Cinematography World January 2022 edition (CW007)

THE ART AND CRAFT BEHIND THE CAMERA

ISSUE 007 JANUARY 2022

INSIDE THIS ISSUE JANUSZ KAMIŃSKI ASC•MAGDA KOWALCZYK•SEAMUS MCGARVEY BSC ASC•MIKE BAUMAN•HIDETOSHI SHINOMIYA JSC•BRUNO DELBONNEL AFC ASC HÉLÈNE LOUVART AFC•ROBERT ELSWIT ASC•DAN LAUSTSEN DFF ASC•SI BELL•MARTIN RUHE ASC•JEFF CRONENWETH ASC•MIKE VALENTINE BSC

ISSUE 007•CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD It’s time for a global, industry-wide safety summit Stephen Lighthill ASC

Editor-in-Chief RON PRINCE ronny@cinematography.world Special Consultant ALAN LOWNE alan@cinematography.world Editorial Assistant KIRSTY HAZLEWOOD kirsty@cinematography.world Advertising Manager CLAIRE SAUNDERS claire@cinematography.world Subscriptions & Social Media CHLOÉ O’BRIEN chloe@cinematography.world Web Manager IAIN HAZLEWOOD iain@cinematography.world Art Direction & Creative Kinda Stuff JAM CREATIVE STUDIOS adam@jamcreativestudios.com tim@jamcreativestudios.com

CONTACT US News hello@cinematography.world Ad sales & Subscriptions +44 (0) 1428 746 377 Artwork artwork@cinematography.world +44 (0) 1428 746 375 www.cinematography.world

EDITORIAL TEAM Ron Prince has over three decades of experience in the film, TV, CGI and VFX industries, and has written about cinematography for 20 years. In 2014, he won the ARRI John Alcott Award from the BSC. He also runs the international content marketing and PR communications company Prince PR.

GREAT EXPECTATIONS It’s 2022! Did you make any resolutions for the year ahead?

Over at Cinematography World HQ, we have resolved to make it a good one, by continuing to build on the solid platform of our first year as a truly international publication – one that already reaches over 32,000 around the world.

As you’ll see, this edition features some of the biggest names in cinematography, as well as those who are forging early paths in their careers, right around the globe, creating wonderful moving pictures on some stellar productions, that are sure to leave an imprint of inspiration and aspiration on others.

Amongst the many plans to broaden our coverage and our reach still further, it gives me great pleasure to announce that Cinematography World is the leading media partner at Euro Cine Expo, happening this July in Munich.

Ron Prince photo by Joe Short www.joeshort.com

Rascals Publishing & Media Ltd! Red Lion Yard, Odd Down, Bath United Kingdom BA2 2PP Tel: +44 (0) 1428 746 375

Along with coverage of this exciting new show, we are also assisting with the programme of cinematography and post-oriented seminars and workshops. So if you have something interesting or innovative to say or show, we have the power to amplify your voice. So please get in touch.

Thank you to all of our collaborators and supporters. Your faith in us means the world.

You can expect us to do our very best.

“Count” Iain Blair is a British writer/musician who lives in LA and writes extensively about film/entertainment for outlets including LA Times, Variety and Reuters. He interviews movie stars, as well as Hollywood’s top filmmakers.

Darek Kuźma is a film and TV journalist, translator/interpreter, and a regular collaborator/programmer of the EnergaCamerimage Film Festival.

He is an ardent cinephile who has a lifelong romance with the visual language of cinema.

David Wood is a freelance journalist covering film/TV technology and production. He was a former technology editor at Televisual, and is a regular contributor to Worldscreen, TVB Europe and Broadcast.

Kirsty Hazlewood has over two decades of editorial experience in print/ online publications, and is a regular contributor to folk/roots music website Spiral Earth.

Ron Prince Editor in Chief ronny@cinematography.world

Michael Burns has covered film, broadcast, VFX, animation and interactive design, in print and online, for 20 years, for publications including IBC Daily, Digital Arts, TVB Europe and Broadcast Tech.

Awards Season recognizes excellence. So Do We. Congratulations to this year’s most celebrated productions brought to life with KODAK film. #SHOOTFILM Learn more at Kodak.com/go/motion © 2022 Kodak. Kodak and the Kodak logo are trademarks.

Michael Goldman is an LA-based award-winning, journalist/author, specialising in the art, technology and people involved in filmmaking and cinematography. He is a long-time contributor to American Cinematographer and CineMontage.

Natasha Block Hicks is an artist/designer/maker, who spent a decade as a freelance film and TV camera assistant, and indulges her love for cinema and cinematography through research and writing.

Oliver Webb is a film graduate/freelance journalist based in the UK, and is the founder/editor of CloselyObservedFrames. His interests include screenwriting, British New Wave cinema and the works of Ingmar Bergman.

Cover Image: Ariana DeBose as Anita, and David Alvarez as Bernardo, in 20th Century Studios’ West Side Story. Photo by Niko Tavernise. © 2021 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.

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CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD JANUARY 2022 3

Beautiful look.

Full control.

ISSUE 007•CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

INSIDE

ISSUE 007 JANUARY 2022

ZEISS Supreme Prime Radiance Lenses ZEISS Supreme Prime Radiance lenses enable cinematographers to create beautiful, consistent and controlled flares in the image while maintaining contrast and avoiding transmission loss. Yet, they offer all the attributes of a modern cinema lens: largeformat coverage, high speed of T1.5, robustness and smooth and reliable focus.

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BEN ROBERTS CEO BFI •VIEW FROM THE TOP

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IAIN SMITH OBE •POINT OF VIEW PRODUCTION NEWS WHO, WHAT, WHEN & WHERE MAGDA KOWALCZYK•COW SEAMUS MCGARVEY BSC ASC & JOE WRIGHT•CYRANO ROBERT ELSWIT ASC•KING RICHARD HIDETOSHI SHINOMIYA JSC•DRIVE MY CAR

40 WEST SIDE STORY

INDUSTRY LENS•SAFETY ON SET HARVEY HARRISON BSC•CAN SAFETY BECOME BULLETPROOF? JANUSZ KAMIŃSKI ASC•WEST SIDE STORY BRUNO DELBONNEL AFC ASC•THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH LETTER FROM AMERICA•HARRY BOX AT PERG HÉLÈNE LOUVART AFC•THE LOST DAUGHTER MIKE BAUMAN•LICORICE PIZZA

46 TRAGEDY OF MACBETH

STUDENT UNION•LONDON FILM SCHOOL ONE TO WATCH•LUDOVICA ISIDORI SMOOTH OPERATOR•LUCY BRISTOW ACO DAN LAUSTSEN DFF ASC•NIGHTMARE ALLEY SI BELL•A VERY BRITISH SCANDAL MARTIN RUHE ASC•THE TENDER BAR

62 NIGHTMARE ALLEY

JEFF CRONENWETH ASC•BEING THE RICARDOS TAKE SCENE SLATE•MIKE VALENTINE BSC GAFFER’S CAFÉ •MIKE BAUMAN SHOOTING GALLERY•CAMERIMAGE 2021 MEMORIES

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VIEW FROM THE TOP•BEN ROBERTS BFI CEO

PEOPLE POWER

People are our greatest strength and we can only thrive if we all work together

This time last year the world was facing an incredibly difficult period of the pandemic, yet thankfully our sector was beginning to see greenshoots of recovery.

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ilm and TV production had been able to restart in the second half of 2020, whilst post production, VFX, animation work and video games development had been able to pivot to a technology-enabled home working environment.

Whilst many were able to continue working, the shutdown brought home to us how much of our production workforce is predominantly freelance. Cinemas stayed closed through to early summer 2021, and festivals and markets were largely operating as virtual events.

We are by no means back to a steady state, but there are reasons to feel optimistic and this feels like the perfect time to take stock of where we are now and what lies ahead.

The screen sector is experiencing a global production boom, and the UK has returned stronger than ever. As you read this, we are preparing to report full-year figures for film and high-end television (HETV) production spend in 2021. Whilst these figures are not yet available, looking at the 12-month period from September 2020 to October 2021, we have seen a phenomenal £5.9bn spent on film productions including Indiana Jones 5, The Lost King, Wonka and Pretty Red Dress and HETV productions such as Sanditon, Showtrial and Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?.

The industry’s hard work and determination has driven this recovery with considerable support from the UK government. Its Film & TV Production Restart Scheme has been a game-changer, supporting more than 1,000 productions with total budgets of £2.68bn.

