British Cinematographer - Issue 72

CONTENTS / BRITISH CINEMATOGRAPHER / ISSUE 72 / NOVEMBER 2015

BRITISH

CINEMATOGRAPHER

UNI T ING C INE M AT O GR A P HE R S A R O UND T HE W OR L D

Pinewood Studios, Iver Heath, Buckinghamshire SL0 0NH t. +44 (0) 1753 650101 Publisher and Managing Editor | ALAN LOWNE | +44 (0) 1753 650101 | alafilmuk@aol.com Publisher and Digital Editor | STUART WALTERS | +44 (0) 121 200 7820 | stuart.walters@ob-mc.co.uk Editor | RON PRINCE | ronny@princepr.com

“The reason there continues to be a lab infrastructure for DPs and directors to exercise their creative choice, is due to the fact that we are driven by a genuine passion for a format that can impart a profoundly affecting pull on the imagination.

Film… it’s a very beautiful thing!”

- NIGEL HORN, I-DAILIES

Sales | TRACY FINNERTY | +44 (0) 121 200 7820 | tracy.finnerty@ob-mc.co.uk Sales | ALAN LOWNE | +44 (0) 1753 650101 | alafilmuk@aol.com Sales | STUART WALTERS | +44 (0) 121 200 7820 | stuart.walters@ob-mc.co.uk Design | MARK LAMSDALE | +44 (0) 121 200 7820 | mark.lamsdale@ob-mc.co.uk | www.ob-mc.co.uk

CONTRIBUTORS 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 the international marketing and communications company Prince PR (www.princepr.com).

ADRIAN PENNINGTON writes about the business and technology of film and TV for publications including The Guardian, Screen International and Broadcast. He is managing editor of The IBC Daily, editorial consultant for TVB Europe, a producer of the 3D Masters conference, and co-author of Exploring 3D: The New Grammar Of Stereoscopic Filmmaking (Focal Press).

DAVID A ELLIS worked in the BBC’s film department. He has written for many publications including Cinema Technology and Film International. He is the author of Conversations With Cinematographers. His second book In Conversation With Cinematographers is out this year.

DEBRA KAUFMAN, writes about media and entertainment technology for American Cinematographer, ICG Magazine, DV Magazine, TV Technology and CineMontage, the Editor’s Guild publication. She also covers CES, SMPTE conferences, and the HPA Tech Retreat for USC’s Entertainment Technology Center.

JOHN KEEDWELL, the GBCT News Editor, is a documentary and commercials cameraman who has worked on many productions around the world. He crosses over in both film and tape productions and has great knowledge of the new file-based formats and their methods of production.

KEVIN HILTON is a freelance journalist who writes about technology and personalities in film and broadcasting, and contributes film reviews and interviews to a variety of publications in the UK and abroad.

British Cinematographer is part of LAWS Publishing.

Laws Publishing Ltd, Pinewood Studios, Iver Heath, Buckinghamshire SL0 0NH t. +44 (0) 1753 650101 | f. +44 (0) 1753 650111 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.

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EDITOR’S LETTER

HOME IMPROVEMENT… I t was quite by coincidence (or happy accident, if you prefer) that all-but-one of the movies selected to feature in this edition of British Cinematographer Magazine were shot - either in their entirety, or vast majority ­- using film. You remember that stuff: long strips of celluloid that only reveal their magic after careful immersion through chemical baths.

The brand new 007 SPECTRE shot with 35mm, under the auspices of Hoyte van Hoytema FSF NSC. So too the forthcoming Carol, lensed by Ed Lachman ASC, and Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens, lit by Dan Mindel ASC BSC. Suffragette was planned and executed as a Super 16mm show by Edu Grau, with digital playing second fiddle, and Alwin Küchler BSC used 16mm and 35mmm for the first two thirds of Steve Jobs. Only The Lady In The Van, by Andrew Dunn BSC, deployed digital fully.

Although Andrew says that, whilst digital cameras deliver depth and texture more as a matter of course these days, “it does take some TLC to give a human aspect.”

Reading the articles about each of these celluloid-originated productions, one gets a sense of their cinematographers coming home - to the familiar pairings of cameras and lenses, the smell of the laboratory, the acquaintance with texture – and ultimately an insight into their feelings of being visual artists who paint with light.

Cinematography is, after all, an art-form.

All of this comes at a time when Kodak is upping the volume about the virtues of shooting on celluloid with renewed vigour.

So it would seem that the urgent industry-wide ministrations, to use film or run the risk of losing film forever, over the last couple of years have worked, and worked well. Filmmakers around have responded to the threat of having an art-form disappear by making a choice and then sticking with it.

The results are there for us to gauge, enjoy and critique on the big screen over the coming weeks and months. One senses the analogue vs binary debate has longer legs that one might have imagined, and will run and run and run.

RON PRINCE Editor | British Cinematographer Magazine

British Cinematographer | November 2015 | 03

CONTENTS / BRITISH CINEMATOGRAPHER / ISSUE 72 / NOVEMBER 2015

IN THIS ISSUE...

50

56

New wave...

Maja Zamojda

On the cover...

Hoyte Van Hoytema FSF NSC on SPECTRE

07

PRESIDENT’S PERSPECTIVE

66

Barry Ackroyd BSC gets all exctied about this year’s Camerimage festival of cinematography

08

PRODUCTION/POST & TECHNO NEWS

The latest news concerning DPs, plus Studios Round-Up

28

SPOTLIGHT

A look at innovative, Danish lighting kit-maker BB&S

31

CAMERIMAGE 2015

Preview of the annual Camerimage International Film Festival

74

Close up... Ed Lachman ASC (l) with director Todd Haynes on the set of Carol

Clapperboard...

Ron Collins

38

52

72

Review of the latest kit and widgets on show at IBC 2015

Nigel Horn of i-dailies says the expectation of having creative choice and the sheer beauty of celluloid are core to its continuing longevity as an origination medium

Discover who’s been dialling-in the most recent DI grades

F-STOP AMSTERDAM

42

WHO’S SHOOTING WHO?

Your definitive guide to which DPs are shooting who and where

50

POST-IT NOTES

54

LETTER FROM AMERICA

Steven Poster ASC bangs the drum for workplace unity and camaraderie

MEET THE NEW WAVE

Maja Zamojda… enjoys a good knees-up!

69

Feeling the heat...

Dan Mindel ASC BSC on set with Director JJ Abrams

56

CAMERA CREATIVE

Hoyte Van Hoytema discusses his creative approach to the celluloid cinematography on SPECTRE, the 24th movie in the Bond movie franchise

62

ON THE JOB / CLOSE-UPS

Edu Grau on Suffragette, Alwin Küchler BSC on Steve Jobs, Ed Lachman ASC on Carol, Andrew Dunn BSC on The Lady In The Van, Dan Mindel ASC BSC on Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens

LIVE & LET DI

74

CLAPPERBOARD

Smooth operator… Ron Collins

76

INNOVATOR

Jeff Lawrence on innovations past, present and future at Ronford Baker

78

IMAGO NEWS

IMAGO welcomes new president Paul René Roestad, whilst past-president Nigel Walters BSC reports on this year’s Manaki Brother’s Festival

80

GBCT NEWS

The chairman’s statement on working hours, plus the latest news from the Guild about 4K, 8K and Dutch painters British Cinematographer | November 2015 | 05

PRESIDENTS PERSPECTIVE / BARRY ACKROYD BSC / BSC PRESIDENT

I’LL DRINK TO THAT BRITISH SOCIETY

OF CINEMATOGRAPHERS Board of Governors 2015 PRESIDENT: Barry Ackroyd BSC IMMEDIATE PAST PRESIDENT: John de Borman BSC VICE PRESIDENTS: Sean Bobbitt BSC Nigel Walters BSC Haris Zambarloukos BSC GOVERNORS: Lol Crawley BSC Oliver Curtis BSC John Daly BSC Joe Dunton MBE BSC (non DoP) Mike Eley BSC Gavin Finney BSC Sue Gibson BSC Rob Hardy BSC David Higgs BSC Nic Knowland BSC Phil Meheux BSC Nic Morris BSC Dick Pope BSC Derek Suter BSC CO-OPTED ASSOCIATE MEMBER REPRESENTATIVE: Chris Plevin SECRETARY/TREASURER: Frances Russell

If Camerimage didn’t exist it would have to be invented.

Because, what would you do without it?

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ow else could we gather a clutch of cinematographers together in one venue? How would you create a place for students, professionals and enthusiasts to all come together – to share, to argue and to enjoy the diversity of cinematography?

Camerimage is a need, not a desire. Something that strikes me most is the honesty of the festival. It is not a festival of the popular, nor is it led by “star” status. It simply reflects, in the selection of the films, and especially in the winners of the Golden Frogs over the last 22 years, the best of cinematography. I’d like to think that if you added up the entire budgets of all the winning films, that collectively that budget would not come to the bill for the Starbucks for the executives of, say, Prince Of Persia or Assassins Creed. The truth is that a festival that loves cinema must love cinematography and brilliance doesn’t have a price. That’s what Camerimage is.

There are, of course, other great festivals of cinematography, but not that many. Maybe it’s because we are probably such a difficult tribe to muster. Getting a conspiracy of cinematographers together is not an easy job. So I must applauded the Manaki Brothers Film Festival in Bitola, Macedonia, and now the new Bristol International Festival Of Cinematography, on their recent events in September. I wish them all well.

But, at Camerimage the standard has been set. The desire and ability shown by Marek Żydowicz and his team, in bringing together some of the world’s best examples of our art, and combining this with debate and celebration, is a triumph of organisation and an expression of love.

I say this despite my rare attendance in Poland. Yet each year around March or April, I still receive an e-mail from Kazik Suwala asking if I’m planning on coming over. Occasionally, we even meet up for a chat over a pint, as the festival team passes through London on their travels in preparation for the big event in November. And every year I reply, “Yes, this time, I’m really going to try and make it.”

Obviously it is a great honour to be asked but, to be honest, this has become a kind of ritual. Inevitably, I fail to keep my promise and end up working on a film. My loss, each year that goes by, is that I miss out on what is probably the most honest and heartfelt

celebration of any art form – the annual celebration of the art of cinematography – and I promise myself once again… “Next year!”.

Now, I have to imagine you might well be reading this at Camerimage itself. You’re actually there, in Poland. Suffering in the icy, misty, dark, wintery, vodkadriven nights in Bydgoszcz. You are lucky people. Lucky because Camerimage is such a great place to be.

I can say this because I did once make it there. I managed a flying visit, back when the festival was in Lodz, wait for it… in 2002.

A long time ago, but my recollections are still fresh. Fresh enough to remember a festival which immerses you in cinema; talking, drinking, sharing, eating and sleeping cinematography. That’s what Camerimage is and long may it last.

It was on that fleeting visit to Lodz that I received the honour of the Cinematographer-Director Duo Award, given for my collaboration with director Ken Loach over many years. What I recall is being tired from the travelling, but then inspired by the reception we got. Then there was the questioning and the discourse with participants. Describing shots, answering difficult questions, about how and why, about our approach to shooting, our likes and dislikes. Time seemed to collapse. It was more than a festival. Even the masterclass went well and I have to admit that these are things that I always find difficult, but rewarding. For me, it’s always easier to do something rather than to explain it. But it’s explaining things that helps you to understand what it is and how you do it. It makes you realise how to achieve results.

For me the experience was more than enlightening and it was, of course, genuinely rewarding. After all, I now have one of those precious golden amphibians. Though it was kind of tough. But isn’t that what we, as cinematographers, like? What with the vodka and the lack of sleep? Hey, isn’t that normal?

Long may it last. I wish Marek and Kazik and the entire team the best of luck. Thanks also to the sponsors, to those who develop the tools of our trade, and to the participants there in Bydgoszcz.

Stay sober. Keep calm. Get some sleep. Love film.

And to those who will be holding their Golden Frogs, congratulations. This is probably the greatest honour. Hope to see you all next year.

British Cinematographer | November 2015 | 07

NEWS / PRODUCTION / POST & TECHNOLOGY ROUND-UP

CHRIS MENGES TO RECEIVE LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD AT CAMERIMAGE

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hris Menges BSC ASC, one of the most revered cinematographers working today, will receive the prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award at this year’s Camerimage Festival of Cinematography taking place in Bydgoszcz, Poland.

A double Oscar-winner for his cinematography on The Killing Fields (1985) and The Mission (1987), Menges started his career in the 1960s as a camera operator on documentaries by Adrian Cowell and on films including Poor Cow (1967), directed by Ken Loach and If.... (1968)

by Lindsay Anderson. Kes (1969), directed by Loach and lauded over the years for its photography, was Menges’ first film as cinematographer. He was also behind the camera on Stephen Frears’ first feature Gumshoe in 1971. Menges went to Burma with Cowell to shoot The Opium Warlords, a film about the drug trade. After the release of the documentary in 1974 the Burmese government was said to have put a price on their heads.

After further documentaries and feature films including Black Beauty (1971), Bloody Kids (1978), The Game Keeper (1980), Babylon (1980) and Angel (1982),

Menges became notable for more ambitious works for which he was critically-acclaimed.

In 1978 he won the best film cameraman BAFTA for Last Summer, directed by Frears.

In 1983 he received a BAFTA nomination for the Bill Forsyth film Local Hero and the following year won his first Academy Award for The Killing Fields about the genocide in Cambodia, as well as a BAFTA. He continued his work with helmer Roland Joffé and won his second Oscar with the historical drama The Mission.

In 1988 Menges made his directional debut with A World Apart. This film was celebrated at the 1988 Cannes Film Festival and won three major awards. His second film as director, CrissCross, with Goldie Hawn, also received critical acclaim.

In 1996 Menges moved back behind the camera to shoot the award-winning films The Boxer, directed

by Jim Sheridan, and Michael Collins, directed by Neil Jordan. For the latter he received his third Academy Award nomination in 1997. Menges supported Stephen

Camerimage winner… Chris Menges pictured on the set of Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close and a shot from Kes (1969)

Daldry on the sets of The Reader (2008) (Menges shared the credit for cinematography with Roger Deakins, both were nominated for the Oscar for this film) and Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (2011). Deakins, also widely-regarded as one of the best cinematographers of modern times, later said that he considers Menges’ use of natural light second-to-none, and that Menges was one of his first inspirations after film school.

Respected for his thoughtfulness, modesty and consummate artistic skill as a cinematographer, Menges told British Cinematographer Magazine during an interview about his work on The Reader, “I only work on films that I can learn from. My work is my university, and the work I do is about educating myself.”

PANALUX EXCLUSIVE LIGHT SUPPLIER FOR SPECTRE

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Panalux… has partnered with Cardiff-based Gaffer Ceiron Jenkins to open a new Welsh seam

aving provided lighting to every James Bond film since 1995’s GoldenEye, Panalux was again the exclusive supplier for SPECTRE, the latest film in the 007 James Bond franchise, both in the studio and on location.

Filmed on 35mm over eight months in more than six UK and overseas locations, was well as several stages at Pinewood Studios, SPECTRE represented Panalux’s largest project of 2015 in terms of both equipment and logistical support.

“Multiple stages – including the cavernous 007 Stage – along with extensive locations, ranging from scorching Morocco to the freezing temperatures of Solden in Austria, enabled us to demonstrate Panalux’s ability to meet the most exacting requirements both on location and in the studio,” said Panalux group technical director Chris Millard.

Panalux is a regular collaborator on big-budget Hollywood feature films and Most illuminating… high-end TV shows shot in the UK and Panalux was the sole throughout Europe, providing lighting to lighting provider for Avengers, Guardians Of The Galaxy and Star 007 SPECTRE

08 | British Cinematographer | November 2015

Wars: Episode VII, as well as currently servicing Game of Thrones and Outlander. Panalux features an in-house R&D and product development department to build lighting, cable, power generation, rigging and grip accessories from scratch.

For SPECTRE, Panalux engineers worked closely with the film’s gaffer David Smith and lighting team to create a specialised control system for location shooting that has since been developed into a formal, proprietary Panalux desk control product to debut for hire to the global industry in 2016.

Over nearly nine months of production, Panalux supplied SPECTRE with more than 95,000 items from its extensive inventory, including LED and traditional lighting fixtures and many thousands of lengths of cabling. Fifteen Panalux generator vehicles were also required for five weeks of shooting a major action sequence along The Thames. Filming locations included Austria, Italy, Morocco, and several locations around London.

In further news, has opened Panalux Wales in Cardiff. Currently the only major lighting rental provider with a physical presence in the Welsh market, Panalux has partnered with Cardiff-based Gaffer Ceiron Jenkins to formally expand the company’s UK presence to Wales, a market attracting an increasing number of large-scale television drama and film projects.

NEWS / PRODUCTION / POST & TECHNOLOGY ROUND-UP

DICK POPE GIVEN RPS LUMIERE AWARD

Nice moment… Dick Pope BSC receiving his award from RPS president, Derek Birch ASIS HonFRPS. Photo by Nick Scott Photography.

D

ick Pope BSC was awarded The Royal Photographic Society’s Lumière Award during The Society’s Awards ceremony on 16th September at the Royal Society in London.

Pope began his career as a documentary film cameraman, working for many companies including the BBC, travelling the world to remote and inaccessible areas including war zones. He specialised in shooting films about endangered indigenous tribes, including Disappearing World, political films, including World In Action, and also arts films for The South Bank Show.

From the early 1980s Pope shot hundreds of concerts and music videos for bands and artists as diverse as Queen, Tina Turner and The Clash.

Moving into features in the mid ‘80s he photographed Porterhouse Blue, for which he was BAFTA-nominated, and Philip Ridley’s Reflecting Skin. In 1990 Pope was asked by director Mike Leigh to photograph Life Is Sweet, beginning a collaboration that has produced ten features, including Secrets And Lies, Vera Drake and Mr Turner.

Winner…

Franklin Dow captures a sunrise over Kano, Nigeria

Pope has twice won the top prize at the Camerimage Festival Of Cinematography – for Vera Drake and Secrets & Lies – and in 1999 Leigh and Pope were recognised there with the Duo Award for their career collaboration. Pope also won the Silver Frog at the same festival for The Illusionist, for which he was also nominated for Academy, ASC and BSC awards.

Amongst many wins and nominations for his work on Mr Turner he was awarded the Prix Vulcaine for the Technical Artist, at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival, and also nominated for Academy, BAFTA, BSC, ASC and

KODAK NAMES STEVE BELLAMY AS PRESIDENT OF MOTION PICTURE AND ENTERTAINMENT

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FRANKLIN DOW WINS AN EMMY FOR VIRUNGA Up-and-coming British cinematographer Franklin Dow recently won a Primetime Emmy for his outstanding work on Virunga, the 2014 British documentary film directed by Orlando von Einsiedel.

The production focuses on the conservation work of rangers within Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo – home to the world’s last mountain gorillas ­­– as well as the complex political and economic issues surrounding oil exploration and armed conflict in the region.

The film initially screened at film festivals around the world and received universal acclaim by critics. In July 2014 it was announced that Netflix had picked up exclusive rights. Virunga was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature at the 2015 Academy Awards, and Dow collected his 2015 Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Cinematography in Nonfiction Programming.

10 | British Cinematographer | November 2015

British Independent Film Awards. He was awarded the BSC Cinematography Award for his photography on Mr Turner at the 2015 BSC Summer Luncheon.

Pope’s many other credits include films for leading US maverick directors, such as Richard Linklater, Barry Levinson, John Sayles and Jill Sprecher. Recently, in New York, he photographed Angelica for Mitchell Lichtenstein, the son of the painter Roy Lichtenstein. His latest project is Legend about the notorious Kray Brothers, written and directed by Brian Helgeland.

odak has appointed Steve Bellamy as its new president of motion picture and entertainment.

Based in Los Angeles, Bellamy will be responsible for growing and deepening Kodak’s relationships with creative luminaries and business leaders in the entertainment industry, working on creative advocacy programmes, creating Rock ’n’ roller… partnerships and new Bellamy brings a business models, and new vibrancy to developing KodakKodak marketing branded solutions for the entertainment industry.

A serial entrepreneur and award-winning media creator, Bellamy founded The Tennis Channel, The Ski Channel, The Surf Channel and The Skate Channel television networks. A lover of film and music, he is a prolific creator in both mediums. As a writer/director, his movies have won over 40 global film festivals, from Amsterdam to Canada to Mexico and the United States.

He has personally won six best director awards including the Las Vegas International Film Festival. In all, he has shepherded over 10,000 hours of content creation.

As a songwriter and recording artist, Bellamy has toured the US, had singles on commercial radio and his work is regularly found on film and television.

He has spent the last six years as CEO of Action Sport Networks and will remain the chairman of that business.

“I’m thrilled and relieved that Kodak remains committed to keeping film alive and well,” said filmmaker JJ Abrams. “It only feels right that film remain an available option in the world of filmmaking. And Steve Bellamy is an ideal talent to help realise this priority.”

Bellamy will work with Andrew Evenski, Kodak president and general manager of entertainment and commercial film, to create deeper relationships with Hollywood’s film and television studios. Both will report to Steven Overman, president of the consumer and film division.

FEATURE OPERATORS AWARD NOMINEES ANNOUNCED

The ACO, BSC and GBCT have announced the nominees for the Feature Operators Award 2015. They are: Chris Haarhoff for Birdman: or (The Unexpected Virtue Of Ignorance); Chris Squires for Whiplash; Des Whelan for Fury; and Tomasz Nowak for Ida. The winner will be announced and the award presented at the BSC Operators Night at The Langham Hotel on Friday 27th November.

NEWS / PRODUCTION / POST & TECHNOLOGY ROUND-UP

Seeing the light… Si Bell has brought a new look to BBC drama Ripper Street

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n Boxing Day, BBC hit crime series Ripper Street will return for series four, opening with a feature length version titled The Strangers Home, featuring returning characters Bennet Drake played by Jerome Flynn and Reid played by Matthew McFadden. New faces join the returning cast including Abel Croker played by David Threlfall and Commissioner Augustus Dove played by Killian Scott. The episode was directed by Kieron Hawkes and shot by cinematographer Si Bell, who kindly wrote in with details about his work.

“The production shot in Dublin with entirely brand new sets including an exterior of Leman Street, built in a large interior studio space in an disused hotel complex in Kilternan. With the large-scale street set the aims for lighting were to achieve day and night looks that were realistic and also quick to change between, due to the relatively tight schedule.

The main set was built in a large, former indoor tennis court, which was about 30ft high. Production designer Stephen Daly built the set to the roof, due to the limited height, so there was a very limited amount of space for lighting. The challenge was to rig the set so that the filmmakers could achieve a natural-looking daylight ambience, and also be able to vary the look between dusk, night and rainy weather (the set also had the ability to have rain effects).

After consultation with gaffer James McGuire it was decided that rigging the set with LED lighting would be the ideal solution. The new, budgetfriendly ETC Colour LED Sources were chosen and rigged into the ceiling to create a large softbox, using diffusers and a number of 20x20 1/4 grid cloth. The Colour Sources were perfect as their Parcan-like focussed beam meant they punched light down, so the set walls close to the source didn’t get too hot. Also, we could rig them very tight to the roof with no heat issues normally caused

by Tungsten heads. The Colour Sources were controlled by an iPad-based custom dimming system, designed by James McGuire. This enabled the filmmakers to dim the lights without altering the colour temperature and also to dial-in any one of the six million colours available, and

THE LEICA SUMMILUX-C LENSES ARRIVE AT MOVIETECH 12 | British Cinematographer | November 2015

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create a variety of looks with very limited set-up time.

After a number of camera tests at Panavision Ireland, the production decided to use the ARRI Alexa with Panavision PVintage lenses to give the show a softer, more period look. During the camera and lens tests, and whilst setting he lighting looks on the Leman Street set, I worked closely with Deluxe grader Paul Staples to create a base LUT. Working on-set with DIT Philip Blake this base LUT was tweaked and sent through for rushes and offline editorial. These were used as a guide in the DI back in Deluxe London.

Keeping the essence of the show was important but also the producers also wanted to give it a fresh new look. The new series was set in 1897, around the time of Queen Victoria’s Jubilee and number of years ahead of series three. The filmmakers tried to show the technological advancements by updating the practical bulbs and using more electrical street lighting in the street set. Instead of going for a traditional moonlit look for our exterior night it was decided to push for more of a warmer Tungsten look. The production designer Stephen Daly helped with this by rigging main street with 33 practical street lights.”

ndependent camera, lens and grip specialist, Movietech has introduced the Leica Summilux-C range of lenses to its hire inventory. Featuring 11 focal lengths from 16mm to 100mm, at T1.4 the Summilux-C PL mount primes are among the fastest modern lens sets currently available. With superb resolution and high contrast ratios the lenses present clear, highly-accurate images with industry-leading flat field illumination, free from distortion or flare.

Incorporating Leica’s multi-aspheric design and high-precision cine lens mechanics, these lenses match well with celluloid. However, the range also delivers high-quality results when used with digital image capture systems. At 142mm long they also allow for significantly smaller, lighter camera packages and rigs.

Speaking about the lenses, Movietech managing director John Buckley said “Compact, sharp and fast, these Leicas have already proven popular, particularly with our commercials clients and on jobs where camera assistants need to make quick changes. Not too harsh, balanced illumination and perfectly engineered, these are amongst the finest primes we’ve ever seen”

NEWS / PRODUCTION / POST & TECHNOLOGY ROUND-UP

JACKSON HOLE WINNERS ANNOUNCED T

he Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival, the premier event of the nature and conservation genre, announced the winners of its 13th biennial festival at the Grand Teton Awards Gala on October 1st.

The awards celebration concluded a five-day industry conference that engaged leading filmmakers, organisations, scientists, broadcasters and visionaries in conservation and wildlife media to Jackson Hole. Submissions in the prestigious competition included a record 1,000 category entries competing for 23 special awards. This year’s winners were selected by a distinguished panel of international judges.

Best cinematography, sponsored by Sony Electronics, went to Wild Yellowstone—Frozen Frontier, a Brain Farm Digital Cinema production for Nat Geo Wild and Terra Mater Factual Studios. Cinematography for the show was by John Shier, Dawson Dunning and Curt Morgan. Aerial cinematography was conducted

by Nel Boshoff, Richard Burton, Greg Wheeler and Nick Wolcott, with additional cinematography by Howard Bourne, Jeff Hogan and Theo Jebb.

The production shot for 260 days over the course of two years, working in conditions as freezing as minus 40°F, in USA’s oldest National Park. Covering the brutal winters and burning summers of Yellowstone, they captured iconic images of American wildlife to help tell new stories in a fresh cinematic style.

ASC TO BESTOW HONOURS ON TOLL, PETERSON AND BENNETT

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ohn Toll ASC, Bill Bennett ASC and Lowell Peterson

Peterson, who is being honoured for his ASC will be recognised for their contributions to the achievements in television, first worked as director of photography on the popular CBS series Knots Landing, and art of cinematography at the 30th Annual American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) has continued to compile an impressive list of credits on award-winning television programmes. For his Awards for Outstanding tt ASC Achievement work on the HBO series Six Feet Under, he received Bill Benne on February an Emmy Award nomination, as well as ASC Award nominations for the telefilm Just Ask My Children, 14, 2016, at the Hyatt Regency and the TV series Second Chances and Profiler.

Peterson’s other Century City, Lowell Pete Los Angeles. series credits rson ASC Oscar-winner Toll include Jane The Virgin, will receive the society’s Lifetime The Fosters, Desperate Achievement Award.

Peterson will be Housewives, honoured with the Lois & Clark: The New Career Achievement in Television Award, Adventures Of Superman, and and Bennett will take home the ASC The Client.

Bennett has President’s Award. compiled over

“John, Lowell and Bill have set an 1,000 television extremely high bar commercial John Toll ASC for all of us,” said ASC credits. Known affectionately by president Richard Crudo. his peers as “The Toll won back-to-back Oscars for his exceptional work Car Guy”, for his innovative work on Edward Zwick’s Legends Of The Fall in 1995, and Mel Gibson’s on automobile Braveheart in 1996. The latter ads, his list of credits-by-sponsor not only include major also earned the BAFTA Award for Best Cinematography. Toll automobile manufacturers, but also a number of the top beverage manufacturers, global received a third Academy Award nomination for lensing Terrence communications companies, airlines and fast Malick’s The Thin Red Line in food franchises. The list of elite directors Bennett has worked with includes Brent 1999. He has compiled nearly 40 credits to date, collaborating Thomas, Robert Lieberman, Gary Johns, Jeff Gorman, Bob Giraldi, David Dryer, Joe with such venerable directors as Francis Ford Coppola, Carroll Johnston, Richard Blair, Catherine Lefebvre, Ballard, Cameron Crowe, John Eric Saarinen, ASC, Andrew Sinagra and Terry Windell. The Presidents Award recognises an Madden, Nancy Meyers, Lana and Andy Wachowski, Ben Affleck, Ben Stiller, and most recently with Ang Lee on the ASC member’s remarkable body of work, combined with their devotion to the organisation. upcoming film Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk.

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Winners… multiple cinematographers were responsible for the Jackson Hole winning doc Wild Yellowstone—Frozen Frontier

PRODUCTION GUILD APPOINTS GUY BARKER AS NEW CHAIR Guy Barker has been appointed chair of The Production Guild of Great Britain. As a member of the board, Barker has played a key role in The Production Guild’s work aimed at ensuring the UK maintains its leading-edge as the destination of choice for feature film and television production. In response to the growing industry need for specific skills, the Guild set up the Assistant Production Accounting Training Scheme (APATS) funded by Creative Skillset and to support those working in production financing, budgeting, accountancy and production management, an online training service, amongst other initiatives.

An experienced financial controller and production accountant, Barker’s credits include major studio productions made in the UK including King Arthur: Knights of the Round Table, The Man From U.N.C.L.E. and Troy for Warner Bros, The Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage Of The Dawn Treader for 20th Century Fox/Walden Media, and Hummingbird for Lionsgate/IM Global/Shoebox Films. He has also worked on major features which have filmed abroad, including Red 2 for Lionsgate and Fred Claus for Warner Bros..

Barker takes over as chair from Kevin Trehy, senior VP physical production of Warner Bros. Productions who becomes joint vice-chair with producer Steve Clark Hall (The Man From U.N.C.L.E., Sherlock Holmes), last year’s Creative Skillset Mentor Of The Year award-winner. Mark Cooper, formerly vice-chair, rejoins the board and Lara Sargent has been appointed treasurer for the Guild.

DAVID SAMUELSON PASSES AWAY We learnt of the passing of David Samuelson at the time of going to press, and send our condolences to his family and friends. Among the many achievements during a successful career in cinematography, he was presented with an Oscar statuette in 2005, along with Jean-Marie Lavalou and Alain Masseron, for engineering and developing the Louma Camera Crane and remote system for motion picture production.

NEWS / PRODUCTION / POST & TECHNOLOGY ROUND-UP Aargghh…. TOHO’s famous character with (l-r) Brett Smith, sales director, Tiffen International Asia-Pacific, Gin-Ichi Corp Steadicam sales manager, Kazuhito Kashiwabara, TOHO chief cameraman Kosuke Yamada with the new M-1

NEW TIFFEN STEADICAM M-1 LOOMS LARGE IN JAPAN

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OHO Studios, the Tokyo production house responsible for the original Godzilla and its current remake, as well as Seven Samurai, directed by Akira Kurosawa, has purchased the new Tiffen Steadicam M-1 camera stabiliser for its current and future feature projects.

