the Mitchell Camera Company, moving it to JDC headquarters in Wilmington, North Carolina. In 1998, for meritorious service to the film industry, Joe was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire. In 2002, JDC launched the world’s first digital video magazine for a film camera.

Film preservation is another of Joe’s endeavors: he collects historic/vintage camera equipment from around the world, archiving the history of technical development in motion picture cameras. Joe served as a board member of the London Film School for 12 years, acted as chairman of the governors of LFS for two years, and helped create the film department of Duke University. Today as manager of both JDC branches, he regularly commutes between London and Wilmington, North Carolina.

Lester Dunton grew up on film sets around the world, helping his father Joe by

turns shoot lens tests, run camera demos, set up projection facilities, operate cranes and remote heads, and exhibit at equipment shows. Today his main responsibility is to provide service and backup to JDC’s equipment. He has worked on over 100 films in the UK and US. On the Harry Potter films, Lester was the underwater bluescreen camera consultant and system designer on Goblet of Fire, and back projection specialist and effects projection supervisor on Prisoner of Azkaban.

On Ridley Scott’s Black Hawk Down, Hannibal, and Gladiator, he supervised all the video, VFX pre-visualisation, and rushes projection. For George Lucas’s Starwars sequels, he was video assist supervisor, while working closely with ILM on digitally-recorded material. Lester is presently working on HD back-projection, onset effects pre-visualization while enhancing The Hat Factory, JDC’s DI facility in Soho.

Like her brother Lester, Erica Dunton was immersed in film activity from an early age. She took a Law degree at Durham University, attended the National Film School, and today is a writer-director, currently filming her latest feature Three Words And A Star (a road movie shot in 35mm anamorphic) in North Carolina and California. Her last feature, Fine Love, picked up at Slamdance 2005 and theatrically distributed by Lionsgate, won the Best Independent Vision award at Sarasota Film Festival, Best N.C. feature at River Run and Best Director, Writer, and Actor at DIBA Barcelona film festival.

Richard Dunton, youngest member of the Dunton dynasty, is studying Fine Art at Central Saint Martins, focusing on photography, performing art, and sound art, with aspirations to become a director of photography. Along with his studies, Richard helps out at JDC and The Hat Factory. No couch potatoes here in this family!

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ISSUE 19

BRITISH CINEMATOGRAPHER