Our triennial report Screen Business – How Tax Incentives Power Economic Growth Across The UK, published in December 2021, covers the pre-pandemic period 2017-2019 and revealed screen production’s highest-ever return to the UK economy of £13.48bn (Gross Value Added). The UK’s tax reliefs are generating record-breaking levels of production and jobs; business and infrastructure expansion; record inward investment; and boosting screen exports. Having a stable and supportive fiscal environment is vital to our continued growth and contribution to the UK economy.

Over the past three years, we’ve seen a number of new studios open including Wolf Studios (Wales), First Stage (Scotland), Belfast Harbour Studios (Northern Ireland) and The Depot (Liverpool, England). Further studio expansion and developments include Eastbrook (East London), Pinewood and Shepperton, plus Sky at Elstree.

We are also seeing international studios including the streaming platforms, schedule production across the UK worth hundreds of millions of pounds, providing thousands of jobs and showcasing the UK’s ability to deliver high quality content.

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which included a live score screening of Mark Jenkins’s Bait in Melbourne.

Looking to our future funding plans, we have just published findings from our Next Up consultation which will help shape the priorities for our new ten-year National Lottery funding strategy, set to run from 20232033. This consultation, undertaken by independent research agency BritainThinks, has sought the views of the sector working in film, television, video games, animation, children’s TV and immersive and interactive media, as well as members of the public. All feedback is welcomed to help finalise the strategy, which will be published in autumn 2022.

Two subjects continue to be fundamental priorities for the BFI, and both are vital to the industry’s future if it is to continue to thrive, be vibrant and relevant – sustainability and inclusion and equality.

All of this is good news for the sector overall, but it is not without significant challenges which have come into sharp focus for independent film production in the wake of accelerated production growth and overall market shifts. We are examining these challenges with some urgency and will report in due course.

The higher costs for Covid-safe production and growing our skills base to meet demand for skilled crews and balance out the job market are top of that list.

Improving employment resilience is part of discussions taking place during the current review of skills that we are leading on behalf of the Department For Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS). International trade also comes high on the agenda in terms of UK screen commerce and cultural development.

The new UK Global Screen Fund is a muchwelcomed move in this direction, designed to boost international co-production, business development and distribution opportunities for UK independent film, TV, animation and video games. The fund has got off to a blistering start, providing over £4m to companies and projects, including 11 UK international co-productions.

A new ScreenUK brand will roll out over the coming months to promote UK content to international audiences.

The fund, which we manage on behalf of the DCMS, has now been confirmed for a further three years.

Trade agreements are also being progressed to support UK and international business and cultural collaboration. The newly-revised UK-Australia coproduction agreement will make it easier for UK and Australian filmmakers to co-produce and support culture exchange. The BFI is partnering ACMI, Australia’s national museum of screen culture, with a season of Australian films, performance and moving image art later this year; this follows a British film showcase in Australia

Rebuilding for a cleaner, greener industry has to happen if we are to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050. Technological advances are shifting larger proportions of production to virtual environments, offering the potential to reduce carbon emissions and waste, whilst also opening up creative exploration in virtual screen production. We are putting into practice recommendations from the Screen New Deal report, which we undertook with BAFTA Albert and engineering and design specialists Arup, in a Transformation Plan project with partners. More to be announced shortly.

Inclusion has underpinned our work for some time and some progress has been made, but there is still significant work to be done on both sides of the camera.

We are taking more direct action with initiatives, such as Step Up that provides opportunities for talented production crew from under-represented groups to enhance their existing skills working on BFI-funded films.

As we look to strengthen the BFI Diversity Standards to generate more of a positive impact across the board, we are also undertaking targeted initiatives such as the Press Reset digital campaign, developed in partnership with our Disability Screen Advisory Group, aiming to inspire decision-makers in film and television to recognise, tackle and prevent ableism.

Within the BFI and within our sector, we recognise that our people are our greatest strength and we can only thrive if we all work together to create the right conditions to thrive within. Committing to change and making the industry a better place to work is down to us all.

Ben Roberts CEO British Film Institute

POINT OF VIEW•IAIN SMITH OBE

ScreenSkills: supporting growth and recovery UK-wide

THE IMPORTANCE OF SMALL THINGS When HBO started-up back in 1972, its future hardly looked auspicious. On its opening night it had fewer than 400 subscribers, and nobody in the company could even agree on the name Home Box Office, settling for it as the ‘least bad’ option.

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hese days HBO is one of the most recognised brands on earth. It has a global subscriber base of over 114 million and more than $3 billion in annual sales.

I mention HBO because it had a prophetic slogan. “It’s not television. It’s HBO.” It seemed to address the considerable gap that existed between film and television at the time, but it was also pointing towards a media future that, before Netflix, few of us could have ever predicted.

after the production pipeline delay last year.

While the UK has always been regarded as a production base, our reorganisation has placed us in an enviable position of being a user friendly “onestop-shop”. A combination of generous tax relief, a highly-skilled workforce, and an excellent talent base has established the UK as a major production centre within the new world order.

Making predictions is a mugs game. Any interpretation of the future in times of great change can never be safe. In recent years I have increasingly appreciated that small beginnings can lead to big consequences.

In the UK film and TV business we have traditionally seen ourselves as an island facing a sea of indeterminate foreign possibilities. Thirty years ago this view of the world wasn’t working too well, and we were smart enough to realise something had to give. We set about re-examining our ways of working in order to prepare for a future we could barely guess at. We were far-sighted enough to realise that centres were giving way to networks, and that we had to think very differently if we were to survive.

Small beginnings can lead to big consequences Akio Morita, the founder of Sony, was Japanese, but he also saw himself as a citizen of the world.

He it was who initiated the concept of “global localisation” as the key to running a globalised company, by empowering local business hubs to be sensitive to local possibilities. More than any other, this small idea has shaped media opportunism in the 21st century.

As a result of the UK rethinking our traditional methodologies, the amount spent on making content in the UK this year is on track to hit a

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The amount spent on making content in the UK is on track to hit £6 billion stunning £6 billion. This is thanks to a Covid-induced UK spending spree by the streaming giants and broadcasters, which has been induced by our industrial preparedness and our readiness to work.

As a result, the investment in making films and high-end TV this year will more than double the £2.8 billion in 2020 (when production ground to a halt for months) and a staggering two thirds more than the previous record, set in pre-pandemic 2019.

Spending on high-end TV shows hit £3.3 billion in the year to the end of September, according to the latest figures from the British Film Institute. Which way exceeds the £1.4 billion so far committed to making feature films in the UK. Ben Roberts, the chief executive of the BFI said, “We are experiencing a boom. We have seen incredible growth in the first three quarters this year.

The streamers have been taking huge amounts of studio space in the UK. And the number of streamers making content here is expanding; for a long time it was only Netflix, which means we are seeing considerable growth in content demand.”

When the spending on productions in the final quarter is revealed in the New Year the total is likely to hit, or even surpass, £6 billion as streamers and broadcasters race to replenish their content libraries

To illustrate the point, in August last year, Amazon made the unexpected decision to move its $1 billion plus Lord Of The Rings TV franchise to the UK, having filmed just one series in New Zealand. Disney has a similar large-scale deal at Pinewood Studios, where the Star Wars and Marvel films are based, and Apple more recently has secured facilities in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire.

In the middle of this surge of new business models and disruptive technology, we must never become complacent or lose sight of what we have always been good at – namely, great stories, well told. Our discipline, our reliability and our technical and creative prowess, our skills, our talents, our infrastructure in-depth.

Above all, in the face of quantity, we must retain the quality of what we do. If we continue to pay attention to the small stuff that makes us as great as we are, we can look forward to a first class future.

Iain Smith OBE Producer Chair of British Film Commission

You can’t make great film, TV and animation without investing in the people Read the stories of the people we support at screenskills.com

PRODUCTION & POST NEWS

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ROBBIE RYAN ISC BSC WINS 2021 CAMERIMAGE GOLDEN FROG

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rish cinematographer Robbie Ryan ISC BSC won the Golden Frog at the 2021 Energa Camerimage Festival Of Cinematography, in Torun, Poland, for his B&W, documentary-style lensing of Mike Mills’ feature film C’mon C’mon, starring Joaquin Phoenix. The film also took home the Audience Award.

Ryan, who was in Hungary shooting Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things at the time of the awards gala, thanked the organisers and described Camerimage as “the best festival in the world”, via a prerecorded acceptance speech.