Senior cameraman Kosuke Yamada had been looking at the M-1 since its launch, and brought a rig to Japan after he completed the six-day SOA (Steadicam Operators Association) Classic workshop in the US with Jerry Holway and Steadicam’s inventor Garrett Brown. Yamada’s experience as a cinematographer includes a 13-year stint as camera assistant at TOHO Studios, leading to four years in the top job as lead cinematographer.

“When I used the M-1 for the first time, I felt a firm sense of stability that I had never felt before. No matter how much lighter cameras become, the quality of the image largely depends on their stability in use,” said Yamada.

“The M-1 can accommodate various shooting styles and equipment, and I think this is perhaps the biggest strength of it. But also very important is the ease with which you can achieve dynamic balance and smoothness of the gimbal.”

All Tiffen M-1 systems work with the Fawcett Exovest. The supportive exoskeleton design of Exovest frees the chest from constraint by providing support on the hip and shoulder. The industry’s benchmark ISO-Elastic G70X arm completes the package, making M-1 the most advanced stabiliser in feature production.

Our hero… (l-r) Harrison Ford with cinematographer Douglas Slocombe BSC and Steven ers Spielberg on the set of Raid Of The Lost Ark

HAY FILM SCHOOL PRODUCTION EVENT

Hay Film School is hosting Independent Film Production – The Challenges on December 5th.

Highlights of the event, taking place in Hay-on Wye, will include a screening of the recently release feature Dartmoor Killing, followed by and Q&A with writer/producer/director Peter Nicholson and cinematographer Nick Dance BSC. There will also be a screening of Jack To A King with editor John Richards, plus panel discussions with Doug Milsome BSC ASC, Nigel Walters BSC, Nick Dance BSC and Keefa Chan. Other participants include Alan Trow BSC, Jamie Harcourt Associate BSC ACO GBCT, James Fulcher GTC, Steve Brooke-Smith GBCT and Shirley Schumacher GBCT.

The listed DPs listed will variously talk about how to construct a scene, composition, camera placements for feature films and high-end television dramas/documentaries and commercials.

Rob McGregor Steadicam operator/DP will also demonstrate his Steadicam and MoVI equipment.

KENKO TOKINA ACQUIRES FORMATT HITECH FILTERS

Kenko Tokina, the world’s largest manufacturer of photographic filters, has acquired 100% of the share capital of Formatt Hitech Limited (Formatt-Hitech), the UK-based producer of ND filters for photo and cinema. FormattHitech will operate as a fully-independent subsidiary corporation and continue to produce filters in the UK.

The Formatt-Hitech acquisition will expand Kenko Tokina’s filter portfolio into cinema. Formatt-Hitech’s Firecrest brand of ND filters uses an advanced, rare earth metal-coating process to create neutral ND filters. The Firecrest product has become popular for landscape, fineart and long exposure photography, as well as the cinema and broadcast markets due to the uniformity of the ND across different densities and due to the extremely tight tolerances for surface flatness. The Firecrest 4mm cinema filters have been independently tested and verified as having the flattest surface of any ND filter. This means that, when used on television and cinema production, the camera can be panned and tilted during a shot without introducing any surface distortion into the image.

SLOCOMBE STEALS THE LIMELIGHT AT ACADEMY PARTY IN LONDON Centenarian cinematographer Douglas Slocombe BSC made the headlines recently after a high-profile film industry event in London. Reported in the Daily Mail, although actress Cate Blanchett was just one of many A-listers at a special reception hosted by US Ambassador, Matthew Barzun, for European members of the Academy of Arts And Motion Picture Sciences, it was the 102-year-old master cinematographer who garnered most of the attention.

Slocombe, who shot the first three Raiders Of The Lost Ark movies, Julia, Travels With My Aunt and The Italian Job, amongst many others, and earned three Oscar nominations, drew tributes and toasts from Academy bosses Cheryl Boone Isaacs and Dawn Hudson during the event.

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NEWS / PRODUCTION / POST & TECHNOLOGY ROUND-UP

Makeover… DP Simon Reay has used ultramodern techniques and kit on New Teletubbies

NEW TELETUBBIES GETS A HIGH-TECH CINEMATOGRAPHIC APPROACH

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he challenging combination of costume characters, miniature photography, motion control and CGI enhancements were all creatively fused in the reboot of UK global children’s classic Teletubbies. New Teletubbies (DHX Media) was shot at Twickenham Studios by DP Simon Reay, who was an operator on the original ‘90’s series.

Now, almost twenty years on, the re-version has been produced with the same iconic green hills using a 20:1 scale model of Teletubbyland.

Reay explains the reasoning behind this new approach “The producers were hugely respectful of the original show and wanted to retain the same iconic greenhill world and identical Teletubby costume performances, but without the logistic headache of filming on location.

So we had to find a way for the characters to exist in a Teletubbyland that looked real and allowed them to fully interact with their environment. The miniature gave us the perfect setting and CGI was used to enhance and extend this, as well as adding skies and animated flowers, under the supervision of Rob Harvey at Lola Post.”

The live-action set consisted of full-size blue hills on the stage, which the Teletubbies could walk over and run around. These were very specifically configured to match the model. Director Jack Jameson, production

designer Ant Howells and DP Reay collaborated on shooting efficiencies, avoiding the full-size hills having to be moved every time the camera changed position on the model. Their solution was to have groups of hills that were repeated three times on the model. In essence, one live action bluescreen set matched three different locations on the model.

Teletubbies was shot on three RED Epic cameras with a variety of lenses all provided by Onsight. Reay explains his choice. “Because each scene generally plays out on one position with very few cuts, A-camera was fitted with an 18mm master prime, giving an horizontal angle of view of 72 degrees [at 5k HD]. This angle was then matched on the model set using a P+S Tecknik T-Rex Borescope, which Onsight sourced for the job from Germany. B-camera used either a 32mm or 50mm Ultra prime.”

The new title sequence carefully replicated the original almost shot for shot. In order to capture this sequence, N-Cam’s Real-time camera tracking system was employed.

Data was collected and then scaled-down for the Milo motion control rig to perform the corresponding moves on the model. Malcolm Woolridge and Rob Delicata of The VFXco supervised the moco set-up.

After three months the production switched from the exterior miniature set to the interior world of the

Teletubbies – the Home Dome. This dome set was built as an inflatable structure with hard set pieces added.

These included a full size working lift, which lowers the Teletubbies down from outside and into their home.

“I knew I had to light for a very wide field of view and to bear in mind that the Teletubbies are big.

Tinky Winky is nine-feet tall,” said Reay. “This meant that we were going to see most of the dome in every shot; therefore hiding fixtures within the dome itself was totally impractical. The solution was to light through the structure itself; we did this with an array of nine light maxi brutes positioned around the perimeter of the set. The maxi brutes were perfect as they had the punch to push through the double-skinned dome and then provide a soft source inside. Backlit Translites were positioned outside the windows enabling a complete 360-degree shooting space. The only problem came when trying to shoot sequences where the dome lights up with the respected colour of each Teletubby. The Epic would not read purple correctly; it always came out as blue. So we tested the Alexa, F55 and F65 and they were more or less the same. So I shot a test using 35mm and that rendered the colours perfectly. So we took the decision to shoot these sequences on film [Kodak 5219] using ARRICAM LTs.”

LITEPANELS UNVEILS BRICK LED LIGHTING SYSTEMS Litepanels, a Vitec Group brand and provider of LED lighting for the broadcast and production industries, has launched its new Brick and Brick One Light Kit. Now more robust, the Brick Bi-Color provides an on-camera solution for on-the-go ENG cameramen, especially for those in wet conditions.

Building on the legacy MiniPlus, the new Brick Bi-Color’s high CRI and TLCI surface-mount LEDs, with custom-designed optics, provide accurate colour temperature adjustability. The tightly binned LEDs also produce a light output that is up to four times brighter than the original MiniPlus, resulting in a longer throw that effectively allows the Brick to illuminate a larger area. By having a comparable luminance output of 100W, it offers

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up to 1060 LUX (98 Footcandles) at 5ft (1.5M) while only drawing 16.5W.

The Brick can also provide both Daylight and Tungsten lighting. With ultra-smooth dimming from 0-100%, it is not only flicker free at any frame rate or shutter angle, but the Brick also has no noticeable colour shift throughout its entire range.

The Brick One Light Kit consists of a half-white diffusion gel, a Manfrotto 244 Micro articulating arm, a 6ft (1.8 m) international power supply, a 60° Honeycomb frame, a soft diffusion frame, and a waterproof hard case with custom foam for safe transportation. Optional accessories for the Brick include an Anton/Bauer QRG-LG plate and an Anton/Bauer Power Tap extension.

NEWS / PRODUCTION / POST & TECHNOLOGY ROUND-UP

Virtually there… Andrew Shulkind ASC with the Headcase VR Cinema Camera that used Codex Action Cams, with the new rig pictured on set of The Strain

CODEX ACTION CAMS POWERS NEW HEADCASE VR CINEMA CAMERA

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odex has supplied multiple Codex Action Cam systems for the pioneering virtual reality (VR) rig developed by Radiant Images, a provider of innovative digital cinema solutions, highend cameras and equipment, and virtual reality content studio Headcase VR.

The Headcase Cinema Camera is the world’s highest-quality virtual reality camera system, comprising of 17 synchronised Codex Action Cams in a spherical array, for recording 360-degree sequences. Among the first projects to deploy the Headcase Cinema Camera is a promo for Guillermo Del Toro’s The Strain, a live-action VR project, produced by Mirada for FX Network, which premiered at Comic Con 2015.

“VR has opened-up enormously exciting opportunities for technology innovation and creative storytelling, and has a magnetic attraction for early adopters who want to pioneer imaginative content creation,” said Codex managing director Marc Dando.

“To this end, Codex has been working with Radiant Images and Headcase VR on integrating Codex Action Cam technology into a new 360-degree camera rig that records imagery of unsurpassed quality for virtual reality applications. Compared to other arrays, the Headcase Cinema Camera represents a huge leap in resolution, clarity and latitude, and delivers a streamlined, straightforward workflow into post production.”

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Cinematographer and innovator at Headcase VR, Andrew Shulkind, commented, “I was already familiar with Codex, and its range of recording, media and workflow products, and I knew the gear was both cutting-edge and reliable. When I first heard about Codex Action Cam I immediately saw it as an essential building block for VR projects, because it combines three factors that are critical for this kind of work – small size, high-quality images and a robust workflow.

Working with Codex and Radiant Images, we were able to develop the Headcase Cinema Camera that will help us open new frontiers in immersive content creation.”

Codex Action Cam is a tiny remote camera head that shoots up to 60fps. With a single co-ax cable to the Codex Camera Control Recorder, it delivers a proven workflow. The camera uses a 2/3” single-chip sensor with a global shutter to capture 12-bit RAW 1920x1080 HD images with wide dynamic range of 11-stops.

The Headcase Cinema Camera, available for rental through Radiant Images in Los Angeles, uses 17 Codex Action Cams in a spherical array. All the Action Cams are sync’d together and have common timecode and metadata, making the stitching of images in postproduction a lot simpler than with other systems.

The Strain VR experience follows Vasiliy Fet, a former Ukranian rat exterminator, as he leads viewers on a 360-degree journey through an abandoned warehouse,

whilst being under constant threat of attack from vampires. The participants in the two-and-a-half-minute VR experience feel as if they are trapped in a warehouse within the story. The Headcase Cinema Camera was small enough to manoeuvre wherever it needed to go, whilst capturing the high quality of images necessary for an intense, suspenseful and realistic experience. The camera rig was supported on a remote-controlled, robotic wheeled platform, with no crew members near the camera when it was shooting. Everything was controlled by a single operator hidden from sight.

MOLINARE MAKES INVESTMENT IN 4K PIPELINE

Soho post production house, Molinare, has made significant investments to support efficient 4K and UHD workflows within the facility. This includes over half a petabyte of high-speed media storage, in the form of a new EMC Isilon storage cluster and high-speed Infiniband backbone serving new 4K Baselight grading and Flame editing suites. The company also recently invested in Sony’s BVM-X300 OLED 4K critical reference monitor for picture monitoring in its 4K suites during the DI grades of upcoming 4K TV drama productions.

NEWS / PRODUCTION / POST & TECHNOLOGY ROUND-UP

BAFTA COMMEMORATES UK STATE VISIT OF CHINA PRESIDENT XI JINPING

Right royal occasion…

Princess Kate at BATFA with president Xi Jinping

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is Royal Highness The Duke of Cambridge, president of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, presented a BAFTA gift to Xi Jinping, president of the People’s Republic of China, at Lancaster House, London, during the official state visit by the Chinese leader in October.

The gift – an original artwork from the BAFTA archive revealing the heart of BAFTA’s historic headquarters in London – symbolises the spirit of open, creative collaboration that BAFTA promotes between the UK and China, and commemorates 2015 as the UK-China Year of Cultural Exchange.

Amanda Berry OBE, chief executive of BAFTA, guided president Xi Jinping and HRH The Duke of Cambridge through the showcase, during which BAFTA screened a short film highlighting its ongoing work in China and staged a performance by BAFTA scholarship recipient Wan Pin Chu, a composer from Hong Kong, who performed British and Chinese music on the erhu, a traditional Chinese instrument.

Berry said, “I was delighted with our involvement and to be part of President Xi Jinping’s State Visit to the UK. The event showcased the range of creative excellence in the UK while recognising China’s significant contribution to the arts.

“BAFTA encourages creative and cultural exchange, and we’ve already begun this work by investing in new talent and laying foundations for future collaboration through initiatives and events in mainland China and Hong Kong.

The Duke of Cambridge is a supporter BAFTA’s work

in China, helping the organisation to forge stronger links with creative talent in the country. In March this year, he donated a replica BAFTA award on the Academy’s behalf to the Shanghai Film Museum during the Great Festival of Creativity in Shanghai, and helped launch BAFTA’s latest scholarship scheme for students studying in mainland China and Hong Kong, which opens for applications in 2016.

BAFTA has been working with partners in China to deliver masterclasses and workshops since 2013, featuring award-winning filmmakers, actors and craftspeople including Johnnie To, Zhang Yimou, Duncan Kenworthy, Eddie Redmayne and Lois Burwell. BAFTA-nominated hair and make-up designer Naomi Donne (Chocolat, Skyfall, SPECTRE) discussed her craft at masterclasses with Mac Cosmetics in Hong Kong and Beijing, BAFTA’s first event in China’s capital city. Actor Hugh Bonneville (Downton Abbey, Paddington) has also attended a fundraising dinner in Hong Kong in support of BAFTA’s charitable activities across Asia and visited secondary school students, discussing his work at special ‘In Conversation’ events.

EVIDENCE CAMERA IS HOT ON MATTHEWS GEAR

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atthews Studio Equipment’s Burbank manufacturing facility recently caught up with Joel Deutsch, cinematographer/ co-owner of Los Angeles-based Evidence Film Studios & Evidence Camera Rentals about the company’s recent purchase of MSE’s newest support.

The Matthews Freedom Car Mounts and Brauer Hostess Tray have already allowed their production company to do some unique shots.

“We are now using the mount and tray on an action film we are producing,” Deutsch explains. “And will have them available as part of our stage rental inventory along with the rest of our Matthews gear.”

Proof… that MSE kit works for Evidence Camera

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The company’s stage has the capacity to drivein vehicles, ideal for car insert scenes with controlled environments, and has the ability to handle sound and lighting effects as well. This allows productions to use the car mounts for greenscreen work or cyc wall projection of driving plate shots, whilst getting clean angles with actors in the car – using the Freedom Car Mounts.

“We discovered that they also mount well using the interior auto windscreen and side window glass to position the camera creatively,” he explains. The Brauer Hostess Tray can be used with windows up or down, and door open or shut. The Freedom Car Mount satisfied the many angles

needed to mount cinema cameras (weighing about 20lbs) in a safe and secure manner all in the short set-up time action filming requires. Support for the set up consists of screw-together stainless steel Ricky Rod components, Quick Heads, large vacuum cups with a swivel head, and more. “They are perfect for use doing high speed on road driving manoeuvres as well,” Deutsch adds.

The success of the new Mount and Tray system has prompted Evidence to add these tools to their other Matthew rental equipment, including the new Matthews 45” Slider - another quick and easy set up that stands alone or serves as an accompaniment to the Freedom Car Mount and Brauer Hostess Tray.

NEWS / PRODUCTION / POST & TECHNOLOGY ROUND-UP

ROESTAD BECOMES NEW IMAGO PRESIDENT N orwegian cinematographer and filmmaker Paul René Roestad FNF has been elected as the new president of IMAGO, the international federation of cinematographic societies, for the next three years. Roestad takes over from Nigel Walters BSC, who held the role of president for six years, and under whose auspices the federation expanded dramatically to include members from outside Europe, including Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Japan, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Turkey, Iceland, Colombia, Iran and Israel. A globe-trotter, who made sure that IMAGO was everpresent at leading cinematography events, Walters also brought the issues of working conditions and authors’ right to the fore, which Roestad has vowed to continue.

Roestad was the only candidate for the presidency and was unanimously voted as the new leader during IMAGO’s IAGA, which took place in Jerusalem in October. A new IMAGO board was also elected: Daniele Nannuzzi AIC (Italy), Elen Lotman, ESC (Estonia), Predrag Bambic SAS (Serbia), Rolf Coulanges BVK (Germany), Ron Johanson, ACS (Australia) and Nina Kelgren BSC (UK). Louis-Philippe Capelle SBC (Belgium) remains as treasurer and general secretary, with Tony Costa AIP (Portugal) the IMAGO webmaster.

Dr. Cristina Busch will continue to provide legal consultation.

COMPANY 3 EXPANDS DAILIES SERVICES WITH NEW APPOINTMENTS

Happy camper… Jonathan Smiles lands senior dailies role at Company 3

Company 3, the Soho-based digital intermediate and post production company has added Jonathan Smiles and Doychin Margoevsky to its London dailies team. With over 20 years of experience across film and TV, Smiles is well known as a film and digital workflow specialist. He worked on the first UK RED camera and German ARRI Alexa shoots. His expertise crosses the disciplines required for film and digital acquisition covering the entire workflow from set into dailies then to editorial, VFX and through to DI, deliverables and studio archive. He joins the company as senior dailies specialist.

Doychin recently completed dailies on Michael Bay’s Thirteen Hours: Secret Soldiers Of Bengazi, and joins Company 3 as dailies colourist.

Fighting the good fight… new IMAGO president Paul René Roestad

CREATIVE ENGLAND APPOINTS CAROLINE COOPER CHARLES AS HEAD OF FILM

Caroline Cooper Charles, previously Creative England’s senior film enterprise executive and head of creative development at Warp X, has been appointed the organisation’s new head of film. Creative England is responsible for film initiatives iFeatures and iShorts, and has backed features including Notes On Blindness, 45 Years, Orion: The Man Who Would Be King and Burn, Burn, Burn.

During her time at Creative England Cooper Charles has led a bespoke support programme for film companies in England and previously worked across talent development strategy in the regions. She is also CEO at production outfit Universal Spirits, producer of Jane Linfoot’s The Incident.

BRISTOL INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL OF CINEMATOGRAPHY KICKS OFF

Looking for typos… Nic Knowland BSC, Roberto Schaefer ACS AIC, Geoff Boyle and Nigel Walters BSC enjoy a right good read at the inaugural Bristol Festival Of Cinematography

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Cinematographers Nic Knowland BSC, Nigel Walters BSC, Geoff Boyle and Roberto Schaefer ASC AIC were caught doing some light, but illuminating, reading before their panel discussion about the state of the art of cinematography at the inaugural Bristol International Festival of Cinematography. Highlights of the three-day festival, which took place this September within the popular annual Encounters Film Festival, included screenings, masterclasses and Q&A sessions, as the cinematographers shared the secrets of their successes and the challenges in the rapidly-evolving landscape of image capture and display.

Low-light… new Canon ME20F-SH camera has an ISO in excess of 4 million

Binary… Woody Allen has selected the F65 and Vittorio Storaro for his next movie

AURORA BOREALIS SHOT WITH NEW LOWLIGHT CANON CAMERA Aurora Skycam, a Norwegian film enterprise, has become the first company in the world to use Canon’s new ME20F-SH, high-definition video camera to capture stunningly detailed low-light footage of one of the world’s most spectacular natural phenomena, the aurora borealis.

The footage, shot in Norway, records the borealis in “never-before-seen clarity”, revealing colour and high definition detail that has “opened up new creative possibilities”, according to Aurora Skycam’s Anders Hanssen. “It’s the most amazing camera out there – a revolution when it comes to night-time photography.”

Launched in July 2015 the ME20F-SH is a professional multi-purpose video camera capable of capturing full-colour, HD footage in extremely low-light environments. Boasting a maximum ISO in excess of 4 million (+75dB), the camera facilitates a wide range of shooting possibilities in situations that previously would not have been possible.

SPENCER NEWBURY JOINS LCA

Lights, Camera, Action has appointed of Spencer Newbury as international business development manager. Newbury will help LCA to develop international markets covering Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific. Working as a lighting technician for 25 years, he has travelled globally advising on his specialty of lighting car commercials for advertising in studios and onlocation. In the last seven years, he developed business for Litepanels in the EMEA and APAC Regions.

Nice shirts… LCA’s Nick

Nick Shapley, Shapley with Spencer LCA managing director Newbury commented, “Spencer is a well-respected figure and we’re excited he has decided to join our team. With his extensive knowledge of international markets we’re looking forward to building up our current customer base and bring the many brands and products we represent to these areas”.

WOODY ALLEN GOES DIGITAL WITH SONY F65

Sony has confirmed that filmmaker Woody Allen has chosen Sony CineAlta F65 for his first-ever digital shoot, to be lensed by Vittorio Storaro AIC ASC. The currently untitled production will be mastered in 4K.

Storaro, the three-time Academy Award winning cinematographer for Apocalypse Now, Reds and The Last Emperor, has dedicated his professional work to digital technologies. He first began testing with Sony in 1983. On his decision to use the F65, Storaro said, “I had seen that the Sony F65 was capable of recording beautiful images in 4K and 16 bit-colour depth in 1:2, which is my favourite composition. So when Woody called me this year asking me to be the cinematographer of his new film with the working title Wasp 2015, my decision was already made. I convinced him to record the film in digital, so we can begin our journey together in the digital world.”

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NEWS / PRODUCTION / POST & TECHNOLOGY ROUND-UP

THE PRODUCTION GUILD ANNOUNCES 2015 UK FILM & TV AWARDS WINNERS

More winners…

Roy Button OBE (pictured), Jessamyn Keogh, Iain Smith and Mairi Bett all recognised by The Production Guild

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he Production Guild of Great Britain paid tribute to leading UK film and TV industry professionals on September 17th with its awards which recognise remarkable achievements made by its members.

The awards come at a time when the creative success of the UK film and TV industry and its contribution to UK economy has never been stronger.

Taking place on Saturday 19 September at The Grove in Hertfordshire, The Production Guild Awards, in association with Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden, awarded four individuals/teams for their exceptional work.

The UK production team behind Twentieth Century Fox Television’s hit TV series 24: Live Another Day, received The Production Guild Member/Team of the Year Award in association with Millbrook. Producer and British Film Commission chairman Iain Smith OBE led a team that comprised a number of Production Guild members including unit production manager Kathy Nettleship, location manager Casper Mill and production accountant David Jones. The decision by Twentieth Century Fox Television to entrust the production and VFX of its highlysuccessful US series’ to British crew was seen as a bold move and a huge gesture of trust in the UK. The production team delivered on every count, achieving a fast-paced, challenging shoot with precision. The speed of turnover of writing, shooting and going to air was unprecedented in British production with filming taking place around the clock and Fox’s US air dates rolling as the team worked.

Roy Button OBE DL, executive VP and managing director, Warner Bros. Productions Ltd, received The Production Guild Contribution to the Industry Award in association with Panavision, for his outstanding contribution to the development and sustainability of the UK film and TV industry.

As head of physical production for Warner Bros.

Productions Ltd, Button is responsible for all Warner Bros’ films based out of the UK, Europe, Africa and the Middle East. He has also been the driving force for Warner Bros.’ investment in Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden, Europe’s

STUDIO

ROUND-UP: Elstree Studios: a brand new book, entitled ‘Elstree Studios: A Celebration Of Film And Television’, pays tribute to 90 years of film and TV production at the world-famous site. Elstree Studios was, and still is, home to some of the most successful and enduring films and TV shows 26 | British Cinematographer | November 2015

largest studio, owned and run by Warner Bros. and the production base for films made in the UK by a number of US ‘majors’ including eight Harry Potter films, Edge of Tomorrow, Jupiter Ascending, Tarzan, Knights Of The Round Table: King Arthur, Fantastic Beasts And Where to Find Them, and host to Mission Impossible – Rogue Nation, Kingsman: The Secret Service, as well as the Leavesden Harry Potter Tour. Button is currently a member of the FITB (Film Industry Training Board) and the board of the British Film Commission.

Assistant production accountant, Jessamyn Keogh, received The Production Guild Rising Star Award in association with Warner Bros, Studios Leavesden.

Keogh began the Production Guild’s Assistant Production Accountant Training Scheme (APATS) funded by Creative Skillset in 2012, taking up placements on Sky1’s Starlings (series two), Channel 4’s Top Boy (series two) and Disney’s Muppets Most Wanted. Since graduating in 2013, Keogh’s focus and dedication has seen her move upwards in an astonishingly short period, working as first assistant accountant on series five of E4’s Misfits, quickly followed by series five and six of ITV drama Downton Abbey.

Producer Mairi Bett received The Production Guild Inspiration Award in association with Creative Skillset, in recognition of her long-standing dedication to assisting the career development of young producers and production crew. Bett established Skyline Films with partner Steve Clark-Hall over 25 years ago, and her many co-producing credits include the upcoming Victor Frankenstein, as well as in recent years Closed Circuit, The World’s End, Oscar-winning and BAFTA-nominated Jane Eyre, The Debt, Green Zone, and the BAFTA-winning and Oscar-nominated United 93.

produced in the UK, from the original Star Wars and Indiana Jones trilogies, to The King’s Speech and Paddington, and from The Saint and The Avengers to Strictly Come Dancing and Big Brother.

The book has an exclusive introduction written

by Tom Hooper, the Oscarwinning director of The King’s Speech. With contributions from actors, directors and behind-the-scenes personnel, the book traces the studios’ history starting from humble beginnings in 1926, through the golden age of film, tough times and the threat of closure, to becoming London’s go-to film and TV studio today, lavishly illustrated with over 250 photographs and film stills.

The Bottle Yard Studios: BBC One’s popular, 18thcentury drama, Poldark, has returned to Bristol’s The Bottle Yard Studios for its hotly-anticipated second series. Poldark’s eight-part first series, which attracted on average eight million viewers per episode, filmed at The Bottle Yard between April and October 2014. Sets were built within the Studio’s Tank House 2 to create key

Iain Smith

Mairi Bett

Romantic…. Poldark series two is back at The Bottle Yard

settings featured in the drama, including The Red Lion pub and ‘Nampara’, Ross Poldark’s home.

This year, sets will once again be built on-site, and the production will expand its studio footprint by using additional build space. The team is coordinating the shoot from the studios production offices, and basing a comprehensive costume department on-site, complete with sewing, dying and fitting rooms. The seven-month shoot, for the ten part series, will feature locations across Cornwall, Bristol and Wiltshire.

NEWS / PRODUCTION / POST & TECHNOLOGY ROUND-UP

The Yorkshire Studios: ITV’s Victoria, a major new drama series from Mammoth Screen, is the first tenant to take up residency at The Yorkshire Studios, with filming for the seven-month shoot now underway. The ambitious eight-part drama, starring Jenna Coleman, follows the early life of Queen Victoria, from her ascension to the throne at the tender age of 18, through to her courtship and marriage to Prince Albert.

Screen Yorkshire announced the major new film and TV studio space in Church Fenton, between Leeds and York, in June. Comprising three aircraft hangars (each over 30,000sq/ft and 36ft to beams) plus office space, garages, workshops, extensive parking, roadways and runways, the site is ideal for large scale productions such as Victoria.

With additional support from the British Film Council and Creative England, Screen Yorkshire is working to bring the next major production to The Yorkshire Studios. The remaining available space includes two expansive hangars and over 400 acres of backlot.

Epic… the next JK Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden: Rowling wizarding Academy Award-winning actor Eddie adventure is now Redmayne has been cast as Newt in production at Scamander in Warner Bros. Pictures’ WBSL much-anticipated wizarding world adventure – J.K. Rowling’s Fantastic Beasts And Where to Find Them.

Making her screenwriting debut on the film, Rowling developed the character of Scamander, and his eponymous book, from her globally beloved Harry Potter series.

David Yates, who directed the last four Harry Potter films, will direct, with producer David Heyman, who produced of all eight of the blockbuster Harry Potter features.

The cinematographer on the show is Philippe Rousselot AFC. Warner Bros. Pictures has slated Fantastic Beasts And Where to Find Them for worldwide release in 3D and IMAX on November 18, 2016.

Pinewood Studios: Universal Pictures’ Steve Jobs, from Academy Award-winning director Danny Boyle, was recently mixed at Pinewood Post Production. The team carried out sound editorial, mixing and foley work for the film, which stars Michael Fassbender as the pioneering founder of Apple.

Pinewood has launched, in partnership with The Open University, a free on-line course called The Business of Film, looking at the business-side of filmmaking.

The course provides a practical and in-depth exploration of the key business decisions in film production and the complexities of development, distribution and finance. As well as providing step-by-step guidance on the main processes, the course will also help students to answer critical questions such as why films fail, why do films get public funding and what is the relationship between marketing, box office returns and overall film success?

Double Emmy Award winning foley artist, Pete Burgis, has joined Pinewood Post Production. Burgis has worked on over 150 titles including the Oscar-winning The King’s Speech, Gosford Park and Slumdog Millionaire and others including, Band of Brothers, Atonement, Children Of Men,

Now ‘ear this… legendary foley artist Pete Burgis

Quantum Of Solace, Captain Phillips and the Harry Potter films. He is also a triple Golden Reel Award winner. His most recent credits include Pan, Legend and Everest as well as The Man From U.N.C.L.E., Cinderella, The Game, Exodus: Gods And Kings and Edge of Tomorrow.

Pinewood continues to invest in its foley and editorial services, recently renovating Theatre One and Theatre Two at Shepperton Studios, to complement UK sound teams in film, television, video games and audiobooks.

British Cinematographer | November 2015 | 27

SPOTLIGHT / BB&S

LIGHT FANTASTIC A

belief in the power of LED as the future of professional lighting technology inspired Danish duo Peter Plesner and Thomas Brockmann to start up Brother, Brother & Sons (BB&S) in 1999, although it took a decade for their vision to be vindicated, writes Adrian Pennington.

“LEDs were not at all useable in 1999,” says cofounder Plesner. “We believed that LED would be the big thing for the future but it took a while for the quality to reach a point that we could use them.”