The main competition jury, headed by director Joe Wright, gave the Silver Frog to French DP Bruno Delbonnel AFC ASC for his work on Joel Coen’s stark B&W film, The Tragedy Of Macbeth. Also accepting his award in a pre-recorded speech, Delbonnel said he was in London prepping for Alfonso Cuaron’s next project, called Disclaimer, together with Mexican DP Emmanuel Lubezki AMC ASC. The Bronze Frog went to Australian DP Greig Fraser ACS ASC for his work on Denis Villenueve’s

Dune. Wright highlighted Fraser’s masterful control of his craft in working on an epic scale, along with his intimate connection to nature and light. Fraser and Villeneuve are now working on a sequel and are rumoured to be harnessing new methods of

AWARDS WINNERS Main Competition: Golden Frog – C’mon C’mon, DP Robbie Ryan ISC BSC, dir. Mike Mills Silver Frog – The Tragedy Of Macbeth, DP Bruno Delbonnel AFC ASC, dir. Joel Coen Bronze Frog – Dune, DP Greig Fraser ACS ASC, dir. Denis Villeneuve Fipresci Award – Animals, DP Frank Van Den Eeden NSC SBC, dir. Nabil Ben Yadir Audience award – C’mon C’mon, DP Robbie Ryan ISC BSC, dir. Mike Mills Polish Films Competition: Best Polish film – Operation Hyacinth, DP Piotr Sobociński Jr, dir. Piotr Domalewski

SOFT LIGHT. PRECISE WHITE.

filming for the next instalment.

Despite the prevalence of the pandemic in Poland, the festival held more than 230 screenings of fiction, documentary, shorts and music videos from around the world, and lured other highprofile filmmakers including: Sir Kenneth Branagh and his British DP Haris Zambarloukos BSC

CAMERIMAGE

2021

GSC on Belfast; Wright’s Cyrano DP Seamus McGarvey BSC ASC; director Joel Coen; as well as No Time To Die director Cary Fukunaga and Swedish DP Linus Sandgren FSF ASC. The festival was notable for a special tribute to Ukranian cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, who died on-set in a firearms incident in New Mexico in October 2021. At the closing ceremony, festival director Marek Żydowicz made a plea to film professionals to be competent, responsible and honest in their work, noting that Hutchins’ death was “a result of the incompetence and lack of responsibility of those that were on-set with her.”

Film & Art School Etudes Competition: Golden Tadpole – Laszlo Kovacs student Award – The Howling, DP Max Bugajak, dir. Bartosz Brzeziński (Warsaw Film School) Silver Tadpole – Tala’vision, DP Philip Henze, dir. Murad Abu Eisheh (Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg) Bronze Tadpole – Cold Blow Lane, DP Christopher Behrman, dir. Luca Homolka (Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg) Documentary Features Competition: Golden Frog – My Voice Will Be With You, DP Tristan Galand, dir. Bruno Tracq Directors’ Debuts Competition: Best director’s debut – Titane, DP Ruben Impens SBC, dir. Julia Ducournau Cinematographers’ Debuts Competition: Best cinematographer’s debut – Bipolar, DPs Yuming Ke & Queena Li TV Series Competition: Best Episode – ‘Welcome Io Utmark’ Eye For An Eye, DP Andreas Johannessen, dir. Dagur Kári

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EURO CINE EXPO GOES AHEAD IN MUNICH

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uro Cine Expo, the new trade fair for technologies, products and the art of cinematography, will go ahead on 1st to 2nd July 2022, at Zenith Kulturhalle, Munich, Germany.

The two-day fair combines all facets and technologies from the world of professional film and TV production, featuring major international manufacturers exhibitors, plus seminars and workshops in partnership with Cinematography World Magazine, and offers a much-needed meeting point for the filmmakers, cinematographers and crews.

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PRODUCTION & POST NEWS SONY UNVEILS FLAGSHIP VENICE 2 DIGITAL CINEMA

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ony chose the 2021 Camerimage Festival Of Cinematography, to take the wraps off Venice 2, the latest addition to its line-up of high-end digital cinema camera systems.

The Venice 2 builds upon the original Venice with new features, including a compact design, internal recording, and the option for two different sensors – the newly-developed, full-frame 8.6K sensor, or the original 6K Venice sensor. The Venice 2 also inherits popular features from the original Venice, including colour science, Dual Base ISO and 8-stops of built-in ND filters.

Paired with a newly-developed 8.6 K (8640 x 5760) full-frame CMOS sensor, the Venice 2 offers 16 stops of total latitude to capture images with high-end colour separation and shadow detail. The camera also inherits its colour science from the original Venice, which is highly-regarded for its natural skin tones.

The Venice 2 CineAlta camera has a dual base ISO of 800/3200, which allows filmmakers to capture clean, film-like images under a wide range of lighting conditions. The new camera supports everything from full-frame, full-frame Anamorphic to Super 35mm all at a minimum of 4K resolution.

Thanks to direct feedback from the production community, the Venice 2 was designed with a smaller and more lightweight body than the original Venice whilst keeping its intuitive operability. Despite being 44mm smaller and approximately 10% lighter, the Venice 2 chassis allows internal recording of X-OCN and Apple 4K Pro Res 4444 and 422HQ without the AXS-R7 recorder.

Sony worked with leading cinematographers to test the camera’s image quality on separate film shoots without using any professional movie lighting. Award-winning cinematographer Robert McLachlan ASC CSC, who has worked on highly-acclaimed productions Game Of Thrones (for which he received two Emmy nominations), Westworld and Lovecraft Country, tested and filmed with the 8.6K fullframe Venice 2 in two countries.

Award-winning cinematographer Robert McLachlan ASC CSC, who has worked on high-

ly-acclaimed productions Game Of Thrones (for which he received two Emmy nominations), Westworld and Lovecraft Country, tested and filmed with the 8.6K full-frame Venice 2 in two countries.“I really wish we’d had a large format, 8.6K sensor like Sony Venice 2 on Game Of Thrones. It would have made it feel even more epic and, at the same time, more engaging, thanks to the increased resolution, richness and dimensionality. The increased speed, cleaner highlights and shadows, together with the potential for super-shallow depthof-field, would have been a huge asset.”

Oscar-winning cinematographer Claudio Miranda ASC ACC used the original Venice and tested the Venice 2 against the original in the pitch darkness of the California desert.

“The 3200 ASA is incredible. I think how clean it is – is definitely a big deal,” said Miranda. “In the film, there is still fidelity in the shadows, and the wide shots are pretty spectacular. There were no film lights on this shoot at all.

There were just headlights of the car, the fire, and that was the point. It was to go to the middle of nowhere and put a big fire and see how far the new sensor could light up the mountain, without noise.”

Rob Hardy BSC, the British cinematographer known for his work on Mission Impossible: Fallout, Ex-Machina and Devs, also commented: “I’m used to using the original Venice and am a pretty much an advocate of that camera. The opportunity to use this Venice 2 is actually a really fantastic one. This is the first time I’ve ever used that 8.6K larger sensor, and we were lucky enough to get some Anamorphic lenses that were set for the full cinematic effect and that really utilised the whole sensor.

The ISOs have been bumped up so that enables me to shoot at a higher speed in the low light levels which is something that wasn’t really an option before, and that’s the big gain for me.”

With the 8.6K sensor providing oversampling, images shot on Venice 2 benefit from less noise and enriched information in a 2K or 4K production. It also means the camera is well suited for VR, in-camera VFX and virtual production set-ups, delivering an immersive experience and realistic images, especially in combination with Sony’s high-contrast and large-scale Crystal LED displays.

Since its launch in 2017, Venice has been used to shoot more than 300 theatrical, broadcast, cable, and streaming releases, including the Emmy award-winning series The Crown, and Paramount’s upcoming feature Top Gun: Maverick.

CVP OFFERS LENS COVERAGE & CAMERA COMPARISON TOOL ONLINE

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ith more choice than ever when it comes to lens options and sensor formats, how do you ensure you can achieve the right coverage without having to spend time physically putting a multitude of lenses on a variety of cameras?

CVP’s comprehensive web-based and easy-to-use, Lens Coverage & Camera Comparison Tool, offers a free visual representation of a lens’ coverage when paired with various sensor formats, giving filmmakers a first indication of the camera equipment and how it might suit their project.

The online resource was created in response to regular enquiries to CVP’s Technical Consultants around a variation of the question, “Will this lens work with that sensor?”.

The CVP team decided it would be useful to create a visual database as an initial guide to show how a particular lens would work with a particular camera – or to compare coverage of two different formats using the same lens.

The database is continually being developed and updated, and includes the latest from manufacturers such as ARRI, Sony, Red, Canon, Cooke Optics, Leitz, Angenieux and Zeiss, amongst others. The combinations presented are vast, with hundreds of thousands of available variations; for every focal length, the tool can illustrate coverage at either wide-open or stopped-down, both at close focus or at infinity. Users are encouraged to engage with CVP via the comments section to request additions to the programme, and it is always recommended to shoot proper tests to look at the full range of camera and lens characteristics.

The Lens Coverage & Camera Comparison Tool allows users to carry out the following functions in a visual format: checking whether a lens covers a sensor format; comparing field-of-view for a lens on a given sensor format; comparison of sensor data; accessing lens data; and seeing how to match B-camera to A-camera. View and use the Lens Coverage & Camera Comparison Tool at: https://cvp.com/tools/cameralens

12 JANUARY 2022 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

FILMMAKERS ACADEMY LAUNCHES NEW APP & LIVESTREAM MASTERCLASSES

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ilmmakers Academy, a new premium online learning community, is an app (iOS and Android) allowing members 24/7 access to more than 800 hours of instruction from leading film industry professionals. The app is available from the Apple Store, Google Play, Amazon and Roku.

As part of a regular programme of masterclasses available on Filmmakers Academy, American cinematographer Shane Hurlbut ASC will host an interactive live-streamed session entitled, “Camera, Lens & Filter Masterclass” on Saturday, January 29th at 10amPT/6pmGMT. Registration is required for this three-hour, one-time-only learning session ($125 for All Access members, $250 general).

Filmmakers Academy replaces and expands upon the legacy of Hurlbut Academy, which has mentored thousands of cinematographers over the past decade. All Access annual members have unlimited access to more than 60 courses covering cinematography, directing, lighting, camera and lenses, grading and more. Members also join special learning sessions and a networking community of experts and peers.

“All this year, we will be growing our roster to include new courses for producers, sound, production design, editors and wellness,” says CEO Lydia Hurlbut, pointing to the new “Unscripted Camera Operating” course by Sherri Kauk. “We’re currently developing courses and content designed to help members keep mind, body and soul at peace in our incredibly demanding industry.”

All-Access Annual Memberships are available at the discounted price of $33 per month, billed annually.

Visit www.filmmakersacademy.com for more information. “

FIILEX’S SHIPS P3 COLOR, WITH Q10 COLOR FRESNEL COMING SOON

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iilex, manufacturer of high-end LED lighting for the film and television industries, has officially launched its P3 Color into the UK market. The P3 Color is a portable 90W LED fixture, offering white light output ranges from 2,000 to 10,000K with high CRI, with colour control modes allowing users to access the full range of vibrant RGB illumination.

At the core of the P3 is Fiilex’s patented Dense Matrix LED, an extremely small light source capable of producing crisp shadows and clean barndoor cuts. Accessory attachments can diffuse or focus the P3’s output.

Available in Q2 of 2022, the 900W Q10 Color sits at the opposite end of the Fiilex Color Series line-up.

This high-performance luminaire is thought to be one of the most powerful full-colour LED Fresnels available.

Besides its extremely bright output, other notable features of the Q10 include an extremely wide spot/ flood range and builtin LumenRadio for wireless DMX control.

The P3 Color and Q10 Color are through Cirro Lite Ltd.

M O RB IU S

PRODUCTION & POST NEWS

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ARRI EXPANDS ORBITER ACCESSORY RANGE

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RRI has expanded the accessory range for its Orbiter LED luminaire with the introduction of the Orbiter Docking Ring, the new Orbiter Bag-o-Light, Orbiter Glass Cover, and Orbiter Dome Mini, with the aim of enhancing the flexibility, of the fixture.

The Orbiter Docking Ring expands the toolboxes of lighting designers and DPs, with its Quick Lighting Mount (QLM) system and a large number of different optical lighting accessories from ARRI. By enabling the Orbiter to accept various industry standard, third-party optics, the new Docking Ring enlarges the fixture’s application possibilities and gives a second life to other third-party equipment. The optical design of the Orbiter Docking Ring boosts the performance of older tools in output, optical performance and homogeneity. Users can apply their already-owned optics on the Orbiter as an alternative to ARRI optics, whilst still benefiting from the quality ARRI lighting.

The adapter connects effortlessly and without any additional tools onto the QLM of every Orbiter.

The Docking Ring is automatically recognised by the

luminaire and the light output is automatically adjusted.

Attaching third-party optics can be done simply and swiftly without any tools required.

Creating pleasing, soft and almost shadow-free illumination is now also possible with the Orbiter Bag-o-Light. This accessory, which looks like a huge tube, can be attached to Orbiter’s 15° Open Face optic and is ideal for closeup applications in motion picture and photography.

When inflated, it is 2m long with a diameter of 22cm and weighs less than 0.86kg/1.89 lbs.

The Orbiter Glass Cover is a small, compact and lightweight optical accessory. With ultra-translucent glass, the Glass Cover allows for full, unrestricted light output without impacting colour temperature or quality on near-distance applications when limited available space but much light is needed.

The Orbiter Dome Mini provides omnidirectional light at high intensity. Compared to the Dome optic, the Dome Mini is a compact version and is smaller and

lighter. Its highly-translucent material keeps the light output loss to a minimum compared to the other larger, cloth-based domes, and is well-suited for near distance applications in limited space.

In further news, Dr. Matthias Erb has been appointed chairman of the ARRI Executive Board. In addition to his duties as chairman he will be responsible for the strategic alignment of the business along with its finance, human resources legal and quality management departments. Dr. Michael Neuhaeuser will continue to focus on operations and technology, and Markus Zeiler will continue to oversee business and sales. Before joining ARRI, Dr Erb, spent almost 20 years in the automotive industry, and most recently, served as SVP and head of holistic user-experience at Volkswagen in Wolfsburg, Germany.

DEDOLIGHT LIGHTSTREAM AT FOREFRONT OF POWER EFFICIENCY

T

he media industry consumes a great deal of energy, and is a significant contributor to climate damage, but green-tech applications in the production world are often over-looked.

The Dedolight Lightstream system offers one of the most power efficient lighting systems on the market, making it an environmentally friendly option.

This is the result of several factors in the design:

low power consumption, as reflectors replace many traditional light fixtures; the use of parallel beam intensifiers increase light output up to 500%, without drawing extra power; and the low-power requirements of LED lights used with the Dedolight Lightstream system.

In former times, lighting a small TV studio would likely have required between 30 and 100kilowatts of power, with an additional 200 or 250kilowatts of extra power for climatisation. The Dedolight Lightstream system and its LED technology, can light the same area lit by 30kilowatt using 970watts of power.

To achieve this, Dedolight employs a 220watt DLED30 light with a Parallel Beam Intensifier lighting four reflectors simultaneously, for front and key lighting. For backlight a 90watt LED bi-colour light has been used, also with Parallel Beam Intensifier,

SCREENSKILLS ANNOUNCES NEW E-LEARNING PROGRAMME

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new suite of five online learning modules has been launched by ScreenSkills to support people looking to get their first break in the screen industries.

The free online training modules, sitting under the title Getting Into The Screen Industries, include an introduction to working in the screen industries, how to identify the right role, find and apply for work, and perform well in an interview The modules were developed with support from the BFI, awarding National Lottery funds as part of its Future Film Skills strategy. Arts Council England

14 JANUARY 2022 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

supported the launch of the online learning platform.

The suite starts with an introduction to working in the screen industries and the various roles involved.

Participants taking the remaining modules will then learn how to identify the right role for their skills, how to find work, how to apply for a role and how to perform well at interview.

The free online training is designed to complement existing resources and open up the screen industries to a greater diversity of talent and better equip new entrants for starting work in them.

lighting five reflectors in a row.

Such lighting can be mixed with additional soft lights. The octagon-shaped Dedolight Ledraptor softlight – available in 3, 5, and 7ft versions – smoothes the overall lighting and gives a gentle and homogeneous feeling, while still leaving the special character of the more structured Dedolight Lightstream system.

With this approach and drastically-lower power consumption, generated heat is minimally reducing the need for air-conditioning, possibly none at all.

The largest light in the Dedolight Lightstream system is the parabolic PB70, which is suitable for feature films and other large-scale productions shooting on location or in studios. The PB70 draws 1200W and has light output significantly higher than a 9000W ARRI in spot function.