Between 1999 and 2007 the company concentrated on developing motorised or manually operated lighting fixtures or engines for lighting manufacturers. The Warp for ADB-TTV was the first product developed. In 2007 BB&S started its first LED product development with the Evenled (later acquired

by Martin Audio), followed by LED-based retro-fits for De Sisti, Robert Juliat and ARRI. The Aledin-AR backend light engine, for example, mounts into ARRI ST 1 Fresnel. It also created a LED light engine for the De Sisti Leonardo Fresnel.

Then, in 2011, BB&S began development of a proprietary product portfolio of it own high-end LED lighting products and to transition from a development house into full-scale manufacturing, sales, marketing and distribution.

“The first step was for LED technology to reach the same level of output as Tungsten or daylights,” says Plesner. “That has been achieved. We next moved to developing the quality of colour rendition. That goal has also now been attained.”

Its key product is the AREA 48 Soft, introduced in 2012. Instead of LED arrays, the AREA 48 uses remote phosphor, widely viewed as an elegant solution to one of the biggest problems to plague LED lighting technology; how to produce a wide spectrum white light and achieve a high colour rendering index for accurate colour rendition.

By swapping phosphor-coated panels of the AREA 48, light can quickly change from daylight to Tungsten or other colour temperatures. The system’s colour rendering

28 | British Cinematographer | November 2015

accuracy is over 95 TLCI (Television Lighting Consistency Index), and the source is comparable to a traditional 1K soft light.

“Every test made to date clearly shows the AREA 48 will reproduce the exact same skin tones as daylight or Tungsten even when shooting in RAW,” says Plesner. “There is absolutely no colour shift when dimming, no green or magenta mess up and therefore less work in post even when used in conjunction with traditional light sources.”

Recently debuted accessories include a new reflector, an octagonal soft box and frames for ganging two or four AREA 48s together for a more powerful soft light.

Also new is the AREA 48 Soft Studio, made especially for front of house applications, TV or motion capture studios where extremely smooth dimming in the last 5% is needed.

At face value LED fixtures can be more expensive than Tungsten, a reason attributed to the greater R&D cost to make an LED fixture than an old-fashioned Fresnel. “However, you also have to factor-in that for traditional fixtures you need thick cabling and dimmers to be installed in studios, whereas with LED you just need an inexpensive DMX cable so the cost of running LED is less,” he argues.

AREA 48s are used on a wide variety of TV and feature productions including the Eurovision Song Contest, in their hundreds on Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (2017 with cinematography by Paul Cameron ASC), and 2016 Lionsgate fantasy Gods Of Egypt, whose DP is Peter Menzies Jr. The gaffer on both features is Shaun Conway, of Conway Film Lighting with AREA 48s supplied by Barbizon of Australia.

The second innovative product using remote phosphor is the Pipeline. These are modular, cylindrical fixtures built with a diameter of less than an inch to be installed in banks of up to four pipes, or deployed in a single reflector for modelling faces and illuminating backgrounds.

“The Pipeline is very slim, allowing gaffers to create a lot of different reflector forms,” he says. “It also matches the TLCI of AREA 48 which means it will match Tungsten or daylight fixtures so you can confidently use existing or older kit alongside the new which is not HQ… BB&S the case with all LED fixtures.” is based just outside

The product has been Copenhagen packaged into Pipeline Reporter to address the challenges of travelling correspondents who often deliver their reports via Skype or Microsoft Messenger from a webcam on a desktop.

BB&S’ founders share experience in designing lighting for TV, theatre and feature film.

Plesner himself spent the first 25 years of his career as a lighting designer for opera.

Peter Plesner

“In a small country like Denmark lighting for different disciplines was par for the course, but we see this merger happening in larger markets too, especially as film and TV cameras get closer together in terms of application.”

The company is based 2km outside of Copenhagen towards the airport in an old industrial area that is undergoing urban renewal. There, the R&D team comprises experts in optical physics, electronics, mechanical design and software processing. All assembly is housed there too with distribution over a worldwide network of 37 dealers.

Plesner is in no doubt that LED will replace virtually all Tungsten and daylight fixtures. “If you go to Singapore and mention Tungsten they don’t know what you mean,” he says. “South East Asia has already moved to LED. It is just the more conservative markets of Europe and the US, which are slower to transition.

The introduction of new technologies is bound to retire all the older, heavy, extremely overpriced and powerconsuming fixtures.”

Whether LED will supplant 12k and 18k HMIs is another matter. “There are occasions when you do need a large point source, to make strong shadows coming through a window for example. But for smaller luminaries it makes no sense to use that amount of power and heat when there are far more economical technologies available.”

The next step for the company is to find new ways of creating lighting instruments that fit the more extreme resolution and sensitivity of the most recent digital cinema cameras. Sony’s A7S II full-frame mirrorless camera boasts an ISO range from 50 to 409600 and the Canon ME20F-SH claims an ISO in excess of 4 million.

“The picture quality from imaging systems will rise significantly and therefore the quality and usability of the light source must follow,” he says. “Lighting will continue to play a huge part in creating skin tone granularity and crisp images.”

BB&S collaborates in scientific research with the Danish Technical University (DTU) Photonics Unit in order to prepare for future leaps in lighting technology.

“We hear a lot of feedback from DPs about being asked to light for two locations in a day,” says Plesner.

“They have to be able to run everything off a battery, there is no time for cabling. There is a demand for greater speed on-set and for more efficient workflows.

All we can do is listen to users and try to give them what they need.”

PREVIEW / CAMERIMAGE 2015 / BY DAREK KUZMA & RON PRINCE

Once again, for eight days, Bydgoszcz will become the movie capital of the world as a cornucopia of cinematographic talents wing their way into “Poland’s Venice” for the annual Camerimage International Film Festival of the Art of Cinematography in celebration of the power of cinema as an art form. This year’s edition will also see Camerimage delve into the area of television content, recognising its makers as significant visual artists.

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his year’s VIP guest list includes: Chris Menges, Safrogndy Powell, Walter Murch, John Seale, Vittorio Storaro, Majid Majidi, Marcel Łoziński, Martin Coppen, Bryan Adams, Sandro Miller, Matthew Libatique, Edu Grau, John Toll, Reed Morano, Giovanni Ribisi, Ellen Kuras, Ed Lachman, Salvatore Totino, Danny Cohen, Michael Hoffman, Łukasz Żal, Chris Doyle, Joan Churchill, Ryszard Lenczewski, Christian Berger, Jay Rosenblatt, Stephen Lighthill, Oliver Stapleton, Wojciech Staroń, Mikhail Krichman, Svena Gisla, Checco Varese… and many, many more.

Camerimage is the place where, once a year, art meets technology and technology becomes art. Where students talk to their masters and each can influence the other.

Where visitors learn about the magic of cinema in its purest form. But, the festival is not just about the various films being screened. There are also numerous seminars, masterclasses, lectures, workshops, exhibitions, special events and advisory programmes, conducted by the world’s most distinguished professionals.

The opportunity provided by Camerimage to meet and converse with cinematographers, editors, production designers, feature, documentary and music videos directors, 3D stereographers, gaffers, key grips, lighting technicians, and other professionals, is an unmissable experience, like no other.

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British Cinematographer | November 2015 | 31

PREVIEW / CAMERIMAGE 2015

LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD FOR CHRIS MENGES Chris Menges BSC ASC was born in Kington, a remote rural market town in Herefordshire, England, but is now worthy of being called “a citizen of the world”. He is a man of high values, true modesty and filmmaking is his greatest passion, for which he quite literally risked his life.

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enges grew up in post-war England and, like many great filmmakers of his generation, learned his craft in British television in the 1960s. He started this adventure thanks to Alan Forbes, the American documentary filmmaker, who became one of his first role models. Menges worked his way up the ladder as an assistant editor, soundman and camera assistant, honing his skills with each and every job.

His life changed forever when he joined, as cameraman, the crew of the current affairs TV programme World In Action. During the next couple of years he travelled the world, going to places of social and political upheaval and shooting in extremely dangerous conditions. On one of such trips, Menges went to Apartheid-torn South Africa and came back with illegally obtained behind-the-scenes footage.

On another, he went with director Adrian Cowell to Burma to shoot The Opium Warlords. The pair became isolated from the outside world and were forced to live a guerrilla life for over a year. These were the times and places that shaped him artistic and personal life.

But not all of Chris Menges’ adventures were connected to shooting documentaries. He started working on features in 1967 as a camera operator on Ken Loach’s debut Poor Cow and Lindsay Anderson’s If... Loach helped Menges in being promoted to the rank of cinematographer on Kes, and so began one of the most important artistic collaborations in his career, lasting to this day.

In the 1970s and ‘80s Menges worked with a number of rising British directors (Stephen Frears, Bill Forsyth, Neil Jordan), integrating his cinematography and love for authenticity with a wonderful eye for detail and artistic sensitivity shaped while shooting documentaries. Then, he worked on bigger projects (he supported Peter Suschitzky on Irvin Kershner’s Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back) and started looking for new challenges and different means of describing the surrounding reality. That led him to Roland Joffé with whom Menges made The Killing Fields and The Mission, both awarded with Oscars for cinematography.

The Killing Fields, made with a strong sense of authenticity in each and every shot, and The Mission, the look of which was inspired by classical Spanish paintings, were enormous challenges. Yet Menges never betrayed his instincts, and he used his skills to enhance the stories being told. Being a humanist and a filmmaker who preferred shooting from a distance, to create “a freedom space” for actors or non-fiction

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“MY FEELING ABOUT ALL WORK IS, IT’S NOT ABOUT STYLE, BUT ABOUT WHAT IT’S TRYING TO SAY, WHAT IT’S WORTH.” CHRIS MENGES BSC ASC protagonists in front of the camera, Menges helped the director to shape his poignant tales about the different sides of human nature.

Having such rich experience in film, and knowing how to handle difficult projects, Menges decided to shoot his own movies. His directing debut, A World Apart (DP Peter Biziou BSC ASC), was a powerful statement about South Africa in the 1960s, which he had come to know from his early documentary days. It won awards at the Cannes Film Festival and was respected by critics and viewers alike. Nevertheless, the subsequent directorial outings did not bring Menges what he hoped for, thus, after almost a decade of absence, he re-ignited the old flame with a film camera, and shot Neil Jordan’s Michael Collins and Jim Sheridan’s The Boxer. Both IRAthemed films became another proof of Menges’ mastery in using light and camera movement to show human emotions, obsessions and traumas.

The new millennium brought Menges a few opportunities to work with long-time friends and collaborators (with Stephen Frears on Dirty Pretty Things,

with Ken Loach on Route Irish), and a number of fresh artistic challenges. He immersed himself in Western imagery in Tommy Lee Jones’ The Three Burials Of Melquiades Estrada. He helped William Monahan to create an alluring vision of England’s capital in London Boulevard. He supported Stephen Daldry on the sets of The Reader (Menges shared the credit for cinematography with Roger Deakins, both were nominated to Oscar for this film) and Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close. And it was Deakins, widely-regarded as one of the best cinematographers of our times, who said later that he considers Menges’ use of natural light second-to-none, and that Menges was one of his first inspirations after film school.

“My personality is not ever to fight for a style.

My feeling about all work is, it’s not about style, but about what it’s trying to say, what it’s worth”, said Menges in one of his interviews. In another one he stated, “You do things that make you grow and make you learn, and I’ve always been interested in things that teach me something”.

WALTER MURCH WINS THE AWARD TO EDITOR WITH UNIQUE VISUAL SENSITIVITY Much has been said and written about the opening of Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now. It starts with a sound, difficult to recognise or place anywhere. Next, there appears an image – an almost-still shot of a jungle...

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he sound swells and, suddenly, a helicopter flies right before our eyes. The first bars of “The End”, by The Doors, serve as an accompaniment and a commentary to what can be seen on the screen: smoke and flames start to devour the jungle. Another helicopter flies by, Jim Morrison’s vocals appear, and the shot turns into a living napalm-induced hell, while the camera moves after the flying machines.

This image of jungle-fever after an air raid is superimposed by a shot of Captain Willard’s (Martin Sheen) face, which gets quickly interwoven with shots of whirling helicopter rotor blades and the jungle’s conflagration, displaying what happens in the soldier’s mind.

These first, intense dialogue-free minutes of Apocalypse Now convey the film’s essence and foreshadow what is to come. It is little wonder that this prologue is often cited as one of the best ever.

It was made largely by Walter Murch, the iconic editor and sound designer who changed the way we watch movies.

Editing is not about gimmicky transitions from one scene to another: it deals with imbuing the story with a rhythm and emotional tempo, just as designing a film’s soundtrack does not mean matching images to music and songs, but creating a spatial soundscape that will make the world depicted on screen believable and tangible.

Walter Murch is a true master of both professions. It was he who made the otherworldly relationship between Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore in Jerry Zucker’s Ghost suspenseful, emotional and poignant, while the film itself became one of the biggest hits of the 1990s. It was Murch’s creativity and intuitiveness that supported the overall feeling of Anthony Minghella’s Cold Mountain and made Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation the film that changed the way sound design was perceived. In THX 1138, George Lucas’s debut feature, Murch created an encompassing sound space of all-too-real dystopian society, in Apocalypse Now he, cinematographer Vittorio Storaro and other artists working on the film, took the audience on a journey into the Vietnam hell, and in Minghella’s The English Patient he heightened the reality depicted on the screen. For his work on the latter, Murch

“A GOOD EDITOR MUST HAVE SOME SENSE OF HOW TO TELL A STORY, AND THAT INVOLVES A SENSE OF RHYTHM. IT’S A LITTLE BIT LIKE TELLING A GOOD JOKE. THE JOKE COULD BE A GREAT JOKE, BUT IF YOU TELL IT WITH THE WRONG RHYTHM IT FALLS FLAT.” WALTER MURCH received two Oscars, for editing and sound design.

An unprecedented achievement. He also won the Academy Award for Best Sound in Apocalypse Now, and received six other Academy nominations.

“A good editor must have some sense of how to tell a story, and that involves a sense of rhythm,” Murch explained in one of his interviews. “It’s a little bit like telling a good joke. The joke could be a great joke, but if you tell it with the wrong rhythm it falls flat.”

Murch fell in love with editing images and sounds as a teenager and decided to dedicate his professional life to developing both areas of cinematic craft, at the same time strongly opposing the empty virtuosity often seen in the film industry.

He was lucky during his studies. He met and

collaborated with a group of film enthusiasts who helped each other to fully-master their skills and try new and exciting things – directors George Lucas and John Milius, and cinematographer/director Caleb Deschanel, among others. What’s more, Murch took his first real career steps with Francis Ford Coppola on The Rain People and then on the legendary films The Godfather and The Conversation.

Murch was one of the creators of the 5.1 surround sound system in cinemas, and he is the only film editor who has been nominated for Academy Awards for his work on four different editing systems: Moviola (Fred Zinneman’s Julia), KEM (Coppola’s Apocalypse Now), Avid (Minghella’s The English Patient), Final Cut Pro (Minghella’s Cold Mountain).

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PREVIEW / CAMERIMAGE 2015

SANDY POWELL TO RECEIVE THE FIRST-EVER CAMERIMAGE AWARD TO COSTUME DESIGNER C ostumes are of invaluable assistance to actors, providing them with new ideas for their roles and giving them deeper understanding of the emotional journeys their characters go through.

But costumes also determine the shape of the production design, the way lights are set, the way camera movements are planned for each scene. They are crucial in defining a given character and the world they inhabit. They let the viewers feel closer to what is happening on screen. And they can – like no other part of cinema – work wonders with on the imagination. That is why this year Camerimage has introduced the Special Award of Costume Designer with Unique Visual Sensitivity. Three-time Academy Award winner Sandy Powell will be the first laureate.

Powell is known as an expert in defining visually, with her costumes, bygone eras and making places that do not exist anymore feel real, as well as a true artist tirelessly looking for new ways of expression. It was her work and inventiveness that helped Emily Blunt to become Queen Victoria in Jean-Marc Vallée’s The Young Victoria. It was Powell’s creativity and immense research that enabled Leonardo DiCaprio, Daniel Day-Lewis and the rest of the cast of Martin Scorsese’s Gangs Of New York, to look and feel like veracious Irish immigrants and Americans from the second half of the 18th century. It was the variety of costumes designed by her for Todd Haynes’s Far From Heaven that allowed the emotional journeys of characters reflect the colours of the passing seasons. And her collaboration with Haynes enabled her to recreate the sumptuous 1970s in Velvet Goldmine, and depict the American 1950s from the perspective of two different states: Connecticut in Far From Heaven and New York in this year’s Carol. Of her six films with Scorsese, she helped the director to look behind the curtains of 1940s Hollywood in The Aviator, made the viewers breathe the atmosphere of modern-day Boston in The Departed, and created stunningly beautiful and wondrous tribute to the everlasting power of cinema in Hugo.

There are many more examples of Powell’s fearless passion for her craft, the love of which was instilled by her mother who taught her how to sew and constantly look for new challenges. Powell does not hold on to only one working method or use the same tools over and over – she makes each and every project according to what it is and what it has to be. She is not afraid of “getting dirty” with her creations, as she loves to imbue her costumes with a certain visual character. Her work on this year’s Cinderella is a perfect example of that trait – the blue ball gown of the eponymous character is subtle, has a perfectly fairy-tale quality, and looks deceptively simple, but its creation took over 20 people approximately 500 working hours. Powell was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) and, suitably for one of the best costume designers in the world, is a fashion icon with her own unique style.

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VITTORIO STORARO AND MAJID MAJIDI WIN CINEMATOGRAPHER-DIRECTOR DUO AWARD Two legendary filmmakers united under an extraordinary film project – Muhammad: The Messenger Of God, the first part of planned trilogy telling in cinematic terms the tale of the life and work of the Islamic prophet Muhammad.

Vittorio Storaro and Majid Majidi will present the film to the Camerimage audience and participate in a Q&A session afterward. They will also accept the festival’s distinction given to extraordinary duets, presented before to such filmmaking partners as Matthew Libatique and Darren Aronofsky, and Ed Lachman and Todd Haynes.

MARCEL ŁOZIŃSKI GETS DOCUMENTARY FILMMAKER ACCOLADE

Marcel Łoziński is one of the most prominent Polish documentary filmmakers of all time, having achieved a tumultuous career, which now lasts for over forty years.

In the 1970s he and his friends changed the way the documentary form was perceived, making it more expressive and cinematic. Since then Łoziński has made both short and feature docs, becoming one of the best chroniclers of the communist times in Poland, and a filmmaker interested in normal people and their fascinating everyday existence.

REMEMBERING THE MASTERS SERIES

The aim of “Remembering The Masters” is to accentuate the craft of all those brilliant cinematographers who are no longer with us, and to provoke a discussion about the cinematic possibilities given by films which, over the years, set the standards for what we watch today. This year the festival will present the work of Polish cinematographer Kurt Weber (Tadeusz Konwicki’s Salto and All Souls’ Day, Kazimierz Kutz’s Night Train), and Swedish cinematographer Gunnar Fischer (Ingmar Bergman’s Wild Strawberries, The Seventh Seal and The Magician).

FIRST LOOK – NEW COMPETITION SECTION Camerimage will delve into what is now recognised as the “Golden Age of Television”. Pilots and first episodes from all over the world will compete for the first-ever Camerimage award given to the makers of televised content. The screenings will be accompanied by several panel discussions with leading showrunners and other industry professionals, to discover how you go about creating a great first impression. How do you persuade viewers not to abandon your show after the first few episodes? Is the visual language of cinematography important for TV creators?

EXHIBITION OF PHOTOS BY BRYAN ADAMS

Exposed is a collection of 130 captivating portraits of famous figures, captured through the lens of Bryan Adams. The exhibition is made up of two unique sets. The first selection, on show in Torun, consists of a retrospective of portraits of some of the biggest names in pop culture, including: Sir Ben Kingsley, Mickey Rourke, Sir Mick Jagger, Lana Del Rey, Kate Moss and Amy Winehouse. Almost all of the photos come from various commissions from magazines like the European based Zoo Magazine (which he co-founded).

The second set, entitled Wounded: The Legacy Of War comes from the book of the same name. It features moving photographs of scarred British veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The project took four years to complete (2008-2012) and is a remarkable tribute to the courage and fortitude of the surviving servicemen and women.

SANDRO MILLER’S EXHIBITION

The exhibition of Sandro Miller’s photographs, entitled Malkovich, Malkovich, Malkovich: Homage To Photographic Masters, was born out of the artist’s fascination with the work of photographic masters, as well as his cooperation with actor John Malkovich. Miller (born 1958) is an American photographer whose commercial success has given him the opportunity to pursue his own artistic projects. This series was created between 2012-14 and was critically-acclaimed in the US and Europe. It contains 41 colour and B&W photographs, staged by Miller and modelled by Malkovich. Together, they recreated iconic photographs by the likes of Irving Penn, Diane Arbus, Richard Avedon, Bert Stern, Herb Ritts, Andy Warhol, Robert Mapplethorpe and Dorothea Lange. The project combines the skills of Miller with Malkovich’s amazing ability to impersonate the subjects from famous photographs.

MARTIN COPPEN AND MUSIC VIDEOS MASTER CLASS

Acclaimed music video cinematographer, Martin Coppen, will receive the Camerimage Award for Outstanding Achievements in the Field of Music Videos, and meet with participants during the next installment of the Music Videos: The Master Class Series.

THIRD EDITION OF 3D FILMS COMPETITION

A few years ago the infatuation with 3D technology was considered a mere fling, but today we are fully-aware it is still a serious relationship which, in the close future, is likely to merge the art of cinematographers with the world of 3D stereographers.

Ridley Scott’s The Martian, Robert Zemeckis’s The Walk and Baltasar Kormákur’s Everest will compete among others.

PREVIEW / CAMERIMAGE 2015

ESTONIAN CINEMA REVIEW

The cinema of Estonia, a country close to Poland both geographically and historically, has over hundred years of cinematic tradition and its films won many international awards and distinctions, yet it is still relatively unknown to the modern-day viewer.

Estonian Cinema Review will not only be a chance to watch interesting films from that part of the world, but also to learn more about the country’s history, mentality, and current situation.

Son of Saul, dir. László Nemes, cinematographer Mátyás Erdély

BALTIC SEA REGION CINEMA REVIEW

A mandatory event for all cinephiles who admire European films. To select the best representation of the Baltic films from recent years, Camerimage invited cinematography societies from eight countries - Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Germany and Poland. Each of them selected one contemporary film production as the most interesting cinematic representative of the given country, which resulted in an eclectic line-up.

STUDENT ETUDES FROM KATOWICE FILM SCHOOL AND FH DORTMUND

Camerimage will screen films from two prestigious European film schools – Katowice Film School (The Faculty of Radio and Television of the University of Silesia) and ELO Film School Helsinki (at Aalto University’s School of Arts, Design and Architecture).

PIXAR SEMINAR

Key crew members behind Pixar’s animated hit, Inside Out, will discuss how cinematography is practiced, and why it matters, in animated filmmaking. The team will share some of the challenges they faced in taking audiences inside the human mind, with work-in-progress examples and insights into the techniques and technology they used, including motion capture, visual structure planning and lighting design.

WORKSHOPS, SEMINARS AND LECTURES Several highly-acclaimed cinematographers, including Chris Menges, Chris Doyle, Garrett Brown, Oliver Stapleton and Steve Yedlin will lead the series of workshops, variously sponsored by ARRI, Panavision, Cannon, Technicolor, Sony, Panasonic, K5600 and others. There are also numerous seminars and lectures concerning the art of cinematography and the way the movie industry has changed throughout last few years.

EXHIBITORS

At the time of writing, confirmed exhibitors at this year’s festival included: Aaton, Angenieux, ARRI, Barco, Canon, Codex Digital, CW Sonderoptic, Digital Sputnik, DMG Lumière, DoPchoice, FujiFilm, Hive Lighting, J.L.Fisher, K5600, Lodz Film School, MAT, Osram, Pajak, Panasonic, Panavision, Rag Place, Sony, Tiffen, Transvideo, Vantage Film, and Zeiss.

ARRI: is bringing its latest camera, lens, lighting and

accessory technologies and hosting a number of events.

Lit entirely by the company’s LED fixtures, including the new SkyPanel softlight, ARRI’s stand will showcase the upcoming Alexa SXT camera equipped with an Anamorphic Ultra Wide Zoom, the Alexa Mini equipped with a Master Anamorphic lens and Flare Set, the versatile Amira equipped with an Alura Zoom, and the flagship Alexa 65 equipped with a Prime 65 lens. Mechanical Pro Camera Accessories and wireless tools from the ARRI Electronic Control System will demonstrate the rugged and user-friendly functionality of ARRI camera set-ups. ARRI seminars and workshops will be hosted by top professionals and, as in previous years, cinematographers nominated for the Golden Frog award will be presented with their nominations at the annual ARRI dinner party.

Codex: is showing Codex Production Suite, its powerful

dailies and archiving software, now running on Vault S and XL-Series and also on Mac OS X. It provides simple, secure, battle-tested workflows for multiple cameras (ARRI Alexa SXT, XT and 65, Amira, Alexa Mini, Panasonic VariCam 35, Canon C500 and C300 Mark II, RED Epic and Weapon Dragon, Sony F55 and F65 etc.) and media from camera to post production and beyond. Also on show is Codex 36 | British Cinematographer | November 2015

Live, whish allows users to work directly with a live camera feed over HD-SDI to create and preview looks and grades that can help to communicate the creative intent on-set and become the starting point for dailies and post production grading.

All linked together via Codex Backbone getting the relevant information to whoever needs it quickly and efficiently.

K5600: watch out for the New Alpha 800, introduced as a

prototype at this year’s IBC. Like all Alphas, the Alpha 800W is precise and controllable, providing a shadow quality these fixtures are renowned for. Without the lens, the beam can grow up to 120°, producing even light with sharper and crisper shadows. Additionally, the Alpha 800W, as with all Alphas (18K included), can be used pointing straight down.

The Alpha line is also known for its versatility. As well as being compatible with the new 3200K discharge bulbs, the Alpha 800W can be also turned into a Par light or a lensless punchy source. To achieve this unique transformation, a patented design 90-degree bulb socket is plugged in place of the bulb into the regular G22 socket. As a result, the bulb can be fitted in the horizontal position offering the choice of either the focusable faceted reflector (aka the Zoom Beamer) or the regular Par reflector.

LEE Filters: with LED lighting now becoming more and

more common, LEE Filters is showing its new Zircon range, designed to offer quality, consistency and durability.

Conventional lighting filters struggle with fade times when used in conjunction with LED lighting set-ups. LEE’s new Zircon filters circumvent this thanks to a new technology that gives them an increased lifespan of up to 200 times longer than standard lighting filters. There are three types of filter in the range. Warm Amber helps to correct a variety of white tones, and comes in a range of four strengths.

Minus Green allows photographers and cinematographers to remove green colour casts of varying intensities, with five options available. With three different strengths, the Diffusion filters act to blur pixels when placed in close proximity to the LED chip.

Leica: is sharing a stand with Codex, and hosting a

seminar titled Moving Images With Leica Cine Lenses. The seminar will explore the qualities and characteristics, both visual and practical, that Leica cine lenses bring to modern cinematography. The current landscape of digital capture compels directors of cinematography to find new tools of expression. The creamy sharpness and natural colour of the Leica Wolf Totem, dir. JeanSummilux-C and Summicron-C Jacques Annaud, lenses provide powerful tools for cinematographer creating compelling and moving Jean-Marie Dreujou images. Their small and consistent form further free the creative options of imagemakers.

Panasonic: will showcase its

range of 4K cameras, including the much-heralded VariCam 35 4K broadcast camera. The

Warsaw 44 dir. Jan Komasa , cinematograph , er Marian Prokop

VariCam, recently used on the BBC’s Doctor Foster and currently shooting the next major production for the BBC NHU, incorporates a 35mm MOS image sensor and AVC-ULTRA family of video codecs. The camcorder has image handling in multiple formats including 4K, UHD, 2K and HD which make it an unparalleled tool for high end filmmaking, commercials and episodic production as well as live 4K events. The AG-DVX200, the world’s first 4/3-type large format, 4K/60p camcorder to feature an integrated zoom lens, will be showcased alongside the VariCam. Panasonic will also host two seminars during the week of the festival, details of which will be announced soon.

Sony: is championing “emotion in every frame”, and

showcasing the creative power of Sony CineAlta camera.

Talk to the experts on the Sony stand and they will be delighted to tell you more about the latest developments in digital cinematography and help get you hands-on with their F65, F55 and F5 CineAlta cameras. CineAlta workshops at Camerimage include a talk with Peter Simonite, about his experience of shooting The Perfect Guy with F65 using Vantage 2x Anamorphic lenses, and High Dynamic Range with Sony CineAlta and the new BVM-X300 OLED reference monitor.

WHO WILL WIN THE GOLDEN FROG? FILMS IN THE MAIN COMPETITION...

13 Minutes, dir. Oliver Hirschbiegel, dp. Judith Kaufmann The 33, dir. Patricia Riggen, dp. Checco Varese Brooklyn, dir. John Crowley, dp. Yves Belanger Carol, dir. Todd Haynes, dp. Ed Lachman I Saw the Light, dir. Marc Abraham, dp. Dante Spinotti Mad Max: Fury Road, dir. George Miller, dp. John Seale The Midwife, dir. Antti J. Jokinen, dp. Rauno Ronkainen Rams, dir. Grímur Hákonarson, dp. Sturla Brandth Grøvlen The Red Spider, dir. Marcin Koszałka, dp. Marcin Koszałka Room, dir. Lenny Abrahamson, dp. Danny Cohen Sicario, dir. Denis Villeneuve, dp. Roger A. Deakins Son of Saul, dir. László Nemes, dp. Mátyás Erdély Suffragette, dir. Sarah Gavron, dp. Eduard Grau Warsaw 44, dir. Jan Komasa, dp. Marian Prokop Wolf Totem, dir. Jean-Jacques Annaud, dp. Jean-Marie Dreujou

F-STOP AMSTERDAM / IBC 2015 ROUND-UP / BY KEVIN HILTON

Vitec Group companies…

Paralinx Ace HDMI/ SDI wireless video transmission system

Recent NAB and IBC trade shows have been dominated by 4K and Ultra High Definition (UHD) and both technologies were fully in evidence at this year’s IBC in Amsterdam during September.

T

he difference was that they were less of a new trend and more something that is now becoming part of the filmmaking and broadcast process, as well as a possible step to future developments. Among these was also 8K, which featured heavily among new shooting equipment, but the real impetus appeared to be behind HDR, a technology that is enhancing what is already here.

HDR (high dynamic range) imaging has been around in viable form since the early 2000s, but only in the last few years has it begun to appear on commercially available cinematography products. At IBC 2015 the technology looked to be bedding in along the production chain, from cameras to finishing workstations to monitoring displays. Sony covers both ends of the spectrum, but was promoting the start point during the Amsterdam show with its cinematography systems.

Sony… went big on HDR and new camcorders

38 | British Cinematographer | November 2015

The company is targeting what it calls “HDR production” and its cameras have featured on several high profile productions employing this, including the F55 on Amazon Original Series Mozart in the Jungle and the F65 for Netflix’s Marco Polo. Claus Pfeifer, strategic marketing manager for broadcast and cinematography with Sony Professional Europe, commented that HDR gave a “more immersive image with emotion in every frame”. In terms of products Sony released v7.0 firmware for the F55 and showed two recently introduced cameras: the FS5, a smaller version of the FS7, designed for drones and gimbals but with a Super 35 sensor; and the Alpha 7S MkII, which like the MkI, is intended to be a secondary cinematography camera, particularly for low light and night shooting as it has an ISO sensitivity range of 50-25,600.

Canon showcased its 4K “glass to glass” offering, again running from the camera to the display. This was illustrated by the combination of the EOS C300 MkII 4K video camcorder and the DP-V2410 24-inch 4K reference monitor, which both made an IBC debut after being launched earlier in the year. Also new was the ME20F-SH full HD, small-scale camera for low light applications, such as wildlife and deep sea photography. Curtis Clarke ASC, who heads the ASC Technology Committee, was on hand to reprise the HDR walk-through he presented for Canon during this year’s NAB.

Today’s digital cameras are delivering 4K and, in some cases, 8K footage and many manufacturers are looking to HDR to “maximise” the image quality. RED Digital Camera introduced its HDRx in-camera HDR mode in 2011 and has been pushing the resolution and quality of what its cameras produce ever since. At IBC RED introduced the compact, lightweight Weapon, which contains a 6K Dragon sensor that can upgrade to 8K. With typical REDness, the company announced another new camera a week after IBC: the Raven is claimed to be its lightest model and is aimed at indie filmmaking, as well as drone and gimbal work. It features a 4K Dragon sensor and, like the Weapon, also delivers HDR images.

Not to be left behind ARRI now has ProRes 3.2K for UHD, with final display on HDR-equipped monitors and TV sets in mind.

During the show the company demonstrated the new range of SkyPanel compact LED soft lights, the EB 12/18 HS and EB 6/9 HS AutoScan ballasts for slow-motion filming to prevent flicker and new features for the ECS (Electronic Control System), including a wireless

Blackmagic…

Cintel Film Scanner Hero

Vitec Group companies…

Teradek new technologies for live grading Colorfront…

Transkoder tackles HDR

remote that works with any camera or lens, not just ARRI’s. There was also the news that ARRI Rental’s Alexa 65 now features an enhanced version of the XT IFM-1 inch-camera ND filter, plus the option of the 50-110mm zoom 65 lens.

Dolby has responded to the shift towards HDR by professional companies such as ARRI, Sony and RED by targeting its Dolby Vision mastering process at the improved image process. Just before IBC the company announced that Sony Pictures Home Entertainment would be using Dolby Vision to release 4K UHD titles featuring HDR for “a wider range of contrast and more vibrant colours”.

Leading colour correction developers are also now offering HDR as part of software and hardware packages. FilmLight is working with Dolby to provide HDR mastering and grading on the Baselight grading workstation, incorporating Dolby Vision and PQ colour space technology for post-production applications demanding enhanced image quality. FilmLight also demonstrated its metadatabased BLG (Baselight Linked Grade) application and Daylight on-set dailies and transcoding program.

SGO’s Mistika system similarly features Dolby Vision from version 8.2 onwards. The company was also part of Canon’s “glass-to-glass” presentation, providing the middle post and finishing section in between the camera and the display. On its own stand SGO showed Mistika with several new tools, including UniColour, which allows “seamless bi-directional transfers between many different colour spaces”. In addition there was a taster of a new 3D Keyer.

The DaVinci Resolve grading system too is HDR capable and has been demonstrated producing footage shot on cameras manufactured by its now developer, Blackmagic Design. Among the company’s other highlights during IBC were a B4 Mount for the URSA Mini and version 12 of Resolve, which features temporal and spatial noise reduction, optical quality motion blur effects, support for multiple GPUs, DCI 4K, 3D stereoscopic tools, multi-user collaboration and remote rendering. There was also an IBC comeback with the first new Cintel product since BMD bought the name and intellectual property of the former telecine manufacturer. The Cintel-branded film scanner took 18 months to develop, incorporates DaVinci Resolve and is designed to transfer 16mm and 35mm film for display and broadcast at UHD resolution.

Colorfront previewed the 2016 versions of its Transkoder and On-Set Dailies systems, which include a multitude of innovations to meet industry demand for faster, more flexible processing of the latest UHD HDR camera, colour, editorial and deliverables formats, not just for digital cinema and high-end episodic TV but also for OTT internet entertainment channels, such as Netflix and Amazon Prime. An industry-first was the demonstration of Transkoder 2016 outputting concurrent, real-time 4K grades on both HDR and SDR UHD

>> British Cinematographer | November 2015 | 39

F-STOP AMSTERDAM / IBC 2015 ROUND-UP / BY KEVIN HILTON

Blackmagic…

DaVinci Resolve

to dual Sony OLED BVM-X300 broadcast >> materials monitors, allowing for concurrent display and HDR/SDR

from directors of photography. “People are looking to do different things with Anamorphic and want a different look,” trimming and review. he said. The lens was due to begin shipping in October.

UHD and 4K in general is now a firm part of IBC, Howard added that Cooke is preparing an Anamorphic 35particularly on the camera side. Panasonic upgraded 140 zoom for launch at NAB 2016. the support its VariCam 35 production camera already

The real demand in specific lenses for 4K has come offers for playback from the Codex V-RAW recorder. This from television and new models continue to appear now includes a 20m extension cable that allows that UHD services are going the recorder and the camera head to be on air. FujiFilm Corporation used in different locations, particularly for was showing 2/3-inch Fujinon shooting in helicopters, cranes and cars.

UHD lenses during the show, There are also firmware changes, with with input from UK sports accommodation for ProRes 444 shooting production company Timeline, at up to 60 frames per second in HD, plus which is using the optics in the PreREC, which starts the camera rolling 4K outside broadcast truck it before the operator hits the record button, commissioned for BT Sport’s new something aimed at natural history UHD channel. The UA 80x9 BESM shoots. The VariCam additionally 4K and UA 22x8 BESM 4K UHD now accommodates lenses have been produced by Anamorphic lenses and adapting existing manufacturing has the capacity to lower practices, with attention paid to the ISO setting from the the configuration and positioning second native dual ISO5000. of the lens elements, while higher Codex… workflow now available on a range of

Codex itself introduced resolution has been achieved through nano-level precision Mac platforms the Production Suite dailies and polishing of aspherical lens components. archiving system fro Mac. This is

Zeiss made major product announcements in four designed for digital feature filmmaking, episodic TV and categories, covering mounts, zooms and auto-focus. The commercials production and integrates with Apple Mac Milvus SLR range is aimed at ZE and Pro and MacBook Pro, running Mac OS X in addition to ZF.2 mounts Codex’s S-Series and XL-Series hardware platforms. Codex for Canon and Production Suite operates with both RAW and compressed Nikon DSLRs. camera formats and offers colour management and grading Comprising six tools. It is compliant with ACES colour pipelines as well as focal lengths Codex Live. The new system works with Codex Capture these conform Drive Dock or Capture Drive 2.0 Dock to copy camera to HDR specs original negatives to hard drives, while ARRI Amira or Mini and resolve at (ProRes) or Canon EOS C300 Mark II (XF-AVC) files can be 6K and above. ingested through loading a Codex CFast 2.0 reader.

The Loxia 2/35

JVC announced firmware updates for its range and 2/50 are of 4KCAM camcorders; the GY-LS300, GY-HM200 and the first entries in GY-HM170. The upgrade on the GY-LS300 Super 35mm a planned new line model is seen as particularly significant, with the addition of of manual focus lenses for E-mount full frame a ‘JVC Log’ setting intended to duplicate a filmic look. Other applications; the Batis 2/25 and 1.8/85 were designed for features include Cinema 4K and Cinema 2k recording modes the same mounting but are full-frame auto-focus optics. and a Prime Zoom feature. JVC is also announced a sales There was also a full family of Cine Zooms for small and agreement with Bradley Engineering. This gives the Japanese big sensors. Among these was the Compact Zoom CZ.2 manufacturer “access” to the Bradley product line, including pan/ 15-30/T2.9, which is the third lens added to the range. tilt cameras, controllers and other studio equipment. As part of Thales Angenieux launched the second in its the relationship Bradley demonstrated anamorphic range at last year’s IBC; the its 4K PTZ remote camera 30-72mm on JVC’s stand. model is now

When 4K first in production and started to be a serious was on display at this proposition there was talk show, as well as being on of specific lenses for the the set of Star Trek Beyond, format, although many lens the next in the franchise due manufacturers, among them for release in 2016 and being shot Cooke… new Cooke Optics, responded that

by Stephen Windon ACS ASC. 65mm macro their film opticals were more P+S Technik celebrated its 25th Anamorphic/ i prime lens than capable of catering for the higher resolution. New birthday with a range of items, for this IBC from Cooke was a 65mm macro Anamorphic including a 35-70 CS T3.2 anamorphic lens, which the company’s chief executive, Robert Howard, zoom lens, an 18-35 T2 short, high-speed described as “unique”. He explained that the new glass was zoom and the Skater Mini tabletop dolly. Other “a bit of an experiment” but that there was demand for it hardware at the show came from Grip Factory,

40 | British Cinematographer | November 2015

which presented its GF-Slider System, together with the Maxi Cranked Riser, GF-Tele Jib and the GF-Quad Dolly.

The company was exhibiting alongside UK manufacturer A&C, which showed its Gizmo Prime digital two and three axis remote head, and Cine Moves with its gyro-stabilised, four-axis gimbal the Oculus. Cmotion promoted its cfinder III distance measurement system, which operates on a two laser configuration; a visible one for alignment and one that is invisible for measuring.

The Vitec Group covered several bases with its various component companies. Anton Bauer had two new products, the Cine and L Series batteries, while Litepanels showed the Astra LED kit, in addition to recently introduced Helio daylight luminare. Paralinx is a new addition to the Vitec empire and for this show introduced the lightweight Ace HDMI/SDI wireless video transmission system. Teradek has been in the fold for a little longer and demonstrated its latest technologies for synchronising colour workflows, including live grading.

Tiffen highlighted the Multi Rotating Tray and 138mm Variable ND, which is claimed to combine three effects in a single unit: a rotating Tiffen 138mm circular polariser, VND (Variable Neutral Density) functions and a warm to cool FX fader. In between its 30th birthday celebrations Transvideo launched the final product for its StarliteHD range of on-camera monitors. The StarliteRF is a 5-inch OLED wireless monitor using the StarliteHD5 core technology, plus an integral wireless receiver. Also on display was a special version of the StarLiteHD 5-inch OLED, developed jointly by Transvideo and ARRI.

With all the high-level technologies on display Zeiss… new one could be forgiven for Milvus family of lenses overlooking a longer established but still vital tool in filmmaking: timecode.

This has had something of a resurgence recently thanks to the trend for multiple camera shooting in both cinema and TV, what with big set pieces for blockbusters and reality shows.

Among the companies catering for this is was Timecode Systems, which introduced its wireless technology in 2012 and is now seeing it being used with numerous digital cameras on the same shoot. Until next time…

Panasonic…

Varicam 35

WHO’S SHOOTING WHO? / CINEMATOGRAPHERS ROUND-UP

LOCK, STOCK & LENS BARREL Watch the birdie…

Martin Roach poses for a portrait

I

ntrinsic: Dinedor Management, the below-the-line agency based in Covent Garden, run by Rob Little and Jarek Zapora, recently merged with Intrinsic, the production agency, based in Los Angeles. Dinedor was founded 14 years ago and represents more than 70 clients who, over the years, have been nominated for eight BAFTAs, two IFTAs, an RTS Award, an Emmy and an Oscar. Little and Zapora are now partners in Intrinsic and co-run day-to-day operations of the London office.

Peter Field operated second unit on the fifth Bourne and Stephen Murphy is lighting Shed Of The Dead. Rasmus Arridlt DFF has been lighting New Blood for Eleventh Hour. Craig Feather is on I Want My Wife Back for Mainstreet. Ruairi O’Brien ISC shot his second block of The Musketeers in Prague, and is prepping The A Word for Tiger Aspect. Chris Preston is back on daytime drama Doctors for the BBC and has graded Midsommer Murders for Bentley. Karina Kleszczewska PSC is lighting The Artist for Roughcut. Gareth Hughes operated on Mr. Selfridge for ITV Studios and The Living And

42 | British Cinematographer | November 2015

The Dead for Monastic. James Mather lit more second unit on Vikings. Nic Lawson is second unit operator on Aliens. Andrew Johnson lit more blocks of Casualty and Holby City. Jorge Luengas is operating and lighting second unit on Fox’s The Bastard Executioner. Andy Clark wrapped on a block of Doctors in Birmingham then moved on to River City in Glasgow, and Martin Ahlgren has reached halfway point on Netflix’s Daredevil. Ciro Candia, Chris O’Driscoll, Ben Filby, Dave Miller, Ed Lindsley, Gabi Norland, James Watson, Lynda Hall, Martin Roach, Martyna Knitter, Pau Castejon, Ruairi O’Brien, Sam Brown and Scott Sandford variously delivered commercials, corporate films and music promos.

Screen Talent: Bart Sienkiewicz shot commercials for Yellow Tail wines and Circle Hospital as well as various music videos. Catherine Derry has just shot commercials for Avon Cosmetics, The Cambridge Press and Amnesty.

Casarotto Marsh: Sean Bobbitt BSC is grading Queen Of Katwe for director Mira Nair. Zac Nicholson has wrapped Brian Welsh’s Hurricane for Zeppotron. PJ Dillon is on season six of Game up s eye y rph Mu Stephen Of Thrones for HBO. Rainier Cunning stunts… during a McDonalds ad an unusual shot Klaussmann SCS is shooting Tschick with director Faith Akin. Lukas Strebel is working with director Urs Egger on Gotthard. Pau Esteve Birba graded Project Lazarus and is now on Orbita with director Hatem Kraiche. James Aspinall BSC is shooting The Durrells with Roger Goldby for Sid Gentle Films. Matt Gray BSC has wrapped The Living And The Dead for BBC and is preparing Apple Tree Yard for Kudos with director Jess Hobbs. Helene Louvart recently wrapped Framing Mom in Norway.

Wojciech Szepel is on series two of Fortitude with director Hettie MacDonald. Sam Care is with director Christopher Menaul on Another Mother’s Son. Julian Court is also shooting a block of The Durrells. Tim Palmer BSC has wrapped on series two of Indian Summers with director Paul Wilmshurst.

Berlin Associates: Owen McPolin is lensing Vikings for MGM TV/History Channel and recently won a BAFTA Cymru award for his work on Da Vinci’s Demons.

Suzie Lavelle has wrapped the Dr Who Christmas episode and is on The Living Dead with director Alice Troughton.

Toby Moore is shooting the final block of Call The Midwife. Andy Hollis is lighting Midsomer Murders with director Renny Rye. Oliver Downey has started on Scott & Bailey for Red Prods with director Alex Kalymnios. Mark Garrett just finished second unit on The Lost City Of Z in Belfast. Len Gowing worked on Call The Midwife with director Lisa Clarke. Sarah Bartles-Smith shot Two Doors Down in Scotland for BBC with director Simon Hynd. Phil Wood shot a destination film in Sri Lanka for Thomson Holidays with Chrome Prods. Annemarie Lean-Vercoe is shooting a comedy pilot with director Jacquie Wright.

Independent Talent: Stephan Pehrsson has joined the agency and is shooting Peter Moffat’s political thriller Undercover for the BBC. Chas Bain has started Let This Be Our Secret, a 3 x 1-hour thriller for Hat Trick/ITV starring James Nesbitt, shot on location in Northern Ireland, directed by Nick Murphy. Darran Bragg did a commercial for Crabbies and has graded Anomalia in Switzerland.

Bjorn Bratberg is in South Wales shooting crime series 35 Days for S4C with director Lee Haven Jones. Oliver Curtis BSC has been shooting commercials. Ben Davis BSC is shooting Marvel’s Dr Strange for director Scott Derrickson, starring Benedict Cumberbatch. Benoit Delhomme AFC shot a Chanel spot with Mario Testino, Campari in NYC with Michelanghelo Di Battista, and a Tom Ford fashion film, directed by Nick Knight, starring Lady Gaga. Anthony Dod Mantle DFF BSC ASC has graded Oliver Stone’s Snowden. Ian Foster lit an Audi spot with director Ali Gerits, a Ford ad with Cadmo Quintero and a commercial for Boursin with Markus Walter. Sam

ska Kleszczew as u… Karina low To me, to yo e action sorted be akes PSC gets th r Anna Bogacz (r) m rtist focus pulle sharp shot on The A sure of a

In his veins… Rasmus Arridlt DFF casts a determined look whilst shooting New Blood

Ready, steady... Chris O’Driscoll (r) wields the camera whilst second AC Alex Kirkwood watches the action

Goldie shot an ad for Liptons with Another Film Co.’s Lucy Blakstad in Lisbon, a Firetrap spot with John Yorke, Optus with Sam Washington, starring Ricky Gervais, and lit for Declan Lowney on P&O. Jess Hall BSC is prepping Ghost In The Shell directed by Rupert Sanders, starring Scarlett Johansson. Darius Khondji AFC ASC is shooting James Gray’s The Lost City Of Z. Seamus McGarvey BSC ASC is shooting Tom Ford’s Nocturnal Animals. Carl Nilsson shot with Johnny Hardstaff for Hovis at Academy, Lexus with Patrick Murphy, Cillit Bang with Michael Gracey and for TUI with Simon Langefoed.

Roman Osin BSC shot The Kaiser’s Last Kiss directed

by David Leveaux. Mark Patten has been shooting commercials since finishing on Luke Scott’s debut feature Morgan, and is now prepping Taboo, an 8 x 1-hour series, directed by Kristoffer Nyholm (The Killing), starring Tom Hardy, about a rogue adventurer who returns from Africa with ill-gotten diamonds to seek vengeance after the death of his father.

Dick Pope BSC has conducted cinematography masterclasses at the Zurich Film Festival and in Oslo.

George Richmond BSC is grading Dexter’s Fletcher’s Eddie The Eagle. Christopher Ross BSC has finished shooting The Sense Of An Ending for The Lunchbox director Ritesh Batra. Ashley Rowe BSC is shooting the second season of Galavant for ABC. Martin Ruhe is shooting American Pastoral in the US, with Ewan McGregor directing and starring. Erik Sohlstrom shot a short film featured at the Telluride Film Festival, Hot Nasty Teen, directed by Jens Assur – a depiction of unseen Sweden, as an encounter between an older man and a hopeless teen propels us into a murky underworld. Dan Trapp shot an Autotrader spot with Jackie Oudney at The Gate Films, Vodafone with Bare director Steve Green, before heading off to Berlin to shoot with Steve Green on a spot for Sparkasse Bank. David Ungaro has

been with Toby Tremlett in Istanbul, with Ivan Grbovic on King Arthur for Warner Bros and Guy Ritchie. Ben for La Poste with Wanda, and with Joe Roman on a Smithard BSC has finished in India with Gurinder Chadha Suave commercial in Barcelona. Ed Wild BSC shot for shooting Viceroy’s House. Mark Waters is grading his Cailler Chocolate with Agile’s PIP, Skoda with Rogue’s episodes of upcoming Sky original series Agatha Raisin that Mark Jenkinson, Travel Republic with Osacar Cariss he lit for director Roberto Bangura. from The Annex and Castrol with American director

Sara Putt Associates: Si Bell is shooting the third Ben Conrad. Balazs Bolygo is lighting Love Nina with block of Ripper Street in Ireland. Giulio Biccari is confirmed longtime collaborator SJ Clarkson. on Hooten And The Lady for Red Planet Productions,

Ulf Brantus lit Scandinavian crime drama Nobel shooting in South Africa. Peter Edwards shot the second series of Still Open All Hours starring David Jason. Simon and will be grading his work shortly. Eigil Bryld has Hawken lit commercials for Chief, WCRS and VCCP. Paul completed lighting on Barry Levinson’s TV movie Wizard Lang was in Zurich completing a Lockerbie film for BBC. Of Lies in New York. Simon Dennis is well into the shoot on the feature The Limehouse Golem with Juan Carlos Medina.

Strike a po Adam Etherington se… at Milan Fa Ed Lindsley is working alongside lensing Car shion Week a Delevingn director Will e McGregor on One Of Us for BBC One. Cinders Forshaw is lighting the opening episodes Poldark, series Keeping two, in Bristol and things closely Cornwall. John monitored…

Mathieson BSC Si Bell on Rip per Street has completed

>>

Let me just po this out to int Simon Arch you… er BSC shooting Th irt Photo courte een.

Sophie Mut sy of evelian Photograph y.

liver tience… O Model of pa(r) with director Curtis BSC idt on location hm Patricio Sc ico for Palmolive in Mex

British Cinematographer | November 2015 | 43

WHO’S SHOOTING WHO? / CINEMATOGRAPHERS ROUND-UP On track… Tim Palmer (l) and grip Stephen Knipe on the set of series two of Indian Summers in Malaysia

Marsh is on Road Trip for Sky Arts – the story of a >> Dave trip across America with Michael Jackson, Marlon Brando

and Elizabeth Taylor. Ed Moore did a commercial for Bay Media in Spain and is prepping on the new series of Red Dwarf. Andrei Austin ACO continues on series two of Outlander for Left Bank Pictures/Starz. Jonathan Beacham ACO was in Botswana on A United Kingdom for Pathé Pictures, and director Amma Asante. Daniel Bishop ACO has prepped The Limehouse Golem for Number 9 Films. Joe Bullen GBCT ACO did dailies dailies on The Durrells in Corfu. New Steadicam operator Ilana Garrard did dailies on Vera. Rodrigo Gutierrez ACO Associate BSC is doing dailies on The Crown. James Leigh has wrapped on Doc Martin. Julian Morson ACO Associate BSC GBCT continues on War Machine with DP Dariusz Wolkski, and will then start Dr Strange for Marvel. Vince McGahon ACO is B-camera/Steadicam operator on Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them for DP Phillipe Rousselot. Al Rae ACO Associate BSC worked on Time Out Of Mind. Fabrizio Sciarra SOC ACO completed a stint of Beowulf with DP James Friend, before starting on Secret Agent for World Productions. Dale Rodkin is on Kings And Prophets in South Africa. Phil Sindall ACO did dailies on New Blood. Des Whelan ACO is on Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them. Peter Wignall lit a commercial for Currys’ Christmas campaign for O Positive, and is storyboarding for Kingsman 2. Rick Woollard worked on Asda’s Christmas commercial for Moxi, and a House of Fraser commercial for Pretty Bird.

Ed Clark has been doing dailies on series two of Poldark.

United Agents: Barry Ackroyd BSC is shooting the next Bourne film with Paul Greengrass at the helm.

Andrew Dunn BSC is

lighting Bridget Jones’s Baby, directed by Sharon Maguire.

Brendan Galvin is in the US on Westworld, directed by Jonah Nolan. John Lee is prepping the new television series Queen Victoria for Mammoth Screen with director Tom Vaughan. Nic Morris BSC shot a block of Beowulf with director Cilla Ware. Gavin Struthers is on the last leg of Marco Polo in Malaysia, before returning to South Africa for the new series of Black Sails. David Luther is shooting a block of Musketeers in Prague. Tony Slater Ling BSC is lensing the feature Access All Areas, directed by Bryn Higgins. Haris Zambarloukos BSC is attached to Denial, to be directed by Mick Jackson. Alan Almond BSC is grading Dickensian for the BBC and Danny Cohen BSC is grading Stephen Frears’ Florence Foster Jenkins.

Martin Fuhrer BSC is grading the first block of Jericho, directed by Paul Whittington for ITV, and David Higgs BSC is lighting Aliens for Jonathan van Tulleken/ Clerkenwell Films. Ian Moss recently concluded on The Frankenstein Chronicles, directed by Ben Ross for ITV/ Netflix. Tony Miller BSC did pick-ups for Peter Pan, directed by Diarmuid Lawrence, and Kieran McGuigan BSC is shooting series two of Grantchester.

Laurie Rose is shooting series three of Peaky Blinders and Simon Tindall is shooting a 20th Century Fox feature, as A-camera operator.

Charlotte Bruus Christensen is in the US on The Girl On The Train for Dreamworks u Grau Out and about… Ed rcial until February on an Engie comme erson Em 2016. Sara Deane with director Zak is lighting 2 Hours

in London. James Friend BSC is on Marek Losey’s block of Beowulf and will light a block of The Musketeers for Udayan Prasad. Neus Olle did a Green Flag spot for directors Jones’ through Outsider. David Raedeker is lighting Tutankhamun in South Africa for director Peter Webber. Ed Rutherford is lighting single drama Reg Keys for director David Blair and the BBC. Anna Valdez Hanks lit Lucky Man for director David Caffrey. Ben Wheeler is finishing comedy drama Crashing for director George Kane and will shoot series one of Mum for Big Talk and director Richard Laxton, starring Peter Mullan and Lesley Manville. Magni Agustsson lit commercials including Nationwide with James Strong via Dark Energy, HSBC for Siri Bunford through Knucklehead, and Nike with Tom Darracott and Carl Burgess at More & More.

Alex Barber lensed a Morrisons’ Christmas campaign for Stuart Douglas London and Northern England for Nice Shirt Films. John Barr has wrapped on the feature Viral in the US directed by Tim Shechmeister.

Philipp Blaubach is shooting TV drama Houdini & Doyle in London, directed

by Stephen Hopkins.

>>

Marine boy…

Anthony Dod Mantle on In The Heart Of The Sea

>>

44 | British Cinematographer | November 2015

Triangulation point…

Mark Milsome with focus puller Julia Green up a ladder on Poldark

WHO’S SHOOTING WHO? / CINEMATOGRAPHERS ROUND-UP Snooker loopy… the Rack Pack crew: (l-r) Andy Bailey (gaffer), Katie Ruffy (B-camera/2nd AC), Peter Robertson ACO (B-camera Operator/ Steadicam op). Alan Hall (B-camera/1st AC), Max MacGechan (trainee), Ben Brown (A-camera/1st AC), Alex Finlayson (A-camera/2nd AC) and Zac Nicholson DP.

>> John De Borman BSC recently shot the new Bond

007 SPECTRE titles for Danny Kleinman in London for Rattling Stick. Daniel Bronks’ recent shoots include Gillette for director Clay Weiner in Barcelona voa Biscuit, Preen Fashion Show for Prettybird during London Fashion Week and BT for Nicholas Jasenovec through Caviar. Simon Chaudoir was in Portugal shooting a Garnier commercial for directors Santiago & Mauricio through Cadence, and in Mexico shooting a First Choice campaign For Director Jonathan Herman At Blink.

Stephen Keith-Roach’s Commercials Include Harvey Nichols and Specsavers both for Tim Bullock through Blink, XFM for directors The Bobbsey Twins again for Blink, and an OTE campaign for director Sam Miller at Mustard/Topcut Productions.

Tim Maurice-Jones BSC has Up the creek… graded Bastille Day for James Mel Griffith on a boat along Watkins and shot a Bet Victor the Amazon campaign for Traktor in Mallorca.

Alex Melman was in Morocco shooting a Playtex spot for Laurence Dunmore through Gang Films in Paris. Jake Polonsky BSC is shooting US project Billions.

Tat Radcliffe shot commercials for Che Banca with Giuseppe Capotondi in Milan through Mecurio, All smiles… and Centre Parks Ciro Candi a happy a on a shoo for Ben Liam Jones t at Mustard. Simon Richards shot a Slack commercial for Smith & Foulkes through Nexus, and a Tuc spot for Henry Littlechild at Outsider in Lithuania. Peter Suschitzky lensed a Very. com ad for Vesa Manninen through Outsider.

Joost Van Gelder is shooting a Delta commercial for director Adam Berg, in various countries for Smuggler. Marcel Zyskind’s commercials include a campaign for Lexus with Adam Berg in Monaco and Durex for Wilfred Brimo in Bulgaria through Wanda.

McKinney Macartney Management: Stuart Biddlecombe has completed principle photography on Doctor Who on location in Wales, with director Rachel Talalay. Ben Butler, Sebastian Milaszewski, Arthur Mulhern, Alessandra Scherillo and Clive Tickner

46 | British Cinematographer | November 2015

BSC have been shooting commercials. Denis Crossan is shooting Kurt Sutter’s new FX series The Bastard Executioner in Wales, with Paris Barclay directing. Gavin Finney BSC has started shooting The Secret Agent, for World Productions with Charles McDougall directing.

Jean Philippe Gossart is on the second unit on Warner Bros.’ Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them, with second unit Gyro.. director Stephen Woolfenden Vincent Warin on location and David Yates at the helm.

Sam McCurdy BSC is prepping Amma Asante’s

feature A United Kingdom in London and Botswana for Pathé.

Andy McDonnell continues on Dickensian for Red Planet Pictures with Mark Brozel directing. John Pardue completed principle photography on Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, with director Craig Viveiros, for Mammoth Screen. Chris Seager BSC is shooting BBC political thriller, Undercover, with director James Hawes in London and Baton Rouge.

Mike Spragg continues on FX series, The Bastard Executioner, with director Paris Barclay, in Wales. Felix Wiedemann completed principle photography on the feature Stratton, with Simon West and is prepping BBC

drama, Murdered By My Father, with Bruce Goodison directing. Robin Whenary shot the drama Making Dad’s Army with director Steve Bendelack and is prepping the feature The Ghost Writer with Paul Wilkins at the helm.

PrinceStone: of the agency’s DPs… Laura Bellingham shot campaigns for Max Factor, Hugo Boss, Lacoste and Victoria Beckham, and is in pre-production for microwave-funded thriller Kill Her Witch.

Gary Clarke is lensing Barbarians Rising, an eight-part drama documentary for October Films/History Channel with Simon George and Declan O’Dwyer directing.

Gerry Vasbenter enjoyed the premiere of Taking Stock at the Raindance Film Festival.

This quirky and uplifting crime comedy by Swipe Films is directed by Maeve Murphy and addresses the issue of redundancy in post financial-crisis London, as 30-year old jobbing actress takes matters into her own hands when she is made ting redundant and faced with Reid shoo s on ar A e… ne a mountain of bills to pay.

The voic deo for Sir Tom Jo vi ic a mus Simon Walton is shooting Living A Lie for S4C, an eightpart political drama directed by Eryl Philips, using RED Dragon with Arri Ultra Primes and Alura zooms.

Of PrinceStone’s camera/Steadicam operators… Peter Robertson Assoc BSC ACO has finished shooting Dallas With Balls in Swansea with DP Zac Nicholson about iconic snooker player Alex “Hurricane’ Higgins, and is now on war drama The Yellow Birds in Morocco, about a bond between two young soldiers sent to fight in Iraq, with DP Dan Landin. Sean Savage Assoc BSC ACO is in Belfast shooting season six of Game Of Thrones, using Alexa with Cooke Primes and Angenieux zooms.