Introducing DaVinci Resolve 17.4 Up to 5 times faster for 8K editing and grading on Apple Mac models with M1 Pro and Max! DaVinci Resolve 17.4 transforms the speed of DaVinci Resolve to work up to 5 times faster on the new Apple Mac models with the M1 Pro and M1 Max chips. This massive speed increase lets you play back, edit and grade 8K projects even faster, and work with up to 12 streams of 8K footage. It also adds Dropbox Replay integration, improved subtitling, automatic color management, audio plugins and more.

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The edit page now features better functionality for position curves in the

A new Resolve FX called custom mixer allows you to combine effects and make

timeline. You will also now be able to use DaVinci Resolve Speed Editor to

adjustments to grades with finer control. Plus, a new 3D keyer adds the ability

switch between cameras in multicam clips on the edit page. Plus for subtitling,

to make finer adjustments to the key and matte finesse settings. For DaVinci

it includes automatic resizing of backgrounds and cursor placement, as well

Resolve Studio, there’s a new film halation which adds glow or light reflection

as nested timeline subtitle tracks now auto populating the main timeline.

effects around high contrast edges for a more filmic look.

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Fairlight audio now supports Steinberg VST3 audio plugins, giving access to more audio effects so you can create the perfect soundtrack. Plus, there are keyboard shortcuts or click and drag to reorder, move and duplicate effects in the Fairlight mixer. Single sided audio transitions are displayed as fades making it even easier to adjust effects.

With greater support for automatic color management, it’s now faster and simpler to set up projects. Additionally, this update adds support for ACES 1.3, including gamut compression. This allows you to have a more accurate display of wide gamut images which allows you to be sure you are getting the best

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PRODUCTION & POST NEWS

NAB SHOW AND ASC PARTNER ON EDUCATIONAL WORKSHOPS N AB Show is partnering with the American Society Of Cinematographers (ASC) to present educational workshops taught by prominent cinematographers. The two in-person workshops will take place April 24-25 at NAB Show in Las Vegas and will cover cinematic techniques in lighting.

NAB Show is developing the workshops in coordination with the newly-formed Cine Consortium.

Each five-hour workshop is designed by instructors who have expertise and experience in specific areas of film and television production.

The Cine Consortium launched in November 2021 in Los Angeles, to help guide NAB Show and affiliated events in identifying opportunities to serve,

educate and unite the cinema, production, post and broader content creation communities. Its members, comprising equipment manufacturers, studios, unions and guilds and more, are committed to building innovative ways to serve creative professionals and technologists.

ASC president Stephen Lighthill ASC, commented, “The new workshops will allow our members to teach and share their expertise to a new group of filmmakers while continuing to advance the craft of the cinematographer.”

ASC instructors and workshop details will be announced in the coming weeks.

CREAMSOURCE ANNNOUNCES MAJOR FIRMWARE UPDATE FOR VORTEX8

C

reamsource has announced the availability of CreamOS 1.2.0, an expansive firmware update for its flagship Vortex8 650W highpower 2’x1’ LED fixture. This firmware release provides several improvements for usability, stability and performance, including sACN DMX control over Ethernet. It also introduces FrameSync, an innovation that enables enhanced effects and creative applications.

With FrameSync, the Vortex8 can be triggered from an external source, such as a sync generator (e.g. Ambient Lockit ACN-CL), or the genlock output of a cinema camera, to ensure that it is synchronised with the camera shutter. This is especially useful when using effects such as strobe, where a lack of synchronisation between the camera and the lights can cause issues like frame tearing and flash banding. It alleviates the problem that most digital CMOS cameras can have with any flashing or strobing light source. It can also be used for frame-accurate strobing for advanced special effects, for frame rates up to 5,000fps.

Using FrameSync, users can set-up a group of synchronised lights, an individual light, or a sub-group of lights, and can run a sequence of pre-programmed changes.

For example, a light to the left of the talent can be set to red for every second frame, and a light to the right of the talent can be set to blue for every other frame. With CreamOS 1.2.0, there is effectively no limit to the number of fixtures that can be synchronised at the same time.

FrameSync on Vortex8 has the most creative latitude when paired with a high-speed camera such as the Phantom Flex 4K. With more frames, there are more options and combinations possible for creative lighting effects. Creamsource says that while its patentpending technology is already useful in its current rendition, there’s a lot more coming in terms of expanded tools and functionality in the future on the FrameSync Platform.

16 JANUARY 2022 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

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WHO, WHAT, WHEN & WHERE

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MAKING LIGHT WORK

Opposite: (top, middle & below) Tobia Sempi on a Toyota TVC in LA with dir. Patrick Cummings; John Pardue BSC shooting on Pennyworth; and Simon Rowling at the camera.

This page: (clockwise) Matt Wicks; Katie Swain on Sanditon; BAFTA Breakthrough DP Aaron Reid in the water; and Bjorn Charpentier with key grip Tom North on set of Gangs Of London 2.

Our regular round up of who is shooting what and where INDEPENDENT TALENT: John Mathieson BSC is working on the new Warner Bros TV series Batgirl for HBO Max. Balazs Bolygo BSC HSC is lensing the TV series Treason, directed

by Louise Hooper. Mark Waters will be shooting block 2 of TV series The Light, directed by Chris Forster.

Maja Zamojda BSC is lighting a new series of The Wheel Of Time. Chas Bain is shooting A Town Called Malice, directed by Jamie Donohue, in London & Tenerife. Simon Dennis BSC is shooting new TV series Candy. Ole Bratt Birkeland BSC is framing Ol Parker’s Ticket To Paradise. Darran Bragg shot The Larkins Christmas Special with director Robin Sheppard.

Bjorn Bratberg has wrapped on The Devil’s Hour with director Isabelle Sieb. Jordan Buck has been on location shooting for Sky with David Mellor. Chris Clarke continues collaborating with Jamie Thraves on promos, and is shooting with Something Else for Tesco x I’m A Celebrity. Ben Davis BSC is prepping for JC Chandor’s Kraven The Hunter. Sam Goldie shot a spot for Noble Panacea featuring Jodie Comer, and is with director Amanda Blue on the TV production Newark Newark. Catherine Goldschmidt is shooting Red Gun for director Geeta Patel. Since finishing on Conversations With Friends, Suzie Lavelle shot a Halifax spot for Director 32 at Pulse. Bani Mendy is lighting Pru S1 with Teddy Nygh. Andreas Neo shot 2nd unit on The Queen Mary with Gary Shore, and lit a Gillette ad with director Noah Conopask. Aadel Nodeh-Farahani shot a Davidoff Cigars spot for two weeks in the Dominican Republic, and worked with director David Barr on a spot for Monster. Mark Patten BSC is lighting Mechanical with Morten Tylden.

Stephan Pehrsson BSC is filming Wednesday Addams. George Richmond BSC has finished on Matthew Vaughn’s feature Argyle. James Rhodes shot on block 4 of The Rising with Carl Tibbetts, and shot Adele’s live concert at The Observatory in LA, plus Coldplay live in Seattle, both with director Paul Dugdale.

Christopher Ross BSC is on Parliament Square with Josie Rourke. Ashley Rowe BSC is shooting The Reckoning. Martin Ruhe ASC is prepping for George Clooney’s The Boys In The Boat. Alan Stewart BSC is getting ready to shoot Our Man From Jersey with Julian Farino. Mark Waters is on block 2 of The Light with director Chris Forster. Erik Wilson BSC lit a Tesco Christmas ad with Academy’s Si & Ad. Maja Zamojda BSC is shooting the new series of Wheel Of Time.

MCKINNEY MACARTNEY MANAGEMENT: Ben Butler and Alessandra Scherillo have been shooting commercials. Sergio Delgado is prepping The Pact S2 for BBC. Mike Filocamo recently wrapped on Elite in India. Gavin Finney 18 JANUARY 2022 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

BSC continues to film Good Omens S2 for Amazon/ BBC. Jean Philippe Gossart AFC has completed on The Witcher: Blood Origin for Netflix. Steve Lawes shot Beacon 23 for AMC in Toronto. David Luther is shooting Wool for Apple TV. Sam McCurdy BSC is working on Shogun in Vancouver for FX. Andy McDonnell recently wrapped on DI Ray for ITV and is Ackley Bridge S5 for C4. John Pardue BSC recently finished a stint on Pennyworth S2 for HBO Max. Mike Spragg BSC has wrapped on Pennyworth S2 for HBO Max, and is now prepping Pitch Perfect: Bumper In Berlin for NBC Universal.