Simon Baker ACO is shooting the feature Their Finest Hour And A Half with director Lone Scherfig and cinematographer Sebastian Blenkov, in Wales. The film, about a British film crew shooting morale boosting film after the Blitzkrieg is for BBC Films, Number 9 Films and Wildgaze Films and stars Gemma Arterton, Sam Claflin and Bill Nighy. Thomas English worked on commercials for KFC, Betfair, British Heart Foundation and Breast Cancer awareness, as well as an Anamorphic spectacular for Emmerdale. James Layton ACO shot the final series of Downton Abbey and is now operating alongside Danish

>>

WHO’S SHOOTING WHO? / CINEMATOGRAPHERS ROUND-UP As-u-like-it…

Eben Bolter squints though the eyepice on Mum’s List

Travelling lig Simon Row ht…. landmark les on a BBC2 show

>>

cinematographer Rasmus Arrildt DFF on new investigative series created by Anthony Horowitz entitled New Blood, directed by Anthony Phillipson for Eleventh Hour Films. Joe Russell is on the set of Victoria a drama from Mammoth Screen shooting on location in the North of England. Tom Vaughan is directing Jenna Coleman, who is playing the role of the young Queen Victoria, and the DP is John Lee. Xandy Sahla is in the Czech Republic shooting series three BBC’s The Musketeers.

Cosmo Campbell worked on Stratton, an action thriller directed by Simon West, starring Dominic Cooper and Gemma Chan, in Rome, Southern Italy and the UK. He is now filming additional material for series six of Game Of Thrones in Almeria in Spain. Meanwhile… camera operator Mark Milsome ACO has finished shooting the final series of Downton Abbey and is doing dailies in Cornwall on Poldark. This new series is directed by Will Sinclair and Charles Palmer while Cinders Forshaw BSC and Sergio Delgado are the cinematographers. They shooting on ARRI Alexa Plus with Cooke S4 lenses.

MyManagement: Nicolaj Bruel was in Spain with director Martin Werner on Coke and in Ireland for Cambria with Alexei Tylevich. Simon Rowles is DP on a landmark, but untitled, documentary series for BBC2, shooting around the Mediterranean, directed by Southan Morris of Storyvault Films, and shooting on the ARRI Amira in 2K using Zeiss Super Speed primes, Canon CN7 and the TLS Morpheus Lens. Richard Stewart shot in Glasgow and New York for Ballantine’s with director Will Williamson and Archers Mark. He also shot a video for Jess Glynne with Declan Whitebloom at Blackdog.

Dominic Bartels lit spots for Nexxus with Spring Studios, ads for Eriksson and also shot a music video for Midnight Madness with director Daps. Aaron Reid collaborated

Line-up… DP Felix Wiedemann on the set of Stratton along side B-cam operator Cosmo Campbell and C-cam operator Emiliano Leurini

& Nic on Celebrations’ Hoy Hoy and Chemical Brothers. Tuomo Virtanen shot in Prague with Gang Films and director Rhett WadeFerrell on an AXA commercial. Roger Bonnici did dailies on series two of The Royals. Will …

Dappled lightra Humphris’ short film alongside director Sybil Alessand t H. Mair scooped up Best Cinematography Scherillo go a to illuminate at The Equus International Film Festival. st great big fore r He has also been shooting with director in Turkey fo Flo shoes Russell Tickner on Capco, with Spindle Productions and Greg Hackett, and with director Lisle Turner for an Earthquake charity shoot in Nepal. Gerry Floyd has wrapped on the feature Into Darkness with directors Peter Middleton and James Spinney. Jallo Faber FSF shot campaigns for Travel Supermarket in Barcelona and Money Supermarket in Budapest with director with Sally Sibbet at Caviar on a WSTRN job and lensed Andreas Nillson and Biscuit Filmworks, and was in Prague spots for Cadburys and Bet Cypher. He has also shot with Rane Tiukkanen. Vincent Warin has been in Sydney music videos for Sir Tom Jones, through JJ Stereo with and Bangkok with Partizan director Michael Geoghegan director James Larkin, Meridian Dan, through Mastermind on Patek watches. Andy Horner lit an Oykos Yoghurt Media, Beth Sherburn with Carly Cussen, and Jasmin spot with Howard Greenhalgh and did some teaching Thomson with Jak O’Hare. at a workshop at the EFTI film school in Madrid. Simon

Olivier Cariou was in Lithuania with director Ross Archer BSC is shooting Thirteen, a BBC 3/Grafton House Cooper at Friend London on The Hive, Visual Artists Production with director China Moo Young. Tim Spence on the Making of for Audi, with Benedict Redgrove, lensed spots including Nicorette and John Lewis. Ekkehart Bonkers director Michael Wong on a Unox commercial Pollack shot AMG in Italy and Spain with Tibor Klage in Amsterdam and with Armada films on a CSOB Bank and Café Royal in Croatia with Marc Scholermann. Mel commercial in Prague with director Tomas Rehovek. Sy Griffith and director Bastian Kuhn, alongside production Turnbull won Best Cinematography at the Ibiza Music company/agency Faust Berlin, have produced a cinemaVideo Festival for his powerful imagery on the music only commercial to promote Frankfurt Motor Show video Preacherman by Melody Gardot. Robbie Ryan BSC IAA 2015. Shot on the RED Epic over three days in the is shooting with Ken Loach on the feature film I Am Daniel Amazon Jungle of Peru. Lester De Havilland, Marcelo Blake in Newcastle through Sixteen Films. Paul Mackay Durst, David Lanzenberg, Dennis Madden, Petra Korner, has been busy shooting Idents for ITV with director James John Perez, Jo Willems ASC SBC, Anders Flatland Adamson and Alex Mathison, and shot spots for Louis FNF, Tomas Tomasson, and Pedro Castro have all been Vuitton and Savills as well a music video for artist Norma working on personal projects.

Jean. Steve Chivers has been with Outsider directors Dom

Summertime… Catherine Derry in sunny Wicklow, Ireland, on an Amnesty International spot about Ireland’s abortion laws. Graham Linehan (IT Crowd) wrote it and Jamie Thraves (with hat) directed it.

Neil Edson produced for production company Kode

48 | British Cinematographer | November 2015

WHO’S SHOOTING WHO? / CINEMATOGRAPHERS ROUND-UP

Slideshow...

John Pardue on the set of And Then There Were None

Wizzo FEATURES: welcomes Sverre Sørdal to its roster. Originally from Norway, he graduated with an MA in cinematography from the NFTS in 2014, and his graduation film was the stunning car rally story Group B, which is nominated for the student Oscar. Whilst at the NFTS he also shot the BIFA and BAFTA-nominated short film Slap with the same director, Nick Rowland, starring Joe Cole, which also won Best Short at the Edinburgh International Film Festival (2014). Tim Sidell prepping on the feature Modern Life Is Rubbish for director Daniel Jerome Gill in London. Matthias Pilz is prepping the feature The Miner, directed by Hanna Slak. The film shoots in Slovenia and is based on the true story of a Bosnian miner who uncovers a tomb of 4,000 victims of war from the Srebrenica genocide of 1995. Erik Wilson has started shooting the feature American Animals, directed

by Bart Layton produced through Film 4, and will also be shooting Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard’s next film project for Sky Arts. Eben Bolter is shooting the feature Mum’s List for director Niall Johnson, starring Rafe Spall and Emilia Fox, based on the best-selling non fiction novel

by St John Greene. Sergio Delgado is shooting Poldark, with director Charles Palmer. Dan Stafford-Clark is on the feature The Library Suicides with director Euros Lyn

Up up and aw ay…

Fabrizio Sciar SOC ACO tak ra es an awesome ride du his stint on Be ring owulf

for Ffilm Cymru/ BFI/ BBC Films/ S4C. Dale McCready is lensing A Midsummer Night’s Dream through the BBC with director David Kerr. Nick Dance BSC is shooting BBC Comedy’s Professor Branestawm with director Sandy Johnson, starring Harry Hill as the professor. Baz Irvine is continuing on the footballing feature documentary Bobby Moore with director Ron Scalpello. Gary Shaw has wrapped on Tommy’s Honour, a story of the founders of the modern game of golf directed by Jason Connery and starring Peter Mullan and Jack Lowden. Angus Hudson BSC has wrapped on the feature The Hippopotamus, based on the book by Stephen Fry, directed by John Jencks and starring Roger Allam and Fiona Shaw. David Rom worked on the first three blocks of BBC drama Thirteen directed by Vanessa Caswill, about a young woman who escapes from a cellar after 13 years and is reunited

with her family. Jan RichterFriis DFF is shooting the new season of Sleepy Hollow in Atlanta, through NBC. Jamie Cairney is lighting an episode of detective drama Vera, directed by Paul Gay. Maja Zamojda continues on ITV’s eight-part period drama Jericho, starring Jessica Raine, with director David Moore. Duncan Telford is shooting the second series of comedy Hoff The Record starring infamous Baywatch star David Hasselhoff. Antonio Paladino has wrapped on the short film Dreamland, directed by Sara Dunlop, shot on location in Margate. Jaime Feliu-Torres shot the short film Litterbugs, directed by Peter Stanley Ward. And finally...

Mattias Nyberg’s comedy feature Superbob, directed by Jon Drever and starring Brett Goldstein and Catherine Tate, went on general release in the UK recently.

British Cinematographer | November 2015 | 49

MEET THE NEW WAVE / MAJA ZAMOJDA / CINEMATOGRAPHER

LENS BABY Filmography (so far): Jericho (2015), Tripped (2015), Not Safe For Work (2015), Jet Trash (2015), The Village (2014), Fresh Meat (2013), Skins (2013) and Dates (2013).

Away from work, what are your greatest passions?

I’m into alternative medicine, herbology and organic everything. I also love doodling, love music and I always dream of coming up with a fun start-up idea.

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

There Will Be Blood (2008, dir: Paul Thomas Anderson, DP Robert Elswit ASC)

When did you discover you wanted to be a cinematographer?

When I was 17, I got a small camera. I would carry it with me and film short moments that I found visually intriguing. I liked the mysterious nights and exposed days. I’d cut montages with music. They didn’t have any logical structure. They were short experiments: my dialogue with aesthetics, concepts and interpretations.

What one piece of kit could you not live without?

Sadly, that would be my phone. I keep my notes on it, references, photos and I can always call a friend when I need some advice.

What are your current top albums?

Gil Scott-Heron and Jamie xx’s We’re New Here; 80’s electronic, synthpop, electro.

Where did you train?

At the National Film & Television School. It was a twoyear course. It opened a lot of doors and I loved every minute spent in Beaconsfield.

What’s weirdest place you’ve ever shot in?

It was the weirdest and most inspiring place - India. I loved it. It’s just magical.

What’s the best advice you were ever given?

“The day you’re fully happy with your work, is the last day of your career.” This makes sense: as long as you continue to learn, you will feel like you’re growing.

What’s the worst knock-back/rejection you ever had?

Sometimes you read a script and completely fall in love with the story, but then they choose a different DP. It’s difficult to visualise a project and then realise you’re not going to shoot it.

What have been your best & worst moments on set?

Best moment. I guess is when you arrive on-set in the morning and while eating your breakfast, you feel like you’re in the right place on the right project. You’re working with creative people, on an ambitious script, surrounded by supportive crew. You’re all enjoying the shoot and you know that the film will be brilliant. The shoot is demanding but the rushes are magical. What else could you ask for?

Worst moment. There is not enough budget or time to facilitate your ideas. People are stressing and blaming each other. Hardly anybody enjoys their time on -et and people neurotically check their phones, counting hours to wrap. Oh… and it’s rainy January and you’re stuck in a windy field.

What was the biggest challenge on your latest production?

We’re currently building a cave/mine set on ITV series Jericho. I’m researching how to light it. It’s 1874, so oil lamps would be our prime sources of light. Our studio has very low ceiling, so there isn’t much space to rig above it. Part of it is a tunnel and so it’s pretty difficult to justify light underground. I’m still thinking about it!

Tell us your most hilarious faux pas?

When I was a runner I asked the DP, “What’s that?”, pointing at a bizarre lens that he had just taken out of a small black box. “It’s a Lens Baby,” he said. “Don’t call me ‘baby’”, I answered. Oh yes, they found that very funny!

50 | British Cinematographer | November 2015

Which films are you most proud of to date?

The answer is and hopefully always will be, “my most recent project”. I like learning and I like a challenge.

What’s the hardest shot/thing you’ve had to light/frame?

I shot a stop-motion puppet film, and it took us several months to complete this eight-minute project. We had to glue all the stands, props and tripods. It required a lot of precision. It was hard, but very rewarding.

Tell us your hidden talent/party trick?

Dancing, I definitely love dancing.

On-set… Maja is pictured with director Robert McKillop whilst shooting Jericho

Can you tell us your greatest extravagance?

I often have seconds for breakfast and lunch, and why not two desserts?

What’s the best thing about being a DP? Creating parallel universes and alternative realities.

What’s the worst thing about being a DP? The time away from your close friends, family – away from your life in general. Travelling can be inspiring, but everyone needs time to bring their souvenirs back home.

Describe your approach to cinematography?

I like improvising, especially when there is a basic plan, and you can allow yourself to be spontaneous. If something happens by chance, there is a good possibility it might be exactly what you were looking for. I try to change styles on every project I shoot. I try to start from scratch and come up with new aesthetic grammar.

That’s probably my favourite time on a project.

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

An illustrator or a chef.

What are your aspirations for the future?

I’d like to challenge myself and shoot in styles I haven’t tried before. I’d like to find projects that are more and more demanding. I’d like to find scripts that mean a lot to me personally and that I believe will make a strong impact on the audience.

POST-IT NOTES / I-DAILIES

FRAME OF MIND Nigel Horn, founder and general operations manager, of i-dailies, says the inherent beauty of film and the desire for creative choice, are keeping celluloid origination alive and kicking.

W

ell, I guess, as the saying goes: ‘It’s never over till it’s over’. Around ten years ago the laboratory world felt the first really serious chill winds of digital origination begin to bite. Around five years ago the noise (no pun intended) from the digital side of the fence was deafening, telling us all that the future would be totally digital, as it was better, cheaper, easier, etc., etc., and the generally accepted view was that film was on a one-way ticket to oblivion within a pretty finite time-frame.

In April 2013, when Fujifilm announced it was stopping manufacturing stocks, Kodak hit financial trouble going into Chapter 11, and Deluxe and Technicolor both closed their processing laboratories globally, you had to have a lot of faith in miracles to believe that there could be any possible future for motion picture film origination.

Fast forward to October 2015 and, against all the odds, it does seems that miracles can in fact happen.

In the case of film, it’s not that something better per se came along, but just that something totally different became available with (as in all things) some pros and some cons.

However, it is generally initially easy to sell new technology as being inherently ‘better’ than old technology and there can also, of course, often be a logical assumption to this being the case. Film therefore suffered as an automatic result of this ‘new vs. old’ scenario. The film lobby made attempts to put the case for film origination. The Image Forum, valiantly organised

by Judith Petty at ARRI and supported by camera rental houses, stock manufactures and the labs, plus the BSC’s camera equivalency tests, made when Sue Gibson was BSC president, were extremely worthwhile exercises.

But the wave of momentum at that time (RED did not partake directly in these tests, but was causing great interest) was becoming overwhelming and the film lobby appeared often to be on the back foot, with confidence in the unique strengths of its own medium ebbing away as a result. We were losing momentum and our efforts became gradually more dissipated as we increasingly concentrated on just trying to hang on to the fast disappearing coat-tails of the film-originated projects that there were.

However, stating the obvious, the joy of film is that it tells a story in a different way to digital origination – not better, not worse, just differently – and the creative choice of format to suit any particular project is something that is joyously alive and kicking in 2015.

Over these years there has been time for the industry to come to its own informed conclusions on 52 | British Cinematographer | November 2015

the “Film vs. Digital” debate, and it appears that creative choice is increasingly becoming the deciding factor.

Also, for lower budget projects the previous kneejerk ‘we would love to shoot on film, but we can’t afford it’ response is becoming less prevalent, due to both Kodak and Frame 24, in collaboration with the remaining laboratories, offering preferential stock, processing and scanning packages.

UK tax breaks have encouraged the major US Studios, (who have committed to substantial film use for the foreseeable future) to work here. With the same negative processing capacity that Technicolor had at Pinewood (100,000ft per 8hrs), and with a team of ex-Technicolor and ex-Deluxe technicians using exclusively Photomec processing machines, we were the only lab to step into the breach the moment the closures of the Tech and Deluxe processing labs were announced two and a half years ago thus enabling the projects that, at that time, were committed to filming in the UK to stay with that format.

We work with most of the film schools in the UK and the genuine interest in shooting on film, from firstyear exercises up to graduation projects, by so many student filmmakers, is genuinely heartening. We do everything possible to assist and encourage those venturing into film for the first time.

The generally accepted view seems to be that very many directors and DPs want the continuation of a creative choice between film and digital origination and, in order for this to be the case for the future, and to sustain any laboratory infrastructure in the UK, film needs to be used for the appropriate projects and that choice not be stifled.

Also, it is essential that the labs be allowed to scan (at 2K/4K) the negative that they process in order to: 1) verify their own work first-hand, and 2) provide the most experienced film lab contact person to deliver full and time-efficient rushes reports to the DP and production.

(Clive Noakes is with us for such a role and there is no-one more experienced or respected in the industry for what he does.) Crucially, labs need revenues for scanning as they cannot continue indefinitely on negative processing revenues alone.

The reason that there continues to be a lab infrastructure available for DPs and directors to exercise their creative choice, is due to the fact that many of us who are remain in this work, with a life-time of hands-on experience, are driven by a genuine passion for a format that can, in the best hands, impart a profoundly affecting pull on the imagination – allowing us, even for a couple of hours or so, to be transported, with complete suspension of disbelief, to other worlds and, most importantly, back in touch with ourselves.

Random grain. Subliminal flicker. Richness of colour.

Chiarsascuro. Latitude. Film… it’s a very beautiful thing!

Processed… i-dailies has provided lab services for a host of movies incl uding Star Wars: The Force Awakens, 007 SPE CTRE, Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation, Cinderel la, The Imit From The Madding Crow ation Game, Far d and Jimmy’s Hall

LETTER FROM AMERICA / STEVEN POSTER ASC

Steven Poster ASC says workplace unity, set etiquette and civil camaraderie need to be integrated into the 21st century production culture.

I

know it’s easy for the more senior practitioners of our craft to often regale younger camera team members with tales of how much this industry has changed.

How we have all “benefited” from our years of handson apprenticeship training on-sets, from mentors who took the time to pass on the knowledge they had gleaned in a system and a workflow as old as cinema itself. I know it’s easy to say the “good old days” were somehow better than today’s more fragmented landscape. But that’s hardly the essence of this editorial.

Frankly, this is no longer the same industry we old farts love to tell stories about. It’s plain to see how much of a culture shift has occurred and, as someone who has personally experienced this sea change, I’m not here to pass judgment either way. In fact, this new era, built around digital technology, may well be more exciting and creative than any we ever lived through. But what is of vital importance for our younger Guild members to understand is that specific aspects of the system I grew up within, namely etiquette, mutual respect and the creative hierarchies on a set, should not be tossed aside.

The great Conrad Hall ASC made a statement late in his life about how directors of photography are responsible for their entire crew. And what that means is that in this industry we call, “show business,” there are practices and methodologies that create the notion of “family” on sets and locations. It’s a key concept that is certainly less present today, and due, in large part, to the lack of the kind of training that past generations learned by “coming up through the ranks.”

Still, the essence of what this kind of training represents remains an imperative: to sustain (and in many cases, bring back) the idea that the filmmakers on a set are a working family, whose leader (the director of photography) is responsible for the safety, welfare and working conditions of the clan. I’ve always scheduled meetings with my crews (and anyone else who wants to join in) at the beginning of each production to talk about the dangers and pitfalls that lay ahead, with the goal being to empower each crewmember to be his or her own safety officer; to really watch out for all of our sisters and brothers.

I remember how a veteran key grip took me aside on my very first day on a film set and said I needed to learn two things: “stay busy and never sit down,” and “always return to the set with a piece of gear in your hands” (and he wasn’t talking about a smart phone!). Sounds like folk wisdom, perhaps, but his message about respecting the set and always staying engaged – with the work and with each other has never been more relevant.

Respect in my formative years was always passed down the line – from the DP, to the operator, to the camera assistants, to the loaders – and now we can add job functions like DITs and digital data wranglers to that chain.

Workplace unity, set etiquette and civil camaraderie may seem like small intangibles, concepts 54 | British Cinematographer | November 2015

from another era. But they have actually sustained this industry for more than a century; and need to be integrated into this 21st century culture, built upon new technologies and new ways of creating images.

The ability to make a set efficient, respectful to all of the production crafts and, most of all, safe for every single person, is a theme I always feel it is necessary to talk about.

A safe, communicative set is an achievable goal to which every member of this industry must strive. The ideas of set etiquette and a set hierarchy have a definitive purpose beyond what the words themselves convey: making entertainment is a dangerous business, particularly with anything that involves “action cinematography.”

The tools we use are heavy (even the small ones), and the control that we require of an environment to achieve our filmmaking goals is extraordinary. That goes for small productions, as well as the obvious demands of a large studio franchise or TV pilot/series filled with stunts and VFX. I can’t imagine any dedicated production team that does not, in all of the important ways, consider themselves filmmakers, not wanting to put out the very best effort to achieve the creative goals of the director and cinematographer. That’s why the set hierarchy is vital.

Especially on a project where the stakes are often raised with action photography, the chain of communication must be crystal clear and all must understand the line of information on a daily basis. Everybody must be conscious of their surroundings and the people around them. These are the ways we become a cohesive unit; these are the ways we become a family.

It’s simple to identify the set hierarchy, given the job classifications to which our industry adheres. To my directors of photography colleagues I would add that one of our most important responsibilities is to keep the camera team safe and support them in every possible way. The pressure to move quickly – on a big or small show – escalates with each passing day. That’s why the way a set is run, which is the responsibility of the first

assistant director, is such an important part of how we all unite as a production family.

Early in my career, I was fortunate to have worked with the same assistant director on seven consecutive features. My friend worked either as the 1st AD or unit manager on many of these projects. He helped create a rhythm that can only come with consistency and familiarity.

It was a joy, really from the first time on the set, to work with him because the level of trust was absolute. The instinctive understanding he and I developed became invaluable, and that should be developed throughout the production team, at every level. If I don’t have that kind of communication with the camera operator, camera assistant, DIT, gaffer and key grip, then my ability to realise the director’s vision (and keep my crew safe) will be compromised.

One way to secure this level of communication and trust is for the director of photography and the assistant director to speak with the entire crew about safety protocol before production begins. The dangers I mentioned earlier in our profession can also be present in even the most innocent ways. For example, I often tell the make-up, hair and wardrobe, costume and art departments (who are not typically dealing with heavy equipment) to be mindful of obstructions around the set.

I ask the sparks to make sure dark areas around and near the set are lit, so everyone can be safe.

Everyone should have a voice in “caution.” If you see something unsafe, do not be silent. Let someone in your department know. Anything of an inherently dangerous nature – stunt, action, working with special tools – has established industry guidelines that are readily available through your smartphone and Local 600’s recently introduced Safety App. For example, working with explosives and gunfire has clearly mapped-out procedures.

If you see those procedures not being followed, for whatever reason, speak up!

We are all one family – never more so than when lives are literally on the line.

CAMERA CREATIVE / HOYTE VAN HOYTEMA FSF NSC /SPECTRE

56 | British Cinematographer | November 2015

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British Cinematographer | November 2015 | 57

CAMERA CREATIVE / HOYTE VAN HOYTEMA FSF NSC / SPECTRE

Hoyte van Hoytema FSF NSC

How did SPECTRE come your way?

HvH: It was pretty much through Sam. Although he and Roger have a great relationship, and worked together on Skyfall, Roger was not able to do the cinematography on the next Bond film.

Clearly I was on Sam’s radar.

From my side, I had recently finished Interstellar with Chris Nolan, and I wanted to focus for a while on smaller films. You dedicate yourself 100% to a project – you live it, breath it, eat it – and then need to clear your head. It has to leave your system at the end, so you can accept new projects and ideas for those new projects. But when Sam Mendes calls offering you a 007 James Bond movie, it’s a no brainer. It was very exciting, awe-inspiring and frightening all at the same time. I have always loved Sam’s work.

He has such a nice eye for detail, and incorporates great cinematography into his films. But a Bond production is spread all over the world, and you have to take part in an inexorable machinery, where the movie has a release date as soon as you start, and must find your visual language within that.

Tell us about your initial conversations with Sam Mendes about the approach to shooting SPECTRE? HvH: We met in NY and clicked immediately. I had never met Sam before, but from the start we had an

intuitive relationship. We are very close on a taste level, have a common understanding of how images work, and it was very easy for us to communicate. Sam was interested in my work – I think he enjoyed Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Her – and there must be a sensitivity in these and my older movies that he wanted for SPECTRE. We talked early-on about this next installment of Bond regaining a kind of romanticism, to be more warm-blooded and less formal, whilst still being cool. It has lots of action, but some very enjoyable humorous moments too. There’s a new intimacy with James Bond himself who, during his missions is extremely driven and focused, like a hunter.

Did you look at other Bond films?

HvH: Yes, of course. But as much as you are a fanboy, and can be inspired by them, you owe it to yourself to make your own version – the one that Sam and I signed off on – and to move the franchise along. Obviously there’s an expectation – a Bond move has to have certain ingredients – and within those rules you have to find your own ideas. SPECTRE links more to the older-style Bonds, rather than the more recent ones, but has more of a modern, 21st century rule set.

What research did you do and what creative references did you consider?

HvH: For me, stills are always a big help to cross-reference with the director. They contain a mood and a poetry that are concrete, fixed reference points to discuss. I always gather lots of stills during pre-production and testing, put them on a wall, and keep adding and taking away as I refine the look and find my visual language for a movie.

For SPECTRE I started looking at fashion photography – as it has a freer, non-formal style to it – and good, high-end fashion photography has this quality. I also especially liked a number of images made by the US photographer Philip-Lorca diCorcia. He has a nostalgic approach to lighting and his images are stylish, timeless and atmospheric. His pictures inspire spectators with an awareness of the psychology and emotion in a real-life situation. They are glamorous and melancholic. Whilst SPECTRE looks far from a Philip-Lorca diCorcia photo, I felt it was a good thing to have these in the back of our heads when we were shooting. Bond is a journey, through geography, through personal moods and through atmospheres, and we were always aware to create a very particular sensibility to the light in these different situations.

Did you debate digital versus film for SPECTRE? HvH: We had a lot of discussions about the origination format from the start.

We tested digital, Anamorphic 35mm film, and even IMAX. Obviously Skyfall was shot on the ARRI Alexa, but I love film. It has exactly the kind of romantic quality, texture and aura that I wanted to infuse back into Bond. Sam was very enthusiastic and welcomed my suggestion with open arms. The producers, Barbara and Michael, after I presented them with a series of tests, were enthusiastic too.

So we elected to shoot film. As filmmakers they recognised the qualities that film can bring and that digital sometimes lacks. Digital lacks the depth and its

58 | British Cinematographer | November 2015

“I HAD NEVER MET SAM BEFORE, BUT FROM THE START WE HAD AN INTUITIVE RELATIONSHIP. WE ARE VERY CLOSE ON A TASTE LEVEL, HAVE A COMMON UNDERSTANDING OF HOW IMAGES WORK.” HOYTE VAN HOYTEMA FSF NSC sharp, gridded and harsh appearance often gets mistaken for resolution. I did my best to make this film as lush and romantic as I could, and film was best choice.

Tell us about your choice of lenses?

HvH: Glass is such a personal thing, from movie to movie, with the different textures and how you want to work with the fall-off and the overall look. On Interstellar Panavision helped me with C-series Anamorphic glass that I really liked.

They are always willing to work with you, and have extremely good engineers, creative, insightful, smart people with you as you move on creatively to new projects. So with their help, particularly Dan Sasaki, their mastermind of optical engineering, I repurposed those lenses for SPECTRE. They swapped various elements around and perfected the glass to what I wanted.

They even custom-built from scratch a new, 65mm T2.0 Anamorphic lens, based on C-series architecture – a focal length Panavision has never had before – and that became one of our primary workhorses. I felt the traditional 75mm lacked the intimacy I wanted on close-up work, whereas the 65mm is more intimate, and it renders beautifully. That said, it’s a focus puller’s nightmare and Julian Bucknall our A-camera assistant nicknamed it “The Beast.” We also gave names our other bespoked workhorse lenses – the 50mm, we called “The Bullet”, and the 40mm we called “The Chosen One”.

And how about your cameras and filmstocks?

HvH: Our workhorse camera was the Panavision Millennium XL2, as it converts easily from studio mode to handheld or Steadicam mode. I selected Kodak 500T and 250D Vision 3 film, as I like the texture and the dimensionality of the grain of these stocks. In Mexico we used 50D as it was so bright and sunny on the exterior day scenes. On a practical level, I did not want to stop-down the lenses. I love to shoot with low levels of light, as it’s much more interesting for the actors to enter and work in space where there’s an atmosphere and there are fewer lamps on the floor. I don’t think high or harsh light levels are conducive for the actors’ performances.

What can you tell us about your lighting choices?

HvH: I have never had such large lighting set-ups before, and I must give a shout-out to my gaffer David Smith, who was my hero and guide in making those very big lighting set-ups work smoothly. For example, for the nightime stunt sequence on The Thames we had 28 generators spread along the river banks, and seven cameras shooting second unit. When we shot on the 007

Stage at Pinewood, we had a 360-degree Translight, and that’s a huge amount of light that needs to be controlled in such a large space. We deployed a lot of LEDs, tube lights and used Tungsten on-stage as much as possible.

On big set-ups Dave had the lights under DMX control, which allowed me to dim the lighting as I wanted. And, of course, we had to find intimacy within all of this, and Dave gave me that control for those details too with

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Alexander Witt - second unit director/DP One of the key elements of second unit cinematography is that the images produced are in harmony with the overall visual language of the movie. Following-up similar roles on Casino Royale and Skyfall, second unit director/DP Alexander Witt says that collaboration with Mendes and van Hoytema throughout the whole year he spent on the production, starting in July 2014, was fundamental to the process.

The other key aspect for the second unit is preparation. Which meant Witt working not just with his team, including trusted A-camera operator Clive Jackson, but also with SFX supervisor Chris Corbould on the plane stunt/crash sequence in Austria, and stunt coordinator Gary Powell for the high-speed car chase across Rome.

“We tested extensively for both sequences at Longcross Studios,” says Witt. “We knew that shooting in Rome would be pressurised. We only had one night at each location. Could only start lighting at 10pm at night, due to traffic. And would have six hours before the dawn broke and the light came up. Because of the work we had done prior to the shoot, we had a very good idea about how the sports cars and the cameras would stand up to the rigours of the cobbled streets and stone stairways in Rome, and how to shoot the fast-paced action. Thankfully we were joined by Hoyte’s friend Jallo Faber for this shoot, and I joined in with fourth camera, and it worked out very well.”

British Cinematographer | November 2015 | 59

CAMERA CREATIVE / HOYTE VAN HOYTEMA FSF NSC / SPECTRE

more intimate lights such as the Creamsource and >> smaller other homemade LED inventions. Lighting was supplied mostly from Panalux.

Who were your and how did you work together?

HvH: You always want to have willing and creative cooperators on any project, but on a big movie like SPECTRE they are absolutely essential. Normally I operate, but this production was on such a scale that I felt I needed other keen and good eyes behind the camera. I was very dependent on the people around me, and they deserve so much credit for their efforts throughout.