Richard Stoddard continues Brassic S4 for Sky. BERLIN ASSOCIATES: Edward Ames is prepping Waterloo Road, for Wall To Wall.BBC with series producer Chris Clenshaw.

Harvey Glen recently worked with Two Four TV for their Project Toronto shoot. Alvaro Gutierrez is prepping on Extraordinary, a TV comedy drama

by Sid Gentle Films for Disney, directed by Nadira Amrani. Annemarie Lean-Vercoe is prepping Breeders S3 for Avalon Television. Nick Martin recently completed shooting on Bloods S2 for Roughcut Television. Toby Moore worked on Silent Witness blocks 1 & 3 with producer Nick Lambon. Trevelyan Oliver is filming Ghosts S4 for Monumental Pictures.

Pete Rowe is prepping Stuck for Hat Trick/BBC, a 5 x 15 minute series written by and starring Dylan Moran.

Simon Rowling shot the feature Lord Of Misrule for Riverstone Pictures with director William Brent Bell.

James Swift has completed a block of McDonald & Dodds S3 with producer Rebecca Davies for Mammoth Screen. Simon Walton shot on Shetland and is prepping for Nutopia’s project Blood, Sex, Royalty.

Matt Wicks completed Funny Girl for Potboiler with director Oliver Parker, and is getting ready to light Avoidance with Ranga Bee Productions. Phil Wood recently completed on Everything I Know About Love, for Working Title TV/ BBC, with director Julia Ford.

INTRINSIC: In features, Dave Miller has graded the Michael Sheen feature Last Train To Christmas for Sigma Films.

Nic Lawson finished 2nd unit on a forthcoming Marvel feature and Malcolm McLean operated on Expendables 4. Ciaran Kavanagh continues to be Charmed in Canada. Richard Donnelly continues The Nevers S2. Tom Hines lit additional photography on Sanditon. Andrew Johnson has completed more Holby City. Bebe Dierken operated on Token. Rasmus Arrildt DFF continues shooting on the second block of The Capture. James Mather ISC has stepped in on Moonhaven in Dublin. Gabi Norland, Martin Roach, Tom Hines, Dave

Miller and Lynda Hall have all been shooting commercials.

WORLDWIDE PRODUCTION AGENCY: Anna Patarakina FSF has wrapped principal photography on the final block of Sky’s The Midwich Cuckoos with director Borkur Sigthorsson, and started recces in Hamburg on the feature, The Tutor, with director Alice Troughton, for Bleecker Street.

Stephen Murphy BSC ISC is in pre-production on Two Cities Television /BBC’s Blue Lights with director Gilles Bannier. Angus Hudson BSC lit Netflix’s I

Used To Be Famous with director Eddie Sternberg, through Firestarter Films. Tony Slater Ling BSC continues principal photography on BBC’s Am I Being Unreasonable with director Jonny Campbell, via Boffola Pictures. Ed Moore BSC has wrapped on four-part ITV drama Nightingale, directed by Jim Field Smith. Björn Charpentier SBC continues on the final block of the second series of Sky drama Gangs Of London with director Corin Hardy, for Pulse Films/Sister Pictures.

PJ Dillon ISC ASC has wrapped on AMC Studios’ Moonhaven. Andy Hollis shot on McDonald & Dodds S3 for Mammoth Screen/ITV. Katie Swain has completed principal photography on Sanditon S3 with director Jennie Paddon, via Red Planet Pictures/ITV, and started 2nd unit photography on Batgirl in Glasgow.

Arthur Mulhern continues Code 404 S3 with

director Al Campbell for Peacock/Sky Vision. Richard Donnelly has completed principal photography on HBO’s The Nevers. Pieter Mattheus Snyman lit a promo for Bloc Party with director Alex Brown at Cardel, and a campaign for Think!, with director Josh Cohen at OB Management. Nathalie Pitters shot a spot for Jägermeister with Papaya Films’ director Dan French in Kiev. Thomas Hole has wrapped a TVC for Sky’s Gangs Of London S2. Matthew Emvin Taylor shot a Smart Energy spot with director Henry Littlechild via The Mill, and Pizza Express ad for Daneil Lundh at Spindle. Marcus Domleo lit a live Placebo promo for Forest Of Black and director Oscar Sansom. Adam Singodia shot a BBC Short with director Mdhamiri Nkemi, and Live Performances in Oxford with Untold Studios’s directing duo Meeks & Frost. Benjamin Todd travelled to Kiev with director Rodreigo Saavedra to shoot an O2 ad through Rekorder. Mattias Nyberg shot a promo for Xbox with Unit 9 Films’ director Simon Neal, and a Tesco ad with director Jereon Mol via Familia. Jake Gabbay lit a New Balance TVC for Noir, and an Adidas ad with Farago director Gabriel Moses. Carl Burke shot a Pepsi campaign in Saudi Arabia with Big Kahuna Films’ director Craig Moore, followed by a Lego TVC with Highly Unlikely director Michael Middlekoop. Adam Barnett shot a Chase & Status promo via Noi, with directing duo Crowns & Owls. Jamie D Ramsay shot a 7UP spot in Cape Town with director Josh Cohen at OB Management.

WIZZO & CO: Congratulations to Aaron Reid, who was named a BAFTA Breakthrough 2021, whose recent work as lead cinematographer includes the three-part drama Stephen, directed by Alrick Riley, and and embargoed drama with director Paul Andrew Williams. Molly Manning Walker has graded Charlotte Regan’s feature, Scrapper, and was also invited to be a member of the 2021 BIFA Awards. Steven Ferguson is shooting the opening episodes of Breeders S3 with director

Chris Addison. Carmen Pellon Brussosa worked with director Eliza Schroeder on a ballet documentary.

Charlie Goodger is shooting a documentary, directed by Matt Ogens, and recently lit a three-part drama for director Freddie Waters. Ryan Kernghan continues shooting Wrecked, directed by Chris Baugh.

Theo Garland has graded Bloods S2 alongside director Ben Gregor. Tim Sidell has done the DI on Peter Strickland’s feature Flux Gourmet. Nicola Daley ACS has wrapped on Netflix’s Half Blood, directed

by Debs Patterson. Hamish Anderson has graded BBC drama Get Even S2. Karl Oskarsson IKS has done the DI on Netflix’s Man Vs. Bee. Jan RichterFriis DFF lit Fear The Walking Dead in Mexico. David Procter collaborated with Luke Seomore and Joseph Bull on the short film Cactus. Oli Russell continues on Riches, directed by Sebastian Thiel. Gary Shaw has wrapped His Dark Materials S3. Dan StaffordClark lit an episode of Riches, directed by Abby Ajayi.

Sverre Sordal FNF has graded the feature Defekt, directed by Malou Reymann. Susanne Salavati shot main unit days on The Capture S2. Matthias Pilz has completed on Netflix’s Red Rose, working alongside

Henry Blake. Nick Dance BSC lit The Suspect S2 and has graded Gentleman Jack S2. Chas Appeti has graded the Amazon Original drama Jungle. Luke Bryant has completed his stint on Grace S2 alongside director Kate Saxon. Adam Gillham worked on the final episodes of The Man Who Fell To Earth. Havard Helle has done final colour on the feature The Loneliest Boy, directed by Martin Owen. Ben Magahy continues to shoot an embargoed documentary, directed

by Mary McCartney. Christophe Nuyens SBC has graded an embargoed drama. Patrick Meller did the DI on the short, Don’t Forget, directed by Mika Watkin. Seppe Van Grieken SBC has graded his work on The Midwich Cuckoos. Franklin Dow continues grading the Olympic documentary, and shot multiple music promos with Sophie Muller. Fede Alfonzo shot with Frank Todaro, Will Bex with Chris Balmond and Joe Douglas with Bugsy Steele.

Arran Green lit with Chris Chance, Peter James shot with Paul O’Brien and Ross McLennan with Paul Gay. Antonio Paladino shot for Jake Mavity and Murren Tullet with Nick Livesey.