Two heroes for me were Dave my gaffer, and my main unit A-camera operator Lucas Bielan who we imported from the US. Lucas is meticulous, added the sensitivity I wanted, and also added something himself. He helped take the weight off my shoulders. My key grip, Gary Hymns, a Bond veteran, was fantastic. With his good mood and energy he always gave me the feeling that anything was possible. I got along with very well indeed with our first AC/focus puller Julian Bucknall. As I love shooting wide open, Julian faced hardcore challenges, because there is virtually no focal depth on The Beast, The Bullet and The Chosen One. But he dealt with any stress in an ice-cold manner, and always had a sense of humour.

We used Steadicam sparsely, as it was not the main language of this film. But, when we did need those sorts of moves, Julian Morson proved very sensitive. He’s a great camera operator too, so when a second camera was required, it was easy to get Julian in-there and his B-camera material integrated seamlessly with the footage shot by Lucas.

I have also to praise the second unit. Alexander Witt, the second unit director, was very well organised, and worked closely with my friend from Sweden, Jallo Faber, who did beautiful work as second unit DP. Together they paid great attention to the lighting, keeping it tasteful and properly lit.

How did you move the camera?

HvH: Apart from using multiple cameras on action sequences, SPECTRE was mainly a one-camera shoot, especially for dramatic conversation pieces. I like the camera to move in a functional way, with a certain integrity and decency, unmotivated and never for the sake of it.

I really dislike it when camera moves are obvious, and I actively censor any ‘jazz’ that happens with the camera.

Rather, I prefer a level of restraint, to create tension. If you shout all the time, at some point the audience becomes oblivious to what’s being said. So you take the voice down and people move towards the edge of their seats and listen more. And that’s my approach to the cameras.

We used lateral dolly moves, and we did quite a bit of handheld work motivated by the actors and their emotions.

Handheld is very soulful and rewarding when done nicely, and it helped us get closer to the intimate essence in many scenes.

It was great having Lucas. His handheld work is sensitive, with a restrained rhythm and very soft pans, that give the image a romanticism that I really like. It’s like the fashion photography that I referenced – loose, personal and intimate.

Gary Spratling Associate BSC ACO – second unit camera operator “It’s very special, exciting and great fun to work on a James Bond movie. It’s like a big family, from the moment you walk on set, because of Barbara and Michael and the team of people they like to work with,” says Gary Spratling, second unit camera operator on SPECTRE.

After shooting third camera for Bond’s ferocious dust-up on the Tangier train, Spratling was invited by second unit director/DP Alexander Witt to shoot the river chase and crash scene at the end of the movie, working alongside second unit A-camera operator Clive Jackson.

The speedboat and helicopter sequences were shot on The Thames at night over the course of five consecutive weekends, during the summer of 2015, using ARRI Alexa 65s. The helicopter crash and explosion were filmed separately on 35mm on the 007 Stage at Pinewood, where a full-length Westminster Bridge set had been built.

“Not that you would know that we shot these sequences at different times and locations and with different cameras,” says Spratling. “The set design, lighting set-ups and VFX work were absolutely spoton and the shots match perfectly in the final movie.”

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Did you have any concerns about shooting on film?

HvH: I had more of a frustration, than a concern. When people keep saying, “Film is dying, film is dying”, it helps to make it die. But film is too beautiful and too good to disregard. With SPECTRE, the Star Wars reboot, Mission Impossible 5 and Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight all shooting on film, people are reminded that film must be good, and there’s a new positivism towards shooting on celluloid. Thanks also to Chris Nolan and his lobbying efforts, I’d like to think that that it will stick around for a good while yet.

As for SPECTRE, we had two labs to choose from, and I tested them both. They both came back with great results and beautiful prints. In the end I chose to go with i-dailies. As much as I would have loved to have watched film rushes, the turnaround was so fast that scanned dailies went immediately to editorial and the VFX vendors. So we watched HD dailies. Also, as we were doing a DI grade, I didn’t want to put the negative through any possible risk.

How much time do you have for prep and what were the working hours?

HvH: I worked on SPECTRE for a year in total. We shot for 128 days. The lengthy pre-production and prep was very much needed, as there are so many logistics to consider. We scouted all of the locations, knew what we wanted to get out of them, and considered what the weather and the sun would be like at each.

Also, with Bond movies, the interiors are almost always shot on-stage, rather than at the location. Whilst this gives you a huge level of control, it also means you have to be very careful to match the atmosphere and lighting of exteriors with interiors often shot weeks apart. So the lengthy prep was really helpful.

We worked five-day weeks, but that became more like six-day weeks for me towards the end of the production. As the cinematographer you never really rest. I was always looking at rushes, grading trailers, looking at forthcoming lighting plans, scouting a location, or advising the second unit. It’s intense, but I work like a machine on these occasions. Especially on Bond, it’s like an oil tanker moving relentlessly along.

Do you have a favourite scene?

HvH: On a Bond film you tumble from one atmosphere to another. For SPECTRE we shot on locations in London, the Austrian Alps, Mexico City, Morocco and The Vatican in Rome, as well as on the stages at Pinewood. These are each like mini films in themselves, and it was enjoyable to approach them in different ways and create different atmospheres. Although the movie is jam-packed with CGI, our philosophy was to try to do as much as we could in-camera. The most challenging, and ultimately satisfying big scene, was a particularly long shot in Mexico, where we built a huge high scaffold right across the back of a large block of buildings so that we could track a Technocrane to capture a special stunt shot combination. It took two months to build the scaffold and get the rig set, and I doubt if there’s been anything bigger on a movie before. The challenges we had to face up to will be clear to you as soon as you see the movie. Technically, it was a mind-fuck but ultimately very rewarding.

However have a thing for some of the smaller scenes as well. There is a moment in a Moroccan hotel room where it is all about mood, melancholy and intimacy. It became so atmospheric and tender in the film, that even sometimes I forget that it was actually shot in a studio somewhere in a cold, foggy, soggy field near Slough – which is hugely satisfying for a DP.

What can you tell us about working with the VFX team?

HvH: I was closely involved with the previz of VFX shots, such as the one in Mexico, and it’s good to have these well thought-out and to have everyone on the same page when you come to the day of the shoot. Steve Begg the VFX supervisor, another Bond veteran, was always around, making sure we did the right thing for the VFX team. He was clear in his instructions, and it was very helpful in knowing when to shoot bluecreen and what he could rotoscope without needing blue. Peter Talbot did a great job directing the VFX photography.

Were there any happy accidents?

HvH: Yes, with the weather. When we were in Morocco, the shoot was bumped by half a day due to a terrific sandstorm. But the effect was fortunate, as it gave a

Steve Begg – VFX supervisor The spectacular action sequences in SPECTRE certainly leave the audience shaken as well as stirred. VFX supervisor Steve Begg, whose previous Bond credits include working as a digital effects artist on GoldenEye, and as the visual effects supervisor on both Casino Royale and Skyfall, worked full-time on SPECTRE for over a year, and says the final shots were delivered to post just one week before the world premiere of the movie in the UK on October 26th. It’s understandable. With well over 1,500 VFX shots to manage he says, “SPECTRE was bigger, massively bigger, than previous Bond movies.” Casino Royale contained 850 VFX shots, with Skyfall numbering 1,100.

The main VFX vendors coordinated

by Begg on SPECTRE were Cinesite, Double Negative, Industrial Light & Magic’s UK branch, MPC Canada and Peerless. London VFX shop Bluebolt handled various cosmetic works.

Begg worked closely with the production on a daily basis. “I really enjoyed putting my head together with Hoyte, his camera team, as well as Sam, throughout the production. Hoyte and I developed a deep mutual respect, and this level of cooperation – around such things as camera moves, the use of blue or greenscreen, and atmospherics, such as smoke – definitely made things easier for each another and our respective teams.”

granularity and cast an atmospheric haze than we could not perhaps have otherwise created or imagined.

Did you do anything special in the DI? HvH: I did the DI at CO3 with Greg Fisher, who is fantastic. Greg has a very keen and subtle eye for the tender slopes of colour and contrast. He also understands the emotional curves throughout the film. His handling of the original material was always with gentle steps and with huge respect to the original ideas and the negative. We fought hard to go 4K for the most of it to maintain as much as possible of the original texture and sharpness of film.

How was your 007 Bond experience overall?

HvH: It’s very nice to collaborate with an auteur like Sam, as he wanted to make the best-possible movie. It was an absolute privilege to work with Barbara and Michael.

They have so much experience, and so much love for the subject and the franchise, yet they were completely open to our input, and very courageous to keep exploring and to keep it exciting. How wonderful that they fullysupported the decision to shoot a cool new film with 35mm on Anamorphic. Sometimes, in exotic locations Sam and I felt we had come home. SPECTRE was a very beautiful, life-altering experience for me, and I’m a very lucky to have been on this adventure.

Clive Jackson GBCT ACO – second unit A-camera operator Whilst the main job at hand is to capture the action, operating A-camera on second unit, especially on a relentless schedule such as SPECTRE, demands a problems-solving capability.

A regular collaborator of second unit director Alexander Witt, Clive Jackson worked on SPECTRE for five months. “During the plane crash sequence in Austria, because of the schedule and the weather, we found ourselves working on the sequence in separate locations on different sides of the country. The weather was a significant challenge, as the first footage we shot was under cloudy skies, but then the sunshine Brrrr… Clive Jackson came out. So we had to plot-out a shooting on the snowy slopes in Austria new shooting schedule for multiple cameras, and ended-up shooting in the mornings and evenings so the lighting would match. Normally you have to wait for the sunshine, but we had the reverse and had to wait for more somber conditions.”

As the production had to shoot the car chase to a very tight timetable in Rome, meticulous testing and prep took place at Longcross Studios.

“We really had to be on top of our game. By the time we shot for real on the city streets, and along the banks of the River Tiber, we had a bible of lenses, rigs and hard-mounts, plus pre-rigged pairs of cars, so we were absolutely ready-to-go without any time being wasted,” he adds.

British Cinematographer | November 2015 | 61

ON THE JOB / EDU GRAU / SUFFRAGETTE

Director Sarah Gavron’s feisty feature film Suffragette, about the wrestle for women’s suffrage is not a prim and proper affair. Far from it. Within the first few minutes of the movie a brick shatters a London shop window and, with shrieks from the madding crowd of “Votes for Women!”, the enthralling, hotblooded and resonating story unfolds.

62 | British Cinematographer | November 2015

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et during 1912 and 1913, a backdrop of stifling sweatshops and filthy London vistas combine with no-frills costumes to vividly and convincingly evoke the grit and grime of that bygone era.

However, the heroine of the title is not the renowned Emmeline Pankhurst (Meryl Streep), whose name has become synonymous with the suffrage movement.

Rather this is the story of Maud Watts (Carey Mulligan), an imagined Bethnal Green laundry worker, dutiful young wife and mother, who becomes wearied by the drudgery of her daily toils and the loathsome lechery of her boss.

At first she is a bystander, but she soon becomes drawn into sedition, and joins the battle for the ballot as the cause careens into violent militancy.

Poignantly, the direct action group Sisters Uncut used the opportunity of the premiere of the movie, during the 2015 BFI London Film Festival, to demonstrate against budget cuts to domestic violence services. Helena Bonham-Carter, who plays activist Edith New, described it as “perfect. If you feel strongly enough about something, and there’s an injustice there, you can speak out and try to get something changed.” And it’s exactly this spirit that proved an irresistible lure for Spanish cinematographer Edu Grau to the £15m Ruby Films, Pathé Film4 and Ingenious Media production.

“Suffragette is an important movie in many respects,” says Grau. “I think it’s important for the world to know about historical events that have been more or less forgotten, or are simply unknown outside of the UK. Even through it is set 100 years ago, the story is connected and relevant to today’s world and today’s issues about gender and equality. It’s offers a moment for women today to stand back, consider how far they have come and how far they still need to go. It’s like a call to action, saying, ‘Let’s keep going and keep pushing, to make the world a better place.’”

Explaining the motives that inspire his imagemaking and his attraction to Suffragette, Grau, whose credits include A Single Man (2009), Buried (2010), Animals (2012) and Suite Française (2014), says, “I like to shoot movies that are about characters and human relationships, with a passionate director at the helm. I think it is maybe my sensibility that draws me particularly towards stories of oppression or suppression. There are not that many good stories about women, that are so moving or interesting as Suffragette. Sarah didn’t want to make it too contemplative, and I was not interested in telling it in a classical, period, old-fashioned style.

I considered that approach to be counter-intuitive and counter-creative. The characters in this story are passionate: they take risks and make sacrifices to change

“I LIKE TO SHOOT MOVIES THAT ARE ABOUT CHARACTERS AND HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS. I THINK IT IS MAYBE MY SENSIBILITY THAT DRAWS ME TOWARDS STORIES OF OPPRESSION OR SUPPRESSION.” EDU GRAU society. I was impassioned to make it in a different way, to shake things up with movement and energy, in the same way the suffragettes themselves did in their actions. Sarah and the producers must have liked that about me and my approach, as I got the job on the second interview.”

Written by Abi Morgan and produced by Faye Ward and Alison Owen, Suffragette is a highly distinctivelooking production. Grau shot the daytime scenes on Super 16mm, with a 2.40:1 aspect ratio, creating a muted, pastel colour palette. With Gavron’s agreement, he also shot every scene using two, and sometimes three, hand-held cameras, so that angles were always moving and the actors could never be quite sure quite where they were being filmed from – ultimately keeping the on-screen images unnerving for the audience.

The three main set-piece protest scenes – the window smashing at the opening of the movie, the violent protest outside the Houses of Parliament, and the death of Emily Davison under the hooves of King George V’s horse ‘Anmer’ at the 1913 Epsom Derby – are akin to contemporary news footage, combining tight framing and fast camera moves with long depth-of-field, to deliver a bustling immediacy and brutality to the images that draw the audience into the action.

Grau says he enjoyed a full seven weeks of prep before principle photography began on 24 February 2014. “It can be both a shame and a mistake if the cinematographer isn’t involved from the early stages, and only gets hired after the production designer has started their work. Coming on-board early helped me to get into the mood of the movie, and having time to work closely with the crew and the producers helped us to make key decisions that really shaped the movie.”

As an example, Grau says it initially proved difficult to find an appropriate location for the small home that Maud lives in with her husband (Ben Wishaw) and young son (Adam Michael Dodd). “The early references just did not give us enough depth or sense of an appropriate environment. However, as we had the luxury of time to do more extensive scouting, one day we went across to the East End of London, and discovered the huge, brick-built tenements in Arnold Circus, near Bethnal Green. We learned that they were built in the early 1900s for local factory workers.

They fitted the story perfectly, as well as being visually compelling. Obviously we made it look a lot worse in the movie than it does today, but this is this sort of attention to detail that helped to put the production on solid historical ground.”

He also believes the lengthy prep and collaborative nature between the production team contributed to the decision to originate the daytime sequences on Super 16mm, rather than digital. “We all agreed that A-list actors, performing in daytime exteriors, in a period piece, would just not look as believable on digital. It was a cooperative group decision to shoot on celluloid, although production were not happy about the cost of 35mm. I think it was Sarah who suggested Super 16mm, and this got us all

Spot the DP… Edu got a brief role as the arresting police officer on the right!

excitedly thinking about how the freedom, roughness and beauty of that film format would work in favour of the story. It suited perfectly the suffragette attitude.”

Focusing his attentions on the look, Grau conducted numerous tests, working closely with Cinelab in London, before settling on a pull process, favoured

by Haris Savides ASC, in which Kodak 250ASA 16mm Daylight stock is pulled by a stop and a half at the lab to reduce grain and contrast and bring a range of soft, monotone pastel colours to the visual palette.

He opted for the ARRI 416 camera, “which is a small, beautiful and very organic to operate,” and a trio of spherical Angenieux zooms – 15-46mm, 26-76mm and 45-120mm – give the simple monikers Zoom 1, 2 and 3. “These are very sharp, precise lenses, that complement 16mm very well, and allowed me and Pau Esteve, my second-camera operator, to shoot, reframe, create subtle variations, and to keep finding the best of the image as we went along – in the style of Oliver Wood on Paul Greengrass’s Bourne movies. This was very liberating for us, in the keeping with the subject matter of change, and the actors rolled with it too.”

However, knowing full-well that Super 16mm would not be the ideal format to render the dim and

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British Cinematographer | November 2015 | 63

The plan is… Edu explains his intentions to an attentive Carey Mulligan

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dingy lighting of night-time Edwardian Britain, Grau says he and the production team also made the decision early-on to shoot digital. Scenes set during the hours of darkness were captured using underexposed ARRI Alexa Studio cameras, set to 1,200ASA, with a Codex ARRIRAW workflow. The glass included Kowa Prime lenses, plus a combination of 2080mm and 18-100mm Cooke zooms, with classic soft diffusion to start bringing the image towards a celluloid look. Cameras and lenses were supplied by Panavision in London.

As for lighting, Grau says in order to faithfully reflect the dark and filthy conditions of the time, he opted to light spaces rather than faces, to envelop the characters, mainly using bounced Tungsten light, a few LEDs and, sometimes, just candles. “In those days, lights were a new introduction to the home, and were not very powerful. The portrayal of the feeling of the darkness that they lived in, and the emergence of our characters into light were subtle themes that I played throughout, always in keeping with the spirit of the movie.”

Grau’s crew was a mix of longtime collaborators and brand new acquaintances. Working alongside Grau, operating second camera was Pau Esteve Birba. The pair attended film school together in Spain, and Esteve has been Grau’s first choice on Buried, Animals and Trespass

64 | British Cinematographer | November 2015

Against Us. So too gaffer Jim Plannette, who has worked on five movies with Grau. The production also harnessed the talents of local gaffer Andy Lowe. Jake Marcusson and Sam Barnes were first ACs, whilst Rupert Lloyd-Parry was key grip on A-camera, with Fric López Verdeguer gripping on B-camera. Peter Robertson was engaged as C-camera operator and on Steadicam.

“Our camera crew was amazing: conscientious, diligent and always sensitive to the situation,” says Grau. “They worked really well together and made it a joy for me. As I have known Pau for many years, our way or working is very organic and collaborative. He is like another DP on set, and we criticise each other’s work all the time to make it better. He is a true friend: a special person on set. ”

Grau also pays tribute to production manager Cass Marks. “So often the cinematographer does not appreciate the work of the production manager, but Cass was amazing at keeping us wrangled and choosing the right person for the job. All the production team was priceless.”

The production shot at locations around London, including a first inside the Houses of Parliament, as well as the home counties, with a brief pause to shoot the interior of Maud’s house in a studio. Crucially, the working regime was five-day weeks for ten weeks.

“It’s so good for the crew and the cast, and is the only proper way to work,” Grau comments. “Longer hours affect people lives, are counter-productive, dangerous, and do not make movies any better. I hope it is forbidden practice to shoot longer weeks in the future.”

Grau graded Suffragette at Goldcrest with DI colourist Rob Pizzey over a two-week period. “An important part of the job was to balance the Super 16mm and Alexa footage, but because of the way we had shot and processed these – the pull-processing of the celluloid at the lab and the under-exposure of Alexa but with fast ASA – it was much easier than expected, and I am happy with the result.”

Report by Ron Prince

CLOSE-UP / ALWIN KÜCHLER BSC / STEVE JOBS

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teve Jobs is a figure of Shakespearean dimensions: an iconic figure of the digital age, a hero to his many fans and a notoriously complex, difficult man who often treated his friends and family with coldness and contempt. Making a movie that portrays such a character is enough of a challenge – Aaron Sorkin wrote the script based on Walter Isaacson’s book Steve Jobs – but director Danny Boyle and cinematographer Alwin Küchler BSC had a range of logistical issues that complicated production even more.

Boyle and Küchler, who had worked together on Sunshine and 28 Days Later, got together to discuss the script. “I call it a thriller with words because it was an absolute joy to read Aaron’s script,” says Küchler. “It was a page turner. I was drawn to it right away.”

Steve Jobs is constructed in three acts, each one depicting a crucial period in Job’s life and career, in the 40 minutes leading up to the introduction of a key Apple product.

“Danny said he wanted to approach it like a theatrical piece,” says Küchler. “He wanted to shoot the first act, then shut it down, rehearse the second act with the actors, shoot it, and then shut it down again. It was important to Danny was that there was a lot of freedom for the actors.”

The two main actors, Michael Fassbender and Kate Winslet (who plays Jobs’ personal assistant Joanna Hoffman), had to learn so many words that Boyle shortened each film day to keep the energy level up.

Boyle also decided he wanted to shoot in real locations in the San Francisco Bay Area.

“Americans thought Danny was bonkers for wanting to shoot in San Francisco,” says Küchler. “There’s a heavy price tag when you work in this city. Everything is more expensive, but once Danny decides to go a route, he embraces it and makes it work.”

Working in the San Francisco Opera House and the San Francisco Symphony Hall created an inspiring realism, adds Küchler, but because they were both very active venues, the film crew had to work around

Alwin Küchler BSC

those schedules, with shoots usually scheduled from 10pm until the following morning.

“We had to share the lighting spaces, so I couldn’t always hang my lights and leave them,” he adds. “In the San Francisco Opera, for example, my gaffer/chief lighting technician Len Levine, and I, had to rehearse bringing the lights in and out, to make it as fast as we could. That’s a very different way of lighting than what we normally have when we have control over the space.”

Because the movie’s three acts span from the 1980s to 1990s, Küchler suggested to Boyle that they mix film and digital. “The story lent itself to showing how Steve Jobs played his part of taking us into the digital age,” he explains. Boyle loved the idea. Act 1 was shot in 16mm with the ARRI 16 SR3 camera using Angenieux Optimo zooms including the 15-40mm T2.6 and the 28-76mm T2.6 as well as Zeiss 16mm Super Speed Primes. Act 2 was shot in 3-perf Super 35mm, with the Arricam LT and ST, using ARRI/Zeiss Master Primes and Angenieux zooms. Act 3 was shot with the Alexa XT “with pretty much the entire focal range,” says Küchler, who says he used rental house Keslow Camera.

“I was trying to get the sharpest lenses for the last act, so we used zooms a lot on the Steadicam.”

There was also some limited use of the RED Epic Dragon. Film stocks, pre-ordered from Kodak, were Vision3 500T 7219 and 500T 5219. All the film was processed at Fotokem in Los Angeles.

Although Act 2 has some flashbacks to Act 1, and Act 3 to Acts 1 and 2, Boyle and Küchler made the decision to stick with the medium of each act. “Otherwise it would be too distracting,” Küchler says. “If you’re looking at a 16mm picture, you forget about the grain, but when you see it in comparison with digital, you notice the lack of grain. We didn’t want it to come across as pretentious or stop the flow of the language.”

The one exception is in Act 3, when Sculley and Jobs are talking about when they met, and we see a flashback of them seeing Job’s father in a restaurant in the late 1970s. “We shot that in digital with vintage Cooke Panchro lenses,” says Küchler. “But we did not shoot in 16mm.”

Almost the entire movie was shot with Steadicam, operated by A-camera operator Geoffrey Haley, not just because the film crew had to move quickly down narrow corridors but because Jobs is always the centre of the action, the sun, with the other characters revolving around him like

the planets, says Küchler, who notes that Haley matched Fassbender’s energy in portraying Jobs’ intensity.

“The story is about people keeping up with Steve Jobs,” he says. “Danny is always good about creating an atmosphere – that what’s happening in front of the camera is also happening behind the camera. So we were always working to keep up with Danny to fulfill that vision.”

Because Boyle wanted to liberate the actors – “so that they would be like racehorses at the start of the gate” – that meant a minimum of relighting. Küchler, working with Levine, relied on LED lights, because of their form factor and the speed and ease of deploying them.

He used LiteGear xFlo ballasts to retrofit the fluorescent fixtures, using the ETC Eos Titanium lighting-control desk to set levels. In the grid, the crew hung Mac Tech LED tubes. Other lights included Kino Flo 2-foot 4-bank, 15inch 4-bank fluorescent fixtures, BarFly 100s and 200s, Par20 and Par46 LED fixtures, all controlled by the RatPac 10-channel 1.2K dimmers hidden on the set.

Steve Jobs was finished at Technicolor London, with DI artist Jean-Clément Soret. “Making Steve Jobs was physically tough,” Küchler concludes. “We had very short hours and it was a very restrictive environment. But our director was very good at embracing these restrictions. If you look at it as a challenge, you become inventive, and good things come from it.”

British Cinematographer | November 2015 | 65

CLOSE-UP / ED LACHMAN ASC / CAROL

A WORK OF HEART

Carol, based on the semi-autobiographical novel ‘The Price Of Salt’ by psychological suspense author Patricia Highsmith (Strangers On A Train/The Talented Mr. Ripley), is about a young department store clerk (Rooney Mara) who falls in love with an older married woman (Cate Blanchett).

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rior to production in March 2014, Carol had been under development for 11 years

by British producers Elizabeth Karlsen and Stephen Woolley of Number 9 Films and Tessa Ross of Film4 Productions. The completed film, with a screenplay by Phyllis Nagy and co-produced by New York-based Killer Films, was selected to compete for the Palme d’Or at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival, where it received a rapturous response, including a standing ovation, and where Mara tied for the Best Actress award with Emmanuelle Bercot for Mon Roi.

The Cannes critics particularly lauded the direction of Todd Haynes, Blanchett and Mara’s performances, the cinematography of Ed Lachman ASC, as well as the costumes and the score.

Haynes (I’m Not There, Far From Heaven, and HBO miniseries Mildred Pierce) has often chosen Lachman to shoot his films, starting with Far From Heaven, and continued that collaborative approach when taking on Highsmith’s underground novel that has since become a feminist lesbian classic. Indeed, Lachman’s cinematography on Carol has been critically acclaimed, with one reviewer describing his work as “utter magic.”

“Carol is a form of melodrama,” says Lachman, “a film style that observes people from the outside, where you’re watching social forces affect peoples’ lives. We created that through subjective shifts. We begin with Therese and end up with Carol.”

Haynes and Lachman spend a lot of time crafting the look of each project, says Lachman, with

66 | British Cinematographer | November 2015

“different rules and visual language.” They did the same for Carol. One visual aspect unique to the film is that Therese is an aspiring photographer. “We begin to see her world opening up through her images,” says Lachman, who reports that he and Haynes looked at mid-century American women photographers including Ruth Orkin, Esther Bubley, Helen Levitt and Vivian Maier. “Our approach to the look was to incorporate a subjective viewpoint of the amorous mind – the mind of someone falling in love, when you read every sign and symbol of the other person.”

Lachman notes that they rejected the “high gloss 1950s Douglas Sirk world of melodrama” – one used to great effect in Far From Heaven – in favour of a “soiled and muted palette of colour still photography of the 1940s.” They also revisited American photographer/painter Saul Leiter, whom they had used as a visual reference for Mildred Pierce. “Leiter created layered compositions; subjects that are obscured by abstractions and seen in reflections and partially visible space,” says Lachman. “By using Leiter’s images, we were not only creating a representational view of the world but also a psychological one to help represent the mind of someone falling in love.”

To that end, Haynes and Lachman decided to shoot Carol on Super-16mm film, with an ARRI 416, as they on Mildred Pierce. Lachman used several Kodak negative stocks: 7219 500ASA Tungsten; Kodak negative 7207 ASA 250 daylight;

7213 200ASA Tungsten and 7203 50ASA Daylight. His lenses included a Zeiss Master Zoom 16.5-110mm T2.6; a Cooke Varo-Panchro 20-60mm T3.1; and a Cooke Super16 10-30mm T1.6.

“We wanted to reference film stocks of a previous time period, in grain structure and colour separation,” says Lachman. “The grain structure in film and its movement is affected by exposure: finer grain in highlights and larger grain in low light, which can’t be represented digitally, even if you can add digital grain later. The colour separation in film affected by gels, or colour temperature, is also lost and different for my eye, digitally, and the RGB layers, even though microscopic, create a colour depth of the image, which I find lacking in digital photography. As an analogue, when you look at a painting and experience its tactility, you’re affected by the brush strokes’ sense of depth and how the colours mix. In a digital photograph, you lose that sense of depth.”

Deciding to go with film created one of Lachman’s first challenges: finding film loaders. The movie’s opening sequence was the most challenging to shoot, and reflected Haynes’ predilection for a “never static” camera.

It opens on a street at night, looking down a sidewalk grate as the stream arises. The camera then begins to rise and tilt up to follow commuter’s feet coming out of the subway station exit, and then pans to the actor across the street.

“We follow him around a corner into a highend restaurant as the camera booms up 30 feet,” says Lachman. “We couldn’t use a track because of the traffic coming across the street, so we devised a way on a camera car mounted with a 30foot Louma crane that allowed us to orchestrate extending and retracting the arm through traffic with the

“CAROL IS A FORM OF MELODRAMA, A FILM STYLE THAT OBSERVES PEOPLE FROM THE OUTSIDE, WHERE YOU’RE WATCHING SOCIAL FORCES AFFECT PEOPLES’ LIVES.” ED LACHMAN ASC actor as he crosses the street. It ends up, finally, in its boomed-up position as he enters the restaurant.”

Another challenge was the weather, since Carol was shot in Cincinnati in the bitterly cold February and March in 2014. “All the night travelling shots with the car were done on location with a camera car,” he says.

“It could have been done in a studio, but Todd wanted the actual locations and the feeling of the source lighting in the streets.”

Cincinnati stood in for New York City in the late 1940s/early 1950s. “Much of the architecture in Cincinnati still references that time period, which was a great support visually for us,” he says. “With my gaffer of many years John Deblau, we created many custom lighting rigs with incandescent bulbs in strips with chicken wire and muslin, lightweight 30-inch paper china balls with a 2,000 watt tube, industrial mogul base fixtures. We also used some theatrical lighting, specifically 750 Lycos with 19-inch and 36-inch shutters that we could bounce and cut the light in the small locations we found ourselves in,” says Lachman. “The rest of the lighting was standard: Tungsten 9-lights, 5Ks, 2Ks on the daylight side, 18Ks to 1200 pars. The only unusual

lights were 5K and 12K T-Pars which have a horizontal mounted bulb, focused by a parabolic lens, which creates shafts of incredible light output.”

Lachman worries about the demise of film infrastructure. “If Kodak is still going to produce film, we’re going to need labs,” he says. “Eight months ago, the last professional lab in New York closed.” Carol was the last film to make prints at Film Lab New York, says Lachman, who says he did a test to show Haynes what the film could look like even if it went through a DI. “The questions was, would there be a different feeling in the image because we originated in Super-16mm,” says Lachman. “And there was.” The digital intermediate was completed at Goldcrest in New York.

Ed Lachman ASC

British Cinematographer | November 2015 | 67

CLOSE-UP / ANDREW DUNN BSC / THE LADY IN THE VAN

Andrew Dunn BSC

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here are stories that are quintessentially British and as cinematographer Andrew Dunn BSC says, the writer Alan Bennett and his work couldn’t be more British. The latest film to be based on Bennett’s writings is The Lady In The Van, telling, in slightly stylised form, the tale of how a homeless woman came to live in the vehicle of the title parked on the author’s driveway and the relationship that developed between them over a15-year period.

This is the third feature written by Bennett that Dunn has photographed and the fourth he has worked on with director Nicholas Hytner, who also directed Bennett’s The Madness Of King George (1994) and The History Boys (2006), as well as The Crucible (1996), taken from the play by Arthur Miller. The Lady In The Van stars Maggie Smith as Miss Mary Shepherd and Alex Jennings in a dual role as two incarnations of Bennett: AB, who has to deal with the irascible woman living outside his home, and Alan, the writer telling the story.

Dunn says that having the same actor playing both parts - a change from the stage version, in which different actors take the two roles - called for visual effects work that in part dictated the choice of camera and recording format.

“We shot on the ARRI Alexa in 1.85 aspect ratio for the VFX but also because of the budget,” he explains. “We used compositing, which was a lot more economical than motion controlled cameras, and allowed us to have Alex as the two Alan Bennetts interacting with each other. We had a terrific VFX consultant in Mervyn New, and a great crew in general.”

The Lady In The Van is the first of the films Dunn has shot for Hytner to feature a digital camera. He says he is now used to “chopping and changing” between digits and film and thinks the Alexa was “the right choice” for this particular production, giving it “depth and texture”, although he says that while digital cameras do deliver that more as a matter of course today, “it does take some TLC to give a human aspect”.

The Alexa also made it possible to shoot inside a van on location 68 | British Cinematographer | November 2015

using low light instead of creating an interior set of the vehicle in a studio. “In a way it’s anti-lighting,” Dunn comments. “We were putting dark things around the camera and beyond it to so we can get into the darker parts of a scene. It was tricky shooting in the van, which was only four and a half feet wide and sitting in a ten feet wide drive. When daylight was fading we created daylight inside with minimal lighting, using a couple of highlights to make the sequences feel real and as though they weren’t lit.”

Dunn’s gaffer on the shoot was Andy Long, who already had a lot of experience working in low light environments for Gavin Finney BSC on Wolf Hall. As with his other films for Hytner, Dunn operated the camera himself, which, on the interior van scenes, made for intimate working with the star. The camera, lens and grip package was supplied by Panavision.

“I was in there with Maggie using a handheld camera, clambering round with apple boxes to do the shooting,” he says. “We thought it would be better if we filmed in the van so that the audience feels it is in there with her.”

The realism of the film is heightened by it being shot in Alan Bennett’s house in Camden Town, which he still owns but doesn’t live in any more, and on Gloucester Crescent where it stands. Miss Shepherd arrived there in the late 1960s; in 1974 Bennett became worried that she was something of a target out in the street and offered her his driveway, where she and her van stayed until her death in 1989. That part of north London is now heavily gentrified and hugely expensive in terms of property and although Dunn says efforts were made to convey the different periods of time, the emphasis was more on the

environs and characters involved: “We did pay attention to satellite dishes and road markings but on a budget like ours we were more interested in people in the street and the events that tell the story.”

The Lady In The Van was shot in October, November and the beginning of December 2014. Dunn says he always uses some filtering for his shoots and on this one it was a mixture of Schneider and Tiffen filters.

“I have a collection of those in my personal filter case,” he comments, “and it was a combination of the two to create the different lighting looks.” He adds that he also worked closely with his regular DI colourist, Paul Ensby, to enhance the look and give it extra depth.

In addition to starring Maggie Smith and two Alex Jennings, The Lady In The Van marked a reunion for both Dunn and Hytner with most of the cast of The History Boys, who appear in small roles, including Dominic Cooper, Russell Tovey and James Corden, now a US talk show star, who plays a market trader.

The star of that film, Richard Griffiths, died in 2013 but Dunn says by a coincidence a child performer playing one of the children in The Lady In The Van had the same name, so everyone felt the departed actor still had a presence on set.

Like Corden, Dunn has been splitting his time between Britain and America. He has continued working with director Lee Daniels, who he first worked with on 2009’s Precious (as discussed in BC38), following that with the highly-acclaimed The Butler (2013) and the pilot for the TV music dynasty melodrama Empire. The two are reuniting for a biopic of the comedian Richard Pryor, subtitled Is it Something I Said?, which is in pre-production. With Keeping Up With The Jones for Greg Mottola and The Lady In The Van, Dunn sees this as his “comedy year”. That continues as he now begins shooting a film marking the return of Bridget Jones, who he describes as “a slightly different, but charmingly-dotty woman”.

CLOSE-UP / DAN MINDEL ASC BSC / STAR WARS EPISODE VII: THE FORCE AWAKENS

When director JJ Abrams and cinematographer Dan Mindel ASC BSC approached Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens, they weren’t just facing an extraordinarily complex shoot, but the latest chapter in a beloved and iconic franchise. They’d done it before, with Mission: Impossible III and Star Trek Into Darkness. But this was Star Wars, the mother of all sci-fi fantasy films.

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British Cinematographer | November 2015 | 69

CLOSE-UP / DAN MINDEL ASC BSC / STAR WARS EPISODE VII: THE FORCE AWAKENS

“The fans know the backstory and so many more details than I ever will,” Mindel says. “So it’s

something we take really seriously and try to honour all the time. The mandate is the same as what we learned from doing the Mission: Impossible and StarTrek movies: we have to protect what came before us.”

Abrams and Mindel have worked on five films together, since Mission: Impossible III nearly ten years ago, and Mindel calls the director “one of the most creative people you’ll ever meet.” Their first conversations on The Force Awakens focused on the look of the film, which would be a nod – in every way from casting to set design – to the original Star Wars. That quite naturally led to their easy decision to shoot on film. “We decided to give the texture of the film a similar feel to period movies made at the time of the first Star Wars movie,” he says.

Working with Panavision in Woodland Hills, California, Mindel settled on two Panavision XL cameras and Kodak 5219 film stock. “I asked them to decorate the cameras in matte black, specially painted for the movie as a commemorative colour,” he says. “We named A-camera Millennium Falcon and B-camera was Dark Star, and Panavision engraved them, to make them something that will be looked at later down the line as the cameras used in the movie.”

Mindel wants to make clear that the decision to shoot on film was not a knee-jerk reaction against digital technology. “We might appear to be Luddites in the decisions we make regarding how these movies are captured,” he adds. “But the truth is that we’re far from it.

We look at the technology very carefully and take it very seriously. As far as storytelling goes for the big screen, I can tell you unequivocally that film is by far the most

70 | British Cinematographer | November 2015

texturized and powerful medium that exists. And that’s why we chose it and why we continue to use it.”

Lenses would be crucial in creating the period look that the filmmakers were going for. For over a year, Mindel worked closely with Panavision vice president of optical engineering Dan Sasaki, to create the lens series he wanted, now called the Panavision Retro Cs.

“Dan is the foremost lens master on the planet,” says Mindel. “I got together with him and my focus puller and, over the year before we started shooting, we were designing these lenses.”

The process was iterative. Sasaki would make a lens, Mindel and his crew would shoot with it, and then they’d all look at the results on a big screen and make whatever tweaks were necessary.

“By working this way, we were able to come up with a series of lenses that looked like how I wanted them

to look: a little softer, a little more patina to them than modern lenses,” says Mindel. “These lenses also allowed me not to put diffusion in front of the lens, but rather have it built into the lens. I love what Dan and Panavision did.”

The most challenging aspect of shooting on film was the fact that in the past few years, the infrastructure supporting a film shoot has been falling away. Mindel was determined to make it work although he notes that all the major film labs in the UK had closed, leaving him with few choices. Because The Force Awakens was shot in Pinewood Studios, as well as Abu Dhabi, Iceland and southern Ireland, Mindel leaned towards choosing a lab in Europe. He ultimately picked i-dailies in London, although he considered the possibility of shipping dailies to FotoKem in Los Angeles as a back-up plan.

Mindel found that i-dailies wasn’t quite ready for the job he proposed they take on. “They were in demand and under-equipped for a movie of the size we were going to give them,” he says. “Fortunately, our schedule pushed and that gave me more time to put copious camera tests into the lab and see how the quality control was going to be.”

In a stroke of luck, one of the second units began shooting in Iceland to capture the snowy landscape before it melted. That gave Mindel the chance to test out the lab before principal photography began.

“It enabled me to put real-time dailies through the lab and to use them to get the lab up and running the way we wanted to work,” says Mindel, who singles out i-dailies’ Nigel Horn and Clive Noakes as doing “a great job. The lab stepped up to the plate and functioned in a completely professional way, and delivered dailies the way we needed them.”

With the lab in place, Mindel set up his basic workflow. After the film was processed at i-dailies, the negative was shipped to Company 3 in London; a driver transported a hard drive back to Pinewood so the crew could watch digital dailies on a big screen. That’s of great importance to Mindel, who notes that a big screen enables him to keep an eye on focus as well as exposure.

The entire camera department watched dailies in the morning before they began the day’s work, an important feature of how Mindel prefers to work.

Although a couple of assistants were brought in from the US (to manage the flow of information and material to editors Maryann Brandon and Mary Jo Markey, studio executives and visual effects company Industrial Light & Magic), Mindel says, “we were able to find excellent

“IT WAS ABSOLUTELY INCREDIBLE, I WAS ABLE TO DEAL WITH 1,000 PEOPLE A DAY ON THE MAIN SET, WHICH IS INSANE IF YOU THINK ABOUT IT.”DAN MINDEL ASC BSC

crew in England,” from the art department to the grips.

“The grip and electric were some of the best people I’ve ever worked with, anywhere in the world,” singling out gaffer Perry Evans, plus grips Gary and Paul Hymns and Gizza Smith in particular. “It’s hard to find people who are so committed to what they do.”

In the original Star Wars, the crew went to Tunisia; for The Force Awakens, the crew ended up in Abu Dhabi, which had built up infrastructure to appeal to film productions.

“It was absolutely incredible,” says Mindel. “I was able to deal with 1,000 people a day on the main set, which is insane if you think about it, in the middle of the desert. They were feeding us, transporting us, we had cell phone coverage… it was phenomenal. This is the industry we live in now. It’s global and everyone has to be prepared to travel around the world.”

On the stage, the crew shot using sets that were exact replicas of those used on the original film, including – and especially -- the Millennium Falcon. “That’s iconic,” says Mindel. “It couldn’t be changed physically although the movie was set 35 years later.” Because he wasn’t able to retrofit or change the Millennium Falcon in any way, that restricted his lighting plan as well. “We used the lighting plans and fixtures that were already there,” he says.

Feel the Force...

Dan Mindel ASC BSC on set with Director JJ Abrams

Mindel consciously stayed away from using gear that didn’t exist – such as the Technocrane – when the original Star Wars was made. “We tried to use dollies,” he says. “We did a lot of ‘dance floor’, where the dolly and actors are choreographed on a floor that allows the dolly to move anywhere as opposed to staying on track.

The dolly grips [Hymns and Smith] were like ballet dancers the way they were able to move the camera around the floor with the actors. That is a spectacular way to make films. The guys on camera and dolly have to listen to the dialogue, know the script and, on cue, move with the actors without messing it up. There are four, five, six people working at

once to get it right.

We did this a lot, and it’s fabulous to watch.”

Another important production continuity from the original Star Wars was Industrial Light & Magic, which was born out of its pioneering work on the original Star Wars. “ILM has so much experience working with film that it wasn’t an issue at all,” says Mindel. “JJ and I, on every single movie we’ve done together have used ILM as our VFX go-to people. They have taught us so much about how to do this in a meaningful way that doesn’t jar the viewer when you’re immersed in the movie.”

With all its many moving parts, Mindel stresses that, “every piece [of Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens] is made with care, love and attention.” “I’m not even talking about the other departments,” he says. “I’m just talking about the camera department. I want to get across that film needs to be preserved. We took what we know and what was in front of us and were able to use it in the way that people have been making movies for 100 years. The result is a hand-made, analogue-derived film.”

Close-Ups were researched and written by Debra Kaufman and Kevin Hilton.

British Cinematographer | November 2015 | 71

LIVE & LET DI / WHO’S DIALLING-IN THE DI GRADES

LipSync… has has a busy time tweaking the looks on several productions, including London Road

Technicolor, London: supervising digital colourist Peter Doyle completed the 2D and 3D stereo grade of Pan, directed by Joe Wright, with Seamus McGarvey BSC ASC the cinematographer. Doyle is also grading multiple previews for Tarzan (dir David Yates, DP Henry Braham BSC) and Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children (dir Tim Burton, DP Bruno Delbonnel AFC ASC). Jean Clement is completing the HDR and 3D grades for In The Heart of The Sea (dir Ron Howard, DP Anthony Dod Mantle DFF BSC ASC), whilst colourist Tony Dustin has been grading Secret In Their Eyes (dir Billy Ray, DP Daniel Moder).

On Technicolor’s broadcast post-production side, senior colourist Dan Coles completed the grade of People Just Do Nothing and Top Coppers, both produced by Roughcut Television for BBC3. He is also in the process of grading series nine of ITV1 detective drama Lewis. Colourist John Claude has been grading The DIs d vere deli has …

Technicolor London Gamechangers for of the y stor the le, Doy & for Houdini BBC 2 (dir Owen ry Houdini and friendship between Har Harris, DP Gustav Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Danielsson).

Projects handled by Technicolor’s dailies post production team include Lost City Of Z (dir James Gray, DP Darius Khondji AFC ASC), the ITV/Big Talk mini-series Houdini & Doyle, and TV series Galavant.

In further news, Technicolor recently announced the acquisition of London-based facility The Mill, for €259 million on a debt-free basis. Founded in 1990, The Mill is recognised as a premier visual effects provider for advertising agencies and brands, and has operations in London, New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. The acquisition accomplishes several objectives set out in Technicolor’s strategic Drive 2020 roadmap, namely to establish a leading position for VFX and digital creation, reinforce its portfolio of brands including MPC, Mr. X and Mikros Image, and add talent and expertise around emerging technologies such as virtual reality.

Molinare: has enjoyed a couple of bumper months having graded no fewer than six films screening at this year’s London Film Festival. These included Nick Hornby’s Brooklyn, starring Saoirse Ronan, shot by Yves Belanger, and chilling thriller The Ones Below, lensed by DP Ed Rutherford, plus documentaries including the thrilling Steve McQueen: The Man And Le Mans, including cinematography by Matt Smith, Elstree 1976 which goes behind the scenes of the original Star Wars, with footage shot by Sonny Malhotra, and the ground-breaking Listen To Me Marlon, narrated

by Brando himself, utilising his archive audio files, with additional cinematography by Ole Bratt Birkeland.

Molinare DI grader Jat Patel pulled out the stops for sci-fi thriller, Narcopolis about a new breed of 72 | British Cinematographer | November 2015

police officer in the near future, working in a city where all recreational drugs are legal. It was directed by Justin Trefgarne, with Christopher Moon the DP, and Elliot Cowan, Jonathan Pryce and Elodie Yung leading the cast. “Narcopolis was a great film to grade, as it’s a classic dystopian, noir look with splashes of strong colours in scenes to compliment the narrative of the legalisation of drugs,” said Patel. “Shot over a few countries and locations, the challenge was to make the Molinare… conjured up some landscape look interesting colour grades for Dr Who and Narcopolis like it was from a single believable future London in different time zones, which we achieved over a five-day grade. We used Baselight’s VFX ability to create complex effect shots to help accentuate the plot twists, including camera shakes, flares, smoke, flicker, boom removals, window reflections and many more subtle effects.”

Meanwhile colourist Gareth Spensley got to work on 12 x 60-minute episodes of Dr Who, series nine, which sees Peter Capaldi return as The Doctor to deal with Daleks, underwater ghosts and even Vikings. “Grading Dr Who is a real treat for a colourist. Every episode is different,” said Spensley. “One show might involve a period look for a Victorian adventure and the next something strange and

unsettling to evoke an alien planet. It’s a complex show, with blockbuster movie aspirations, and whenever we can use the grade to add that extra sparkle it gives you a great buzz.

“I’m always looking for ways to extend the magic of the VFX shots beyond the digital matte paintings of alien planets and spaceships. Using Baselight’s impressive compositing tools we can add background atmospherics right there in the grade – hide a weeping angel in mist, add falling snow to a meeting with Santa Claus, or layer floating embers to a scene at the side of a volcano. A heavily-treated sky replacement can transform a typical British landscape into something much more alien, and doing this in the grade allows the process to be collaborative and, most importantly, to hit tight deadlines. When dinosaurs stomped around London we animated their moving shadows into the surrounding drama shots to continue the sense of threat through the whole scene and not just the standout VFX shots, and it’s this kind of “stretching the magic” that’s so important on a show like Dr Who.” Narcopolis

Meanwhile, Molinare has formed a strategic and creative alliance with Manchester’s oldest independent post facility Flix. The companies will share technical and

Onsight… helped to transition the look from gritty to glorious for the rugby-doc Building Jerusalem

Onsight: using match footage, never-beforeseen material, plus special interviews including Jonny Wilkinson and Sir Clive Woodward, shot by DP Joel Devlin, the new feature documentary Building Jerusalem tells the extraordinary story England’s Rugby World Cup win in 2003. Onsight worked with New Black Films to manage the high volume of data from the ‘90s to present day, which involved an extensive conform process, due to the range of formats. The team, including online editors Matt Pamplin, Chris Young and sound supervisor Andy Coles, also performed archive restoration, the grade, audio and mastering. Senior colourist Andy Lee focused on a gritty feel to reflect the nature of the sport and history. He also developed a look that progressively brightened as the England team reaches its glorious victory over the Aussies in the epic final.

Technicolor PostWorks NY… collaborated with Ken Burns and Daniel J. White on the restoration of The Civil War

creative resources and enable clients to take advantage of regional access as they require. For instance they can edit their production at Flix’s brand new state of the art facility in White Tower at MediaCityUK; and take advantage of Molinare’s creative talent in London, whilst utilise the technical support of both companies to manage efficient workflows.

Pinewood Post Production: Bull for John Stanley Productions recently posted at Pinewood Post Production.

Outpost provided offline, online and Pinewood Digital provided the grade facility with Stuart Fyvie as the colourist.

Unusually the sitcom was shot on Alexa to give both studio and location scenes a more filmic look.

LipSync Post: provided post-production as well as equity investment services for three features at the Toronto International Film Festival – London Road, produced by BBC Films and Cuba Pictures, directed by Rufus Norris, with cinematography by Danny Cohan BSC; London Fields, directed by Mathew Cullen, shot by DP Guillermo Navarro, and starring Billy Bob Thornton, Cara Delevingne and Johnny Depp; and Kajaki directed by Paul Katis, lensed by Chris Goodger.

The Soho facility is now providing equity investment and full post-production services – including grading, sound mixing, titles design and VFX – on the upcoming supernatural thriller The Crucifixion, starring Sophie Cookson, Javier Boter and Alexis Rodney, shooting in Romania with Xavier Gens in the director’s chair and Daniel Aranyo the DP.

Technicolor PostWorks, NY: handled dailies processing, editorial conforming, final colour grading, sound mixing and deliverables for HBO’s new six-part drama Show Me A Hero, directed by Paul Haggis, and written by David Simon.

Show Me a Hero is set in 1980’s Yonkers, New York and centres on conflicts among elected officials, bureaucrats and citizens over federal court ordered construction of low-income housing. It stars Oscar Isaac, Winona Ryder, Jim Belushi, Alfred Molina and LaTanya Richardson-Jackson, among many others.

The challenge for Technicolor PostWorks was to deliver six hours of feature-quality material under tight time constraints. Simon’s insistence on realism and absolute fidelity to the series’ time period also set a high bar.

Both dailies and final colour grading were performed by senior colorist Sam Daley. During preproduction, Daley worked with cinematographer Andrij Parekh to prepare colour LUTs as an aid in setting looks on the set. “We created two LUTs, one that was colder for bureaucratic settings and one that was warmer for human interest aspects of the show,” Daley recalls. During production, Daley applied colour looks to each day’s camera media using a Colorfront system. Going beyond what is normal at the dailies stage, Daley performed detailed grading on a scene-by-scene basis in order to set looks that were near to final. His aim was to provide the editorial team with imagery in close to finished form, and to make final grading more efficient.

“The Colorfront system allowed me to set ASC CDL values that I could carry over to the final grade,” he explains. “Most of the colour correction was done with

primary grades. During final grading, I used Resolve mainly for global adjustments within scenes, saturation adjustments, beauty work and tracking.”

Final grading sessions with Daley were conducted under the supervision of Haggis, Parekh and producer Nina Kostroff Noble. Daley notes that the ultimate look of the series was influenced by the work of artists Giorgio de Chirico and Tamara de Lempicka and classic films such as The Conformist, The Insider, The Yards and The Assassination of Richard Nixon.

“It’s a high contrast look,” he says. “There is a lot of backlight built into the photography with desaturation added on my end. We often toned down the background colors to make the characters stand out.”

Having used Colorfront, with its limited set of colour tools, proved an advantage in arriving at an authentic period look. “It does not appear to be a modern digital correction where windows, keys and other tricks are used to create a highly polished look,” says Daley. “This was a very aggressive grade that was based on a toolset similar to what was available at the time.”

Technicolor PostWorks also collaborated recently with Ken Burns and Daniel J. White to restore and remaster in 4K the landmark PBS documentary The Civil War for its 25th anniversary rebroadcast and Blu-ray release. The Civil War was shot on 16mm film

by Burns and his co-cinematographers Allen Moore and Buddy Squires in a production spanning more than ten years. For the new restoration, 50,000 feet of original negative, conserved by George Eastman House, was scanned frame-by-frame. This enormous task was shared between George Eastman House and Technicolor PostWorks, using identical ARRIScan film scanners at 4K resolution.

Data management was a major challenge throughout the process. 4K files for the full ten-part series comprised more than 110TB of data with more than 25TB kept “live” at any one time. Restoration was accomplished by a team of artists, editors and producers, including vice president of creative services Ben Murray, conform editors Jeff Cornell, Allie Ames and Ryan McMahon and colorist Jack Lewars on Autodesk Lustre.

Nube Studio, Mumbai: set up to provide uncompromised grading services for the Indian market, Nube has opened with a Baselight Two grading workstation as its centrepiece. The colour-driven facility is providing services for commercials, music videos, television and film throughout the region. Open since June 2015, Nube as completed over 100 commercials for brands including BMW, Philips, Cadbury, Amazon, Honda, Nescafe, Olay, Jaguar, Lifebuoy and Renault.

Technicolor PostWorks NY… helped recreate 1980’s Yonkers for HBO’s Show Me A Hero,

Oxido, Mexico City: has invested in new Daylight on-set grading systems from FilmLight. The Daylight systems have been fitted into two data management vehicles that can be driven to studios or locations to provide digital dailies and start the grading process.

Oxido has two Baselight suites in its OxidoFilms operation, supervised by colourist Fernando Medellin.

Colour grading files created in FilmLight’s Baselight Linked Grade (BLG) format in Daylight can be transferred alongside the media, so colourists see the decisions made on set immediately. Daylight also synchronises audio – essential for the editorial outputs – and allows the director and DP to attach notes to each shot, providing helpful guidance for the editor.

British Cinematographer | November 2015 | 73

CLAPPERBOARD / RON COLLINS / BY DAVID A. ELLIS

Former Movietone news cameraman Ronald Ernest Collins was born on the 29th January 1942 in Cheltenham and went to school in London. His ambition was to be meteorologist, but after leaving school in 1958 he joined Rank Screen Services in Hill Street, London. His first job was as an office boy followed by a job with Rank as a trainee model animation cameraman in Hammersmith, London. After a year he joined Paul Barralet Productions as a trainee assistant cameraman.

The company was a well-known industrial documentary film production company.

74 | British Cinematographer | November 2015

I

n 1960 he moved to Movietone News, which was based in Soho Square and was part of 20th Century Fox. He was appointed by Paul Wyand, the assignment manager, as an assistant cameraman on a six-month trial. Wyand had been Movietone’s chief cameraman and had written a book about the newsreel business and his life as a newsreel cameraman called Useless If Delayed.

Movietone began in 1928 and it is likely that one of the first cameras was the Bell & Howell Eyemo.

Another camera used was the Wall camera, a sound on film system by Movietone. It later adopted under licence the Western Electric variable density system until Movietone went over to magnetic recording. The Wall camera recorded sound only nine frames ahead of the picture, which meant it had to be edited before it could be projected twenty frames ahead. The Wall had a four-lens turret, which could be rotated while shooting.

The Newman-Sinclair camera followed the Wall. Another model used was the Cameflex by Éclair. This camera was used until Movietone News closed in 1979.

After six months Collins was given the opportunity to go out on his first solo assignment and was given a heavy, ancient Newman–Sinclair camera to operate. His task was to provide two minutes of screen time of the Christmas lights in Oxford Street.

The Newman-Sinclair cameras had been in use from the early 1930s and were used on many documentaries. Stanley Kubrick used one on some sequences of A Clockwork Orange. As an assistant Collins worked alongside a chap named Norman Fisher, who was then chief cameraman.

On location… Ron Collins, wearing glasses, with assistant cameraman Michael Anderson on a shoot in Norfolk in 1962

In 1963 Collins became a fully-fledged cameraman on a weekly wage of £22. With Fisher he worked on Movietone’s contribution to the TV programme This Week. Fisher and Collins were responsible for shooting whole sections of the programme. They were both engaged to shoot sequences for the hit TV cop series No Hiding Place, using a 35mm Arricord self-blimped camera.

Other work included filming documentaries to promote movies produced or distributed by 20th Century Fox. These included The Longest Day and The Sound Of Music.

Asked if there were any assignments that stood out, he said, “One that stands out was being invited to Windsor to shoot material for the Queen’s forty-second birthday with her family. That was a privilege. The film was in colour and that material was used by the BBC every night when their service was closing down.”

Collins was one of the cameramen who covered the funeral of Sir Winston Churchill in 1965.

Until 1963 Movietone provided film for the United Press Movietone Television (UPMT), the first truly global television news service. Movietone cameramen were required to shoot some items in 16mm using the Paillard Bolex, the Bell & Howell silent cameras and Aurican sound camera.

From 1963-1967 Movietone continued to supply United Press International Newsfilm (UPIN) with 16mm films for the news service. Collins said that newsreel companies made a lot of commercials for television in the early days of independent television.

Academy Award…

Derek Lightbody and Ron Collins collect a major gong for the virtually showdowless Aurasoft light Snapped… during the making of the film The Longest Day

“ONE THAT STANDS OUT WAS BEING INVITED TO WINDSOR TO SHOOT MATERIAL FOR THE QUEEN’S FORTY-SECOND BIRTHDAY WITH HER FAMILY. THAT WAS A PRIVILEGE.” RON COLLINS

Often on an assignment he would be a one-man band, operating, directing and doing all the other required skills. He said there were no set hours. It really depended on where the job was located. Sometimes it could be done in a day; sometimes you needed to stay in a hotel.

When going on an assignment how much film did he carry? “You were told by the editorial staff that we want two or three minutes of material depending on the importance of the story and if it was in black and white or colour. On 35mm you would always take two magazines to cover the story and maybe a third as a back-up.”

Collins gained a reputation for his work in sport.

In 1968 he worked on the Mexico Olympic games and

Taking a squint…. pictured at the Grand National, Aintree, in the mid-1960s, with an Éclair Cameflex CM3 with B&L cinemascope attachment

was DP on a number of feature documentaries. He was employed by Movietone for ten years, leaving in 1968 to do other freelance work. Between other work he carried on working for Movietone on a freelance basis for a further ten years.

When working abroad did he hold on to the unprocessed film until getting back to England? “In the majority of cases we held on to the film until we got back because the stories abroad were mainly soft news stories – they weren’t what we called hard news stories,” he said.

Collins said he doesn’t regret one moment of it.

He worked with about eight cameramen. One of them was Michael Samuelson, brother of Sir Sydney. “I was able, while training, to pick up their best points,” he said.

Collins won two awards for his news work. In 1968 he won the World Newsreel Award in the general news category for a soft news story called On The River.

In 1981 Collins was part of the film crew that filmed football sequences in the John Huston movie Escape To Victory. In October 1999 Collins was awarded a Fellowship of the British Kinematograph Sound and Television Society. It was for services and innovations provided to the film and television industries.

In 1969 Collins formed a company that went on to turn over millions of pounds called Optical & Textile Ltd, which was later renamed Optex. The company provided a wide range of equipment to the motion picture industry. The company won several awards including the Prime Time Emmy Award for the first compact image intensifier. Later the company was given by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences (AMPAS) a Technical Achievement Award for the design of a virtual shadowless soft light called Aurasoft. This also won a Prime Time Emmy. Collins now lives in Sri Lanka.

Thanks go to Ian Gallacher for information written by his father Terry, who was Movietone’s assignment manager from 1961-1964. Further information can be found by searching online, Ron Collins / Terence Gallacher Recollections Of A Career In Film.

British Cinematographer | November 2015 | 75

INNOVATOR / JEFF LAWRENCE / RONFORD BAKER / BY KEVIN HILTON

GRIPPING

STUFF

Jeff Lawrence

Ronford Baker is known on the international filmmaking scene for its innovative fluid heads and tripods, in addition to other support hardware such as tracks and sliders. The company was founded by camera rental company owner Ron Ford and engineer Harry Baker. Today the public face of Ronford Baker is managing director and designer Jeff Lawrence, who has been involved in product innovation since the very early days. He talks to Kevin Hilton about significant products, famous commissions and how he sees the market in the future.

BC: How did you come to work for Ronford Baker?

JL: I joined about three months after the company started in 1966. I had worked for Harry Baker when he was manager at an engineering company where I was working while I was doing my City & Guilds at college. Engineering had always been an interest and I’d been into motorbikes and cars. Ronford Baker was set up because Harry used to do repairs and special things for Ron Ford’s camera rental firm. In those days you couldn’t get spare parts for some of the equipment. Ron had a small rental company based in a gatehouse at Borehamwood Studios and people would bring Miller heads and other equipment in because it either didn’t work properly or they wanted it to do something else.

Ron suggested setting up a dedicated company and said he would put up the money. The original idea was also to service ARRI film cameras, because no one was doing that at the time, but I don’t think we ever did work on any.

76 | British Cinematographer | November 2015

BC: What kind of work were you and the company doing in the early days?

JL: Someone would come to us with a problem, saying that something wasn’t working, or they wanted us to make it better. Harry brought in two other people soon after the company was set up; one was a turner and the other was me. I was working in the machine shop on the milling machines, as well as assembly work. All the construction was done in the back of Harry’s brother in law’s barn on a farm in Watford. We were there until three years ago, when we moved to new premises in Kings Langley. Where we started out was nothing very sophisticated and wasn’t the best environment to work in ­– it didn’t have a damp course and there was water running down the walls – but it did have character. For the first three years we sub-contracted special jobs for Ron Ford and expanded from there. We also worked for other rental companies. There was always something on the go and only three people to work on it.

BC: Who did the requests for modifications and special equipment come from, and is it the same as today?

JL: Every filmmaker wants to get a different angle, so if there aren’t the tools it’s a kind of evolution to make them. A lot of the work we did in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s was for Stanley Kubrick, on films like A Clockwork Orange (1971). Where we were based at the time was quite close to where he lived in Elstree. He was a very demanding man, but had some wonderful ideas and would spend a lot of money to get just one shot.

The trouble is half the movie-going public wouldn’t

understand what he was doing. In other cases requests for modifications or new products would come through a rental company or the camera operator. These days we usually work with the grip, although sometimes they’re passing on what the director of photography wants.

BC: What was Ronford Baker’s first innovation?