ECHO ARTISTS: Stuart Bentley BSC has graded BBC mini-series Life After Life, directed by John Crowley. Nicolas Canniccioni shot the feature Frontières with director Guy Édoin. Nadim Carlsen DFF is prepping for the HBO/Sony series The Last Of Us. Carlos Catalan has wrapped on Disney+’s Extraordinary with director Toby MacDonald. Federico Cesca ASK has wrapped on HBO’s Industry S2, of which he lensed episodes 3,4,7 and 8 with directors Isabella Eklof and Ciaran

Creative, independent providers of professional image capture solutions and quality engineered production equipment for the film, television and commercials industries. +44 (0) 1753 650007 movietech.co.uk available at Movietech Scorpio 17ft crane

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CAMERA I LENS I GRIP I ENGINEERING I LOGISTICS 17/01/2022 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD JANUARY 2022 10:39 19

WHO, WHAT, WHEN & WHERE

WHO, WHAT, WHEN & WHERE Opposite: (clockwise) BAFTA Breakthrough DP Aaron Reid in action; Michael Carstensen in production on Willow; and Ashlea Downs shooting on His Dark Materials.

This page: (clockwise) WFTV Craft Award-winner Ilana Garrard ACO; Tom Wilkinson on Jack Ryan 2; and a group shot of DP David Mackie (centre) with camera operator James Leigh (right) and 1st ACs Paul Christie and Ryan Douglas (left).

Payne. Matyas Erdely HSC is prepping Foe with director Garth Davis. André Chemetoff shot for Pringles with director Tom Kuntz. Erik Henriksson lit an NDA ad with Rob Chiu. Piers McGrail ISC is framing the series Damage with directors Glenn Leyburn and Lisa Barros D’sa. Ari Wegner ACS is shooting Eileen with director William Oldroyd. Jakob Ihre FSF lit for Renault with WAFLA.

Donnelly. Rachel Clark has wrapped on Al MacKay’s series Without Sin for ITV. Nick Cooke is prepping Moin Hussain’s feature Birchanger Green for BFI/Film 4. Ruben Woodin Dechamps recently shot the documentary If The Streets Were On Fire, directed by Alice Russell. David Gallego ADFC has wrapped on the feature Butcher’s Crossing, directed by Gabe Polsky.

MacGregor recently finished shooting the feature Kandahar, directed by Ric Roman Waugh. Michael Paleodimos shot additional photography on BBC The Capture S2. Will Pugh is filming for the Netflix documentary The Good Nurse, directed by Tim Travers Hawkins. Korsshan Schlauer has wrapped on ITV series Tell Me Everything with director Marley Morrison.

Niels Thastum DFF is prepping the feature Northern Comfort with director Hafstein Gunnar Sigurosson.

Chloë Thomson BSC shot additional photography for the BBC feature Tuesday with director Daina O. Pulse.

David Chizallet AFC, Andrew Commis ACS, Edgar Dubrovskiy, Bonnie Elliott ACS, Charlie Herranz, Jo Jo Lam, Anders Malmberg, Christopher Miles, Lachlan Milne ACS NZCS ASC, Lorena Pagès, Noël Schoolderman, Bartosz Swiniarski, Maria von Hausswolff and Felix Wiedemann BSC have all been busy in commercials.

LUX ARTISTS: Maceo Bishop is shooting The Watcher, directed

by Chloe Okuno. Diego Garcia shot a TVC for WhatsApp with director Daniel Wolfe. Nicolas Bolduc CSC is shooting director Martin Bourboulon’s film Les Trois Mousquetaires. Guillermo Garza has finished on Rupert Wyatt’s feature, Desert Warrior.

Jarin Blaschke lensed an ad for Canal Plus with director Henry Hobson. Ula Pontikos BSC is shooting TV series Three Women. Nicolai Niermann lit an NDA promo with Jonas Lindstroem. Nanu Segal BSC is filming A Spy Among Friends with director Nick Murphy. Rina Yang shot a spot for Viktor & Rolf with director Andrew Thomas Huang. Anna Franquesa Solano is filming Expatriates with director Lulu Wang.

Ruben Impens SBC lit Felix van Groeningen’s feature 8 Montagne. Steve Annis is shooting I’m A Virgo with director Boots Riley. Henry Braham BSC is still shooting Guardians Of The Galaxy 3. Chris Aoun BVK is shooting Netflix series The Empress. Eigil Bryld is lighting The Holdovers with director Alexander

RA AGENCY: Ashlea Downes is a new client and has been operating B-camera/Steadicam on His Dark Materials S3, completing block 3 with DPs David Johnson BSC, and block 5 with DP Gary Shaw. Ashlea has also clocked-up dailies on Gangs Of London S2 with DP David Bird on 2nd unit, The Power with DP Ruairi O’Brien, and House Of Dragons on C-camera blood unit for DP Catherine Goldschimdt. Svetlana Miko ACO has been shooting B-camera on Ant Man And The Wasp: Quantumania with the 2nd unit team. Svetlana also operated the ARRI Trinity rig on Gangs Of London S2 with DP Laurent Bares, Everything I Know About Love with DPs Arni Filippusson and Phil Wood, Good Omens S2 with DP Gavin Finney BSC, and Avenue 5 S2 on 2nd unit with DP Tony Miller BSC. Sally Low was 2nd unit DP and C-camera operator on DP Kit Fraser’s feature The Phantom Of The Open, and also shot dailies on Matt Gray BSC’s Showtrial, as well as Nanu Segal BSC’s A Spy Among Friends.

20 JANUARY 2022 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

PRINCESTONE: Of the agency’s camera/Steadicam operators…

Peter Robertson Associate BSC ACO is shooting on Wonka for Warner Bros. Sean Savage Associate BSC ACO SOC is shooting on The ThreeBody Problem for Netflix, directed by Derek Tsang, starring Eiza González, Benedict Wong and Liam Cunningham. Simon Baker ACO is filming on The Crown S5, directed by Benjamin Carron, produced by Left Bank Pictures for Netflix. Fabrizio Sciarra SOC Associate BSC GBCT ACO is filming on Wednesday, a live-action TV series version of The Addams Family, told from the perspective of their daughter Wednesday, directed by Tim Burton. Cosmo Campbell ACO is shooting on Extraordinary, produced by Sid Gentle films for Disney+, with DP Carlos Catalan and director Sophie McDonald.

Michael Carstensen ACO is working on Willow for DP Stejn Van Der Weken SBC, a Disney + TV series based on the 1988 movie with Warwick Davies reprising his lead role. Matt Fisher ACO has been framing on Conversations With Friends, directed by Leanne Welham and Lenny Abrahamson, and filming dailies on Moon Haven and Foundation. Rob Hart ACO is the DP on Consecration, a supernatural thriller shooting in London and the Isle Of Skye, using ARRI Alexa Mini and Cooke S4s. Tony Jackson ACO is also working on Willow. Tony Kay ACO has finished shooting Wedding Season, a romantic comedy for Netflix, directed by Tom Dey. James Layton ACO is lensing on the Apple TV+ series Wool, starring Rebecca Ferguson, directed by Morten Tyldum, with Hagen Bogdanski the cinematographer. Nic Milner ACO is A-camera operator on Lionsgate Television’s The Continental, directed by Albert Hughes, starring Mel Gibson, Peter Greene and Colin Woodell. Dan Nightingale ACO is filming dailies on Red Gun, the prequel to Game Of Thrones. Diego Rodriguez recently finished as the DP on Juventus, part of Amazon Prime’s All Or Nothing series, and is currently working on Six Captains for Fulwell 73, alongside Wire Card, produced by Sky Studios, and Save Our Squad for Twenty Twenty TV. Joe Russell ACO is on Red Gun too, shooting at Leavesden Studios with DP Fabian Wagner. Peter Wignall ACO has finished filming on WW2 drama series Masters Of The Air for Apple TV+. Tom Wilkinson ACO is shooting on the next series of action thriller Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan for Amazon Studios, with DP Richard Rutowski ASC. Junior Agyeman-Owusu recently finished filming dailies on Coldharbour Lane, a Netflix feature produced by The Bureau.

through Iconoclast, as well as operating dailies on Dust Bunnies.

SARAH PUTT ASSOCIATES: Congratulations to Ilana Garrard ACO who recently won an WFTV Award for Craft. Emily Almond Barr continues on Sanditon S2 for Red Planet Pictures.

Sashi Kissoon has been shooting dailies on Netflix’s Straight Shooter. David Mackie has wrapped on Mammoth Screen’s series Tom Jones. George Amos is working in his native South Africa. Andrei Austin ACO, Associate BSC SOC was on location in Scotland filming on Neil Gaiman’s Anansi Boys for Endor Productions/Amazon. Andrew Bainbridge ACO has wrapped on Lockwood And Co. Jon Beacham ACO has started prep on A Town Called Malice. Danny Bishop ACO Associate BSC SOC recently wrapped on Tar, which shot in Germany and stars Cate Blanchett. Ed Clark ACO is working Good Omens S2 with DP Gavin Finney BSC. James Frater ACO SOC has wrapped on John Wick 4 and is starting on Invasion. Zoe Goodwin-Stuart ACO is working on Wonka. James Leigh ACO has wrapped on Mammoth Screen’s Tom Jones in Belfast. Will Lyte ACO is operating on the feature Polite Society.