JL: The first tripods appeared in April 1967. Back then there were only wooden tripods or metal ones with the tubes inside each other. If those got damaged then they wouldn’t work properly. When David Lean started making Ryan’s Daughter (1970, DP Freddie Young BSC), there was a requirement for constant use of the camera on a tripod in the sea. Wooden tripods wouldn’t be any good for that so Harry said he could do something tubular made out of stainless steel. It couldn’t be steel because it was going to be used for six months up and down a beach in Ireland.

What he came up with was a completely new design and led to our heavy-duty tripod, which was followed by the medium duty and then the lightweight. We’re still producing them today and 99% of other tripods used in filmmaking are very close copies of that original design.

BC: The company is also well known for its fluid heads.

How did those come about?

JL: Back in the early days fluid heads had only two settings: on and off. People were bringing heads in to us because they wanted them to do more than that.

Harry looked at some of the equipment that was brought in and said, “If I couldn’t make something better than that I couldn’t call myself an engineer.” At the time the camera that was being used most on productions was the ARRI 2 C, the motor was cylindrical and looked a bit like a washing up liquid bottle. We developed the first variable fluid head for that, which was our F15. That was in development from 1967 to 1968 and was released in January 1969. There were later versions of our heads for other cameras, including the F2 for the Éclair. We made lots of those. After that came the F7 and F4, the 2000 series, 2003, 2004 & 2015 up to the Atlas range we have today. The F15 was a pre-counter balance head but the later ones did have a counter-balance.

Harry Baker receives the Technical Oscar for Ronford Baker

“THE FIRST PRODUCT I HAD A LOT OF INPUT INTO WAS THE F (FLUID) 7 HEAD, WHICH WAS IN 1972.

ONE OF THE MAIN THINGS ABOUT IT WAS IT DOESN’T NEED A COUNTER-BALANCE BECAUSE THE MASS OF THE CAMERA IS BALANCED ON THE PIVOT POINT OF THE TILT. IT ALSO ALLOWED NODAL FILMING.”JEFF LAWRENCE BC: You’ve also produced sliders and dolly track.

How did you approach those areas?

JL: Our sliders have only been around about 11 to 12 years and they again came from a request from people working on productions. The original ones were OK for DLSRs but they weren’t that popular. We made something that was aimed at the professional film market. With the track ARRI went to another manufacturer but that company didn’t want to make it so they came to us.

BC: How much input did you have into the early innovations of Ronford Baker?

JL: I was involved in the development of products from the beginning, including the F15, although not a great deal in the early days. The first product I had a lot of input into was the F (Fluid) 7 head, which was in 1972.

One of the main things about it was it doesn’t need a counter-balance because the mass of the camera is balanced on the pivot point of the tilt. It also allowed nodal filming. The reason for developing the Fluid 7 was to accommodate the Eclair NPR [Noiseless Portable Reflex] camera, which had a tall base-to-lens-centre height. It works with half a gimbal and today is the Atlas 7 fluid head for a range of digital cameras, including ARRI and RED. The original F7 was built for Johnny Alcott [the late John Alcott BSC, cinematographer on Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange, Barry Lyndon (1975) and The Shining (1980)]. Today 90%

of remote heads are based on its principle of half a gimbal. After that came the F4, which was very popular with the BBC at Ealing, where they had 16mm ARRI and Aaton cameras.

BC: The company that you head up bears the names of two other men but you’ve been with it from nearly the beginning and are as associated with the products and innovations of Ron Ford and Harry Baker as the founders. How did that progression from the machine room to designer and managing director come about?

JL: Harry died 12 years ago. He had two daughters and one said I was the son he never had. I think he was grooming me for taking over at some point and 30 years ago he got me involved in running the machine shop. The youngest of Harry’s daughters, Vicky, came to work for the company and the idea was eventually we would run the company between us. But Vicky wanted to go in other directions so I bought her out about ten years ago.

BC: What directions do you see for the company and the development of camera support hardware in the coming years?

JL: We’ve got three projects on the go at the moment but I can’t talk about them right now. In the last couple of years we’ve adapted existing products to suit new demands in the industry. About five years ago we produced a double-sided version of the Atlas 7 head for 3D rigs, which was used first on Hugo (2011, dir Martin Scorsese, DP Robert Richardson ASC, stereographer Demetri Portelli).

More recently the sliders were motorised with a kit that can be added to the original product. It doesn’t matter about the length of the slider, you just add a longer belt for movement. That was produced in the last year and we started delivering about three months ago. Three of the main rental companies – Panavision, ARRI and Movietech – are now stocking it. Development of new products is ongoing as we get new requests from the hire firms and the industry in general.

British Cinematographer | November 2015 | 77

IMAGO NEWS / PAUL RENÉ ROESTAD FNF / PRESIDENT OF IMAGO

THE FUTURE

The usual suspects… the new board of IMAGO (l-r): Rolf Voulanges BVK, Pedrag Bambic SAS, Elen Lotman ESC, Paul René Roestad FNF president of IMAGO, Nina Kellgren BSC and Ron Johanson ACS. The board member Daniele Nannuzzi AIC was absent.

IMAGO held its 23rd Annual General Assembly in Jerusalem, Israel, on October 17th/18th with 46 member delegates attending from as far as Australia, Japan and Canada. It was the first time in IMAGO´s history that the General Assembly was held outside Europe. The Israeli Society ACT, under their former President Idan Or and his excellent crew, hosted the event generously and perfectly.

T

his year, IMAGO president Nigel Walters BSC unfortunately come to the end of his maximum term in office, and stepped down. His eight-year presidency has been a highly successful period for IMAGO. The federation has developed immensely and has nearly doubled in size. It now has 48 member countries, with more than 4.000 member cinematographers, and has more activities and energy than ever. IMAGO started as a European federation, and developed during Nigel’s term in office to be international, today with members all over the world – a successful move forward for the Federation.

The new Board of IMAGO is very grateful, and Nigel has agreed to continue to advise and work for IMAGO in different capacities, but he will naturally be excused during any rugby matches with Welsh participation.

IMAGO´S NEW BOARD AND PRESIDENT

During the General Assembly in Jerusalem a new board was elected: the new IMAGO president is Paul René Roestad FNF (Norway), and the board members are Nina Kellgren BSC (UK), Daniele Nanuzzi AIC (Italy), Predrag Bambic SAS (Serbia), Elen Lotman ESC (Estonia), Rolf Coulanges BVK (Germany) and Ron Johanson ACS (Australia).

IMAGO’s new president, Paul René Roestad FNF had his film education in Britain (Manchester and London), and then worked his way up after starting as camera assistant and filming numerous features, TV dramas, shorts and documentaries. Today, in addition to working as a cinematographer, he also works as a producer and director in his own production company in Oslo.

He has previously been president of the Norwegian Union of Film Workers, vice president of the Norwegian Society of Cinematographers and general secretary of IMAGO, in addition to many years as a board member of the above mentioned Societies.

IMAGO – WHAT´S IT ALL ABOUT THEN?

IMAGO is a federation for the world´s national societies of cinematographers. It was initiated by Luciano Tovli AIC, and established in cooperation between the AIC (Italy), BSC (Britain), AFC (France) and BVK (Germany), in 1992. Why? The founders concluded that cinematographers needed an umbrella to bring European cinematographers together to discuss and find solutions to challenges of common interest, to promote cinematography on an international level, and to share and exchange experience and knowledge. IMAGO has expanded greatly over the years, today with member societies all over the World. IMAGO’s aims and activities are many, and focussed on, amongst others, the following: 78 | British Cinematographer | November 2015

Promoting cinematography: the importance of cinematography to the general public, film colleagues and the cultural-political environments.

Sharing experiences: post-education, updating and training; sharing knowledge and experience between cinematographers world wide, both in technical and creative areas, and informing and updating on new technology and future developments of importance to cinematographers.

Arranging master-classes, workshops and creative sessions where cinematographers meet other cinematographers to learn from each other’s experiences and knowledge.

Authorship & collecting: Informing and updating member cinematographers and societies on the development and situation of authorship for cinematographers in different countries around the world. Informing about the possibilities of membership for international cinematographers in national collecting societies.

Working conditions: monitoring the situation, experiences and developments of working conditions for cinematographers worldwide.

Monitoring and influencing technical developments: cooperating with all main camera and filmmaking equipment manufacturers to transfer the experiences from cinematographers to the manufacturers, in the belief that manufacturers utilizing cinematographers’ experiences will result in equipment better, suited to ease cinematographers’ work.

A FEDERATION, NOT A UNION

It is important to underline that even though IMAGO works to monitor and inform our members of, amongst others, authorship and working conditions, IMAGO is not a union, but a federation that works to inform and promote cinematographers’ interests in all areas. Even though the number of our members who believe cinematographers are authors/co-authors of the image, and that all cinematographers naturally should have acceptable working conditions, is rising steadily, the decision to implement or work to promote these views within their society and country or not, is up to the national societies themselves. IMAGO just works to keep its members well-informed on how other national societies handle and work with these challenges and other topics of interest cinematographic interest.

THE FUTURE!

The General Assembly in Jerusalem showed that the interest in, and need for, cooperation and sharing experiences between cinematographers has never been bigger. Many countries that have not previously had a cinematographic society are forming them in

order to participate in the international fellowship of cinematographers that IMAGO provides. Turkey is the latest society formed for that purpose, and the Turkish Society of Cinematographers was welcomed as IMAGO´s 49th member during the Jerusalem Assembly.

IMAGO´s Committee for Creative Technologies in Cinematography is uniting cinematographers from all the world´s corners to discuss common challenges. This involves cooperating with manufacturers to tailor-make camera equipment to maximally suit professional cinematographers, and also with cinema projection equipment manufacturers to make sure our images are projected in the best possible way.

Even influencing cinema screen manufacturers to make the best screens for the projection of our images. This is just a few examples of the vastly important work they do.

IMAGO´s Master Class and Education Committees are arranging masterclasses where cinematographers from all around the world come to convey detailed information to their colleagues about their experiences and creative methods in their latest films.

IMAGO is planning two large international conferences in Brussels focussing on working conditions for cinematographers, which many fear are deteriorating, and on cinematographers’ authorship situations worldwide.

Both conferences will have an extensive number of highlyqualified and influential international speakers. These were initiated by Nigel Walters and the new IMAGO administration will carry this important work forward.

The fifth IMAGO Oslo Digital Cinema Conference is took place from Oct 30th to Nov 1st, gathering cinematographers together from many countries discussing the latest creative and technical developments. The conference is arranged bi-annually in cooperation with the Norwegian Society of Cinematographers and the Norwegian Film Institute. It is regarded internationally as a high-quality arena where more than 200 cinematographers and camera manufacturers meet to discus and share knowledge in digital technical and creative areas.

Visit www.odcc.no for more information.

KEEP IN TOUCH

The interest shown by cinematographers globally to meet, discuss topics of high importance, both technical and creative, is rapidly increasing. That tells us that the need for IMAGO as an international hub for information, sharing, discussion and influencing, and as a direct connection and information line between all national cinematographers societies, has never been bigger. For more information visit www.imago.org. And please like us on Facebook!

IMAGO NEWS / NIGEL WALTERS BSC / VICE-PRESIDENT BSC

FILM IS BEAUTIFUL The Manaki Brothers Festival ended its 36th year of celebrating cinematography by awarding the Golden Camera 300 to Matyas Erdely HSC for his incredible craftsmanship in shooting the film Son Of Saul.

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his award, to the Hungarian cinematographer, marked the culmination of the festival where, in ten days of photographic screened excellence, the pendulum had swung encouragingly towards films from central and south eastern Europe.

The Balkans are seldom far from controversy and the press corps covering this charming festival, in Macedonian city of Bitola, was rife with rumours that the jury were experiencing difficulty in agreeing the final result of the main competition. Given the quality of the programme this was hardly surprising. The professional cinematographers present at the screening were unanimous in the opinion that Son Of Saul was the masterpiece of the festival and thoroughly deserved the prestigious Golden Camera 300.

The jury, under their chairman Ryszard Lenczewski PSC, awarded Macbeth the Silver Camera 300, for an evocative visualization by the Australian cinematographer, Adam Arkapaw.

The Bronze Award went to the Colombian, Mateo Guzman, for his cinematography on La Tierra y La Sombra. The International festival selector, Blagoja-Kunovski Dore, had chosen well some of the best films available from the recent major European Festivals of Cannes, Venice and Berlin.

The festival traditionally opens with the showing of a Macedonian feature. The film Lazar, unlike some previous Macedonian premiers, thrilled the full audience. It showed high production values, a pointer to the value of being in a co-production with Croatia, Bulgaria and France. The craft values, welded effectively by the director Svetozar Ristovski, augur well for the future of filmmaking in the region. The cinematographer was Dejan Dimeski from Skopje.

Under the encouraging vision of the festival director, Dimitar Nikolov, the SEE CAMERA Program is an innovative introduction in this melting pot of Southeast East Europe culture. The purpose is to promote films from the region.

Thankfully the Best Cinematography prize is retained, and the first recipient for 2015 was Milos Sric from Serbia for his skill filming the Slovenian/Austrian co-production The Woods Are Still Green. The inaugural Golden Manaki prize went to the Turkish film Sivas directed by Kaan Mujdeci. The jury in this category were Diomides Nikita, Cyprus, Maja Bogojevic, Montenegro and Miroslav Moncilovic, Serbia. They claimed complete harmony in their decision-making.

A New European Cinema programme has been introduced under Dejan Trajkoski. He describes it as “lyricism, philosophy, an experimental approach, an uncompromising visual expression, critical towards societies and reality, an open-mindedness towards the depths of love, fears”. In short almost anything under the sun!

Line up… the delegates at IMAGO’s Bitola 2015 conference in Macedonia

Eastern European promise…

Dimitar Nikolov, the new Manaki Festival director, has forward-look ing vision

Closing ceremony at Manaki… with Nigel Walters BSC r Sof presenting Jaromir n ACK with the Golde e Camera 300 Lifetim . ard Achievement Aw

The Best Film was awarded to the Icelandic Rams which won its director, Grimur Hokanarson a prize of €10,000 euros given by the Hungarian Film Lab towards his next project. Best Cinematographer went to Vasco Viana for the Portuguese film Mountain directed by Joao Salaviza.

The respected Serbian veteran cinematographer and director Bozidar-Bota Nikolic stole the loudest applause on the opening night when presented with his Golden Camera 300 by the Major of Bitola, Vladimir Talevski. In his speech he mentioned film as a collective art and how grateful he was to those who helped him win the award. The Macedonian president, Dr Gjorge Ivanov, presented Bruno Ganz with a special Golden Camera 300 Award for his outstanding contribution to World Cinema Art, about which there was no controversy, only universal pleasure! A similar award was presented to the Russian Actor Aleksey Serebryakov, best known for his monumental performance in Leviathan.

Short films preceded the screening of the thirteen films in main competition. If an applause register had been present the loudest ovation would have been shared for the Small Golden Camera between the outstanding Macedonian films, Pepi I Muto, shot by Dimo Popov and Down From Heaven, by Goran Naumovski. As a jury member it was difficult to separate the excellence of the storytelling by either cinematographer. The award was finally given to the popular Goran Naumovski for the latter. It was presented by Frosina Boshkova responsible for the imaginative VIP Junior Programme. As a result of this sponsored youth programme the children of Bitola are educated to appreciate the craft of the cinematographer. Where else in the world?

The Documentary Programme under the respected guidance of Gena Teodosievska, continues to champion the importance of the genre. A closer overview of the programme timings in future festivals would ensure a greater opportunity to enjoy the wider value of the documentary, important for social and educational development.

Following an invitation error several years ago when two distinguished cinematographers were invited simultaneously and both to some embarrassment replied positively, the Festival Committee have continued the tradition of giving Golden Camera Achievement awards at both the opening and closing ceremonies!

The Laureate, to whom I had the privilege of presenting his Award this year, was the veteran Czech cinematographer Jaromir Sofr ACK, known for his collaboration with his director and friend Jiri Menzel. This resulted in two young men winning an Academy Award in 1966 for Closely Watched Trains. Jaromir has previous

contact with the Manaki Festival as president of the jury and winner of the Golden Camera in 2007 for I Served The King of England. In the early days of IMAGO, Jaromir Sofr made an important contribution to the participation of the Czech cinematographers after co-founding the ACK in 1990. A former Head of Cinematography at Famu he addressed the audience with his hope that future audiences would be able to watch quality films correctly digitised. The Czech Society is instrumental in the fight for recognition of the role the cinematographer should play in digital restoration.

This year workshops were given by Deborah van Dam, a Dutch filmmaker, masterclasses by Milcho Manchevski, the Manaki Script Lab continues in collaboration with the TorinoFilmLab, Sony gave a presentation of 4K cinematography, and the ACK, with president Marek Jicha, supported by Jaromir Sofr, illustrated their progress on their digitising system. Various presentations, exhibitions and entertainment augmented the festival programme. When the restored cinema of the Manaki Brothers, burnt down in 1927, is completed in 2016, Bitola will boast four theatres, meters apart, all showing 2K projection, with a seating capacity of 1,200.

BALKAN CONFERENCE

IMAGO held the Fourth Balkan Conference of Cinematographers, featuring the topic of the future of 4K technology in regional filmmaking. It was attended by delegates from Macedonia, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Albania, Serbia and Croatia. A visiting guest cinematographer from Kosovo, Afrim Spahiu, was invited to address the delegates on the issues and problems affecting the few cinematographers in his country. An informed and independent view on the challenges to be faced by new technology was valued from the Sony representative from Sofia, Djorde Djukanovic.

IMAGO is also grateful for the participation of Tomi Salkovski SFS; Dimo Popov SFS president; Pedrag Bambic SAS president; Milos Spasojevic SAS vice president; Piro Milkani, Albania, Silvestar Kolbas, Croatia, Valentin Perko, Slovenia, Simon Tansek Slovenia President, Ivan Tonev, BAC president, IMAGO vice-president. Attending also were Ryszard Lenczewski PSC and Bozidar-Bota Nikolic, Serbia, and the Iranian cinematographer Morteza Gheidi who had the film Nahid in main competition.

The conference delegates were welcomed by the new Manaki festival director, Dimitar Nikola. He is determined to establish a platform of excellence to meet the challenges of the many crafts of filmmaking in the Balkans. The Manaki Brothers, Yanaki and Milton, can rest in peace assured that the oldest festival for cinematographers remains in caring hands. Milton is buried in Bitola, Macedonia, and Yanaki near Thessanonika, Greece. Brothers united in the spirit created in Bitola from their pioneering cinematography.

Jaromir Sofr ACK with the Golden e Camera 300 Lifetim . ard Achievement Aw ha Jic Photos by Marek K ACK, president AC

British Cinematographer | November 2015 | 79

GBCT / NEWS FROM THE GUILD / BY TIM POTTER - CHAIR - GBCT

OUR FINEST HOURS T

he recent EU court ruling has finally confirmed what I have been saying for years – that travelling for the purposes of work is work.

It means that those who do not have a permanent place of work should count the time they spend travelling from and to their home as part of their working day. Since the introduction of the Working Time Regulations in 1998, I have maintained that if you are required to render your services at various places that are dictated by your engager, then the time it takes you to get to these various places is part of the work that you are being asked to do. In the past I have argued that the time spent travelling from a production’s main base of operations to a location was work. The part of the journey that was from home to the production base was thought to be equivalent to a normal commute.

This was a distinction made by the HMRC when considering travel expenses. It was a difficult distinction to make in practice as most of us travelled directly to our locations. However, the EU court has gone further than I thought they would by including the part of travel that is from home to base.

This will now affect the way in which productions count the working time of individual members of the crew. The UK ‘opt-out’ from the Working Time Directive has been included in the wording of the Working Time Regulations. This allows for waivers from some, but not all, of the provisions of the Act. Most of us in the film and television industry sign waivers for the 48-hour week, but we cannot waive the 11-hour break between shifts. The Act does not give us the authority to waive the breaks between calls and weekend breaks.

The ruling now means that your personal 11-hour break starts when you arrive home and ends when you leave home for your next shift. Add 24-hours to this for every

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scheduled day off. The timing of your 11-hour break will no longer be from camera wrap to camera call. It will have to take into account the time taken to travel to and from the location. This will have a big influence on the timing of any claw-back after late shifts, split days and night working.

There is nothing in the ruling that says that this time should be paid; that is up to the individual to negotiate. The Working Time Regulations only refer to working hours not pay.

Productions will try to ignore the ruling and continue to set illegal schedules, so the new rules will have little immediate effect on camera crews.

But it will give those departments who work before and after camera hours more ammunition to argue for shorter working days. Any success they have will inevitably have a knockon effect on camera hours.

This is the way in which we will be able to use this ruling to improve our conditions. If your working time (work + travel) reaches or exceeds 13-hours then claw-back of start times will now be legally impossible. Prep and wrap departments are being routinely scheduled to break this part of the law. With the affect of this ruling making the abuse greater, it will not be long before someone gets sufficiently angry and heedless of their future career that they will take a production to court. They

will win hands down and this will be the motivation for productions to finally act on the issue of excessive hours. Prep and wrap departments will only be able to work legally if the camera hours are reduced. Claw-back will have to be replaced with rest days if turn-rounds from late or night shifts are to occur legally.

If overtime or long commutes push anyone into danger of breaching the 11-hour break, the amount of time that the next day’s call will have to be pushed later will now have to take that travel time into account.

The way we can begin to act on the new ruling is to make any breaches of the 11-hour break a matter of complaint that will force productions to reschedule accordingly. If any such breaches are TIM POTTER not met with the legal requirement for ‘compensatory rest’, which is usually taken as a later call the next day but which must be given within a reasonable time (courts tend to take reasonable in these circumstances to be within a week), should now be put into dispute and any failures to give any worker the correct 11-hour break should be reported to BECTU. The more pressure we can apply, the sooner we can achieve changes to our excessive hours.

“THOSE WHO DO NOT HAVE A PERMANENT PLACE OF WORK SHOULD COUNT THE TIME THEY SPEND TRAVELLING FROM AND TO THEIR HOME AS PART OF THEIR WORKING DAY.”

GBCT / NEWS FROM THE GUILD / BY JOHN KEEDWELL Bright ideas… audiences enjoyed Marvel’s Fantastic Four and Disney Pixar’s Inside Out using the Christie 6P laser projector

IBC… AND THE LESSONS FOR CINEMA

The recent IBC 2015 show in Amsterdam was again a huge spectacle of technology and innovation in the methods of sending moving pictures to an audience. There were interesting developments and many advances on established technologies, and there were the inevitable “pixel chasers” showing us the latest in a higher and higher definition television screens.

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here were only really a few “wow” moments at the show as many of the current advances were improvements and modifications of conventional technology, particularly in cameras and lighting. 4K is now the base level standard of many cameras it seems, with Sony, Panasonic and Blackmagic now producing relatively inexpensive 4K-capable cameras for under £5,000, some even under £1,000 in the case of Blackmagic.

The improvements in technology and manufacturing enabling such advances are spectacular and mind-blowing, and the effect on the business will be potentially massive.

The IBC show is, of course, predominantly a television technology show, not specifically for cinema.

The techniques and technology for television transmission are very different to that of cinema projection and cinematography due to the huge difference in viewing conditions, size of screen and overall immersion and connection with the screen content.

Yet it is safe to say electronic cameras are now the established way of producing a huge volume of the movies we see. It pains me to think of film now being seen as “old technology”, as many of the techniques are now based in the digital domain, yet the advances are primarily concerned with creating a better experience for the audience across both cinema and television, even with a different audience experience and production value.

One of the IBC Daily magazine’s headlines was announcing NHK’s advances into 8K television production within a few years, and NHK have been at the forefront of higher resolution cameras and TV displays over many years now. This again highlighted the debate about where technology is taking us, and where “chasing the pixel count” will end. With television the viewer naturally sits closer to the smaller screen than theatrical releases in cinema, of course, so there is a limit to the size of screen and how much extra the human eye can resolve. The introduction of 8K resolution high dynamic range screens in the Future Zone left me examining the picture as an electronic image I didn’t engage with. I felt I was looking at electronic image and not watching a compelling story, as the sharpness and enhancement of the image made it become unbelievable.

The human eye in real life doesn’t see saturated colours, edge detail and certainly doesn’t see everything in focus

from close-up to infinity. Because of this the picture looked “too real”, if that makes sense. It didn’t make compelling viewing, even though it was technologically advanced and highly detailed. This is an aspect driven by technology without taking account of how the “Mk-1 eyeball” actually perceives things. By making it “hyper real” it actually makes it “un-real” to watch, and this is an aspect of electronic cameras and productions compared to the more organic approach of film cameras and cinema production.

Higher definition electronic cameras and projection will clearly have a huge knockon effect for rising quality Disney Pixar’s Ins standards in both television ide Out and cinema productions, and the need for talented crew, set design and seamless postproduction effects will become much more crucial for discerning audiences. Training, education, quality standards and attention to detail will become even more essential as camera and cinema projection standards increase.

In essence, if any element is substandard on the screen it will be noticed by the evercritical audiences.

Perhaps more interesting in terms of cinematography was the discussion about high dynamic range (HDR) projection for cinema, and this was a recurring theme within the show. 2015 marks a major step towards better quality theatrical releases and consistent standards, and this was demonstrated by releasing the first two cinema releases in a cinema HDR format and an extended colour palette nearing Rec.2020.

The 2015 IBC Big Screen Experience closely examined the topics that are shaping the future of cinema and bigscreen entertainment. Packed audiences enjoyed Marvel’s Fantastic Four and the Disney Pixar film Inside Out, using the high brightness Christie 6P laser projector. Inside Out was demonstrated in a specially-created version for IBC,

which emphasised the full capabilities of an extended colour gamut. Christie’s latest laser projection technology uses six specific primary colours rather than filtered or polarised broad-spectrum white light to create a vivid and bright image to engage the audience, and this, combined with a specially installed Dolby sound system meant a cinema experience second to none, and it was a special treat to witness.

The fundamental business model of cinema was also closely examined. With live events now being shown on the big screen as an event attraction themselves, there could be a fundamental change in how cinemas are utilised and perceived, and what direction cinema needs to steer to ensure longterm success.

All-in-all IBC 2015 was a good show, but not for the usual reasons. Technology is advancing rapidly in our business, and some may wonder which way we are heading in terms of resolution, data rates, dynamic range and the viewing experience. Some may argue 4K resolution is more than sufficient as a standard for cinema going forward. Others argue 8K. Even 16K was being discussed for future standards. The fundamental issue isn’t necessarily about resolution, it’s about delivering compelling content and ultimately telling great stories the viewer is engaged with to ultimately have a fantastic experience.

This has to be paramount at every stage of the production.

Cutting corners and using poor techniques with camera operations and movement, set design, sound, hair, make-up and costume will ultimately show up massively on the ultra high-resolution, high dynamic range, crisp, bright projection screen. So a quality of technology as well as the trained professionals to use that technology must always feature at the top end of the priorities.

British Cinematographer | November 2015 | 81

GBCT / NEWS FROM THE GUILD / BY JOHN KEEDWELL

After a 10-year renovation the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam reopened in April 2013, so I made a point this year of staying an extra day after the IBC show to take a look. The Rijksmuseum is now the home of classic magnificent paintings from Rembrandt, Vermeer, Van Gogh and more.

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ou may ask why I am telling you this? Taking reference from the master painters and other art forms has always been a large part of the cinematographer’s art, and studying of composition, light and the ability to tell a story within a single picture has always been of interest and influence to the great cinematographers. However the visit to the museum demonstrated many aspects in other areas, predominantly related to cinema screens and how the human eye perceives detail.

Surprisingly there were many fantastic lessons to be learned by current high definition cinema in looking at the paintings from Rembrandt and Vermeer, although the painters will not have understood this at the time of producing their masterpieces, of course. Comparing two particular paintings by Rembrandt and Vermeer hopefully illustrates this ays been Fine art… has alw on for point, and will put into a source of inspirati may and perspective such current cinematographers techies still help inform theD imaging discussions about ultra high about details in UH definition cameras and where the cinema business is heading.

On heading through the museum I entered a large room, which was surprisingly full of many other people compared to the rest of the museum. The reason for this was evident after a few seconds of arriving in the room.

The painting from Rembrandt called “The Night Watch” (1642) dominated the room in a multitude of ways. The first thing to strike any viewer is the sheer size of the painting, taking up a whole wall of the room at 11.91ft tall × 14.34ft wide (3.6m 82 | British Cinematographer | November 2015

× 4.4m). The original painting was apparently even larger, but when it was moved from one building to another many years ago it apparently wouldn’t fit the new building. The decision was then apparently taken to cut off parts of the painting from the top and the left side. I guess, at that time, a Rembrandt wasn’t seen as quite as valuable as it is today.

However the current painting is suitably huge and certainly dominates any room it would hang in.

The second famous painting is by Johannes Vermeer called “The Milkmaid”, sometimes called “The Kitchen Maid” (c1657). Another classic Vermeer painting, “Girl With A Pearl Earring” (1665), was the inspiration for the eponymous 2003 film, of course. The Milkmaid painting is striking in many ways, as the quality of light and the detail in the picture is quite extraordinary, yet this picture is tiny in comparison to Rembrandt’s “The Night Watch”, being only 17 7⁄8 in × 16 1⁄8 in (46cm × 41cm) in size.

Both paintings are clearly masterpieces, yet their scale could not be more different.

The Rembrandt needs a massive room to fully appreciate it, and the viewer needs to stand much further away to take it all in. The Vermeer is a much closer viewing experience, and a small puncture hole in the painting that Vermeer had put their himself and used as a reference

for the vanishing point within the painting was pointed out.

A screw on the rear wall was immaculately rendered with exquisite shadow detail. The Rembrandt also had fantastic detailing in the clothing worn by the two main characters, and the background action characters are all masterpieces within their own right.

The underlying difference between the two paintings is the subject matter and the scale. The Rembrandt has a massive story unfolding behind the two main characters, and in terms of a movie it would be a fantastic wrangling of background extras to enable them to achieve their poses all at the same time as the painting. The Vermeer is a very simple picture of a maid pouring milk, yet equally compelling and a painting to be studied in greater detail.

Comparing the viewing distance of these two paintings has huge relevance to what I was discussing above about resolution, pixel count, dynamic range and content.

The detail within the Rembrandt is like comparing it to an 8K resolution cinema, as an example. The detail is phenomenal and masterfully executed, as one would expect from a Rembrandt, yet on standing further back to take in the whole picture this detail is diminished by the lack of resolving power of the human eye. In terms of cinema it is very similar to an IMAX viewing, where the framing and action within the scene is somewhat altered when the film is for IMAX, as the viewer can take the time to look around the whole scene in greater detail. The Vermeer is much lower “resolution” and the viewing distance is much closer to see the fine detail, yet the detail is still there, although on a smaller scale.

The question from these paintings for cinema is how much definition or resolution do we need to see? Or, put another way, how much do we actually see when we look at it with our eyes? It may mean the start of longer takes within the scene to let the viewer look around the image, yet this is counter intuitive to the cinematography techniques of light and shade, focus pulling, camera movement and lens choice, along with action within the scene and compelling dialogue and story. Higher resolution is great as long as it comes with all the traditional storytelling techniques we have come to love and cherish within the cinema.

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