Vince McGahon ACO Associate BSC wrapped a year-to-the-day he started on See Saw’s thriller Slow Horses. Julian Morson ACO Associate BSC GBCT continues shooting on the much-anticipated fifth instalment of Indiana Jones. Al Rae ACO has been busy operating dailies on Dust Bunnies. Aga Szeliga ACO continues on HBO’s Red Gun. Tom Walden Associate ACO has started on A Spy Among Friends with DP Nanu Segal BSC. Rick Woollard working on commercials for Qatar Airways via Smuggler, Pepsi

UNITED AGENTS: Remi Adefarasin BSC is shooting Secret Invasion for Marvel Studios. Sonja Huttunen is a new client who recently shot second unit on The Rig for Wild Mercury/ Amazon. Sonja’s recent film, Caterpillar, was nominated a 2021 BSC Short Film award. John Lee BSC is prepping Anansi Boys with director Jermain Julien for Amazon.

Mark Nutkins is grading The Split S3 with director Dee Koppang O’Leary for Sister Pictures. Gavin Struthers BSC ASC is prepping Invasion S2 for Apple TV. Haris Zambarloukos BSC GSC is prepping Meg 2: The Trench with director Ben Wheatley. Danny Cohen BSC has concluded lighting on Shane Meadow’s The Gallows Pole for Element Pictures/BBC. Damian Paul Daniel is filming The Truth Behind A Name documentary, directed

by Noella Mingo. Martin Fuhrer BSC is grading Holding, an adaptation of the novel by Graham Norton, directed by Kathy Burke for ITV Studios. David Higgs BSC is prepping in Hungary on Shadow And Bone for Netflix. Kieran McGuigan BSC is grading Heyday Television/BBC’s The Capture.

Laurie Rose BSC is lighting La Voix Humaine, directed by James Kent. Bet Rourich AEC is focussing on short form. John Sorapure is working on Warner Bros’ Wonka as second unit director. Simon Tindall is filming I Hate You for Big Talk Productions/C4, directed

by Damon Beesley. Laurens De Geyter BSC has started on Belgian series Professor T. David Rom has started soft prep for Ted Lasso S3.

Simon Stolland is filming Adam Deacon’s feature Sumotherhood. Si Bell is shooting The Blue, directed

by Hans Herbot for New Pictures and Paramount+. Charlotte Bruus Christensen DFF ASC is lighting Retreat for FX, with Britt Marling and Zal Batmanglij. James Friend BSC ASC is shooting

Luther, directed by Jamie Payne, for Netflix, and will then prep The 39 Steps, also for Netflix, with director Ed Berger. Milos Moore is lighting Pennyworth S3, and begins You S4 for Netflix in February. Niels Reedtz Johansen is shooting commercials. Anna Valdez Hanks shot on the last two weeks on Carol Morley’s film, Typist Artist Pirate King, and is in prep for lighting the second block of Culprits for director Claire Oakley and Disney+. Ben Wheeler is shooting block 3 of Lockwood & Co for director Catherine Morshead. Barry Ackroyd BSC has wrapped the Whitney Houston biopic I Wanna Dance With Somebody with director Kasi Lemmons in the US. Alex Barber shot for Pepsi with Ernest Demumbilia in Paris and Manchester via Iconoclast. Laurent Bares is shooting Crossfire with Tessa Hoffe in Tenerife. Philipp Blaubach is shooting new TV show Culprits for Jay Blakeson. Daniel Bronks recently shot a Specsavers as for Matt Piedmont through PrettyBird, and Very for James Clancy at The Gate Films. Simon Chaudoir’s commercials include Renault Twingo with director Romain Chassaing at Solab in Paris. Lasse Frank shot a Samsung campaign for Alaska through Iconoclast.

Brendan Galvin has wrapped on thefeature The Plane. Stephen Keith Roach shot a Panadol ad for Dom & Nic at Outsider, and a Shell spot for Daniel Kleinman with Rattlingstick in Mexico. Tim MauriceJones BSC has wrapped on Expendables 4. Alex Melman lit a Funding Circle spot for Big Red Button via Biscuit. Ben Moulden lensed a Scottish Government TVC for Ben Craig through Fond Films in Edinburgh.

Matias Penachino filmed a Hargreaves Lansdown ad for director Diamid for Untold Studios, and a Pirelli spot for directors Manson in Barcelona through Canada.

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CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD JANUARY 2022 21

WHO, WHAT, WHEN & WHERE

WHO, WHAT, WHEN & WHERE Opposite: (clockwise) Chris Dodds in Tignes, France; Todd Banhazl shooting 35mm film on HBO series Untitled Lakers Project; Adric Watson, Max Wiiting and Todd Martin enjoying a beer; and Adric Watson on a Helly Hansen TVC. This page: (clockwise) Jallo Faber (standing), Alex Lopez (left) and TC Grondal (right) on Netflix’s Troll; Lee thomas on a Cop 26 National Grid UK job with dir. Chris Thomas; Allison Anderson filming a music video for artist Girl In Red; and Craig Devine and crew working flat out on Derry Girls.

Jake Polonsky BSC lit a Scholl TVC for Rory Kelleher in Barcelona for Ricardo Albinana Films. Diana Olifirova has been grading Heartstopper for director Euros Lyn. Simon Richards lensed for Safestyle and Iceland with directors Chris Cottam and Mark Ingham via Chief. Ed Rutherford shot an Aldi commercial with Vaughan Arnell for Merman. Chris Sabogal lit a Thortful commercial for Mike Maguire for Outsider, and has been enjoying brilliant reviews for the TV show In My Skin he shot for director Molly Manners. Alfred Thirolle lit Budweiser campaign for Liam Saint-Pierre in Ireland for My Accomplice, and First Direct for Dan Henshaw for Citizen Films. Laust Trier Mork filmed for McDonalds with Matrin Kalina in Brussels through Division. Joost Van Gelder shot a Qatar TVC for Adam Berg via Smuggler. Daniel Vilar filmed a Ford ad for Nicolai Fuglsig in Barcelona for MJZ. Marcel Zyskind DFF lensed a Mastercard spot for Peter Thwaites through Smuggler. Alan Almond BSC, Sam Chiplin, Ollie Downey BSC, Sam Heasman, David Marsh, Anton Mertens SBC, Neus

Ollé BSC AEC, David Raedeker BSC and Kate Reid BSC are reading for their next projects.

MY MANAGEMENT: Huge congratulations to Robbie Ryan BSC ISC who won the 2021 Camerimage Golden Frog for his lensing of C’mon C’mon, directed by Mike Mills, which also scooped the Audience Award. Robbie recently shot Poor Things with director Yorgos Lanthimos, starring Emma Stone, William Dafoe and Mark Ruffalo. The agency welcomes Deon Van Zyl to its roster. Deon recently lensed a music video for Jeshi with Agile director Brock Neal Roberts, then flew to Cape Town for a Vinted TVC with director Basha De Bruijn, before shooting the short Mami Wata with director Paul Ward in Senegal. Max Witting lit for ASOS with director Walter Campbell, and the short film Sylvia with Luti Media director Tara Ayemi. Carlos Veron was in New York with director Ariel Danziger for Not Normal, then Mexico filming for London Alley.

Tómas Tómasson continues on TV series The Octet in Cairo, directed

by Ahmed Medhat.

Todd Banhazl has wrapped on Winning Time – The Rise Of The Lakers Dynasty with director Adam McKay, streaming on HBO Max in March.

Chris Dodds shot for for John Lewis with director Sam Robinson, Direct Line with director David Ryle, and Heinz with director

grading with director Andrew Baird on the feature One Way, starring Travis Fimmel and Kevin Bacon.

Lee Thomas lensed on National Grid with director Chris Thomas, and LG with Sliced Studio director Alex Graham. Darran Tiernan has wrapped on HBO series Barry with directors Alec Berg and Bill Hader, and is in prep on Perry Mason S2. Daisy Zhou lensed on NY Lottery with Caviar director Cloe Bailly, and Amazon NFL with Somesuch director

Richard Jung at Chuck Studios. Dominic Bartels continued his collaboration with Spring Studios’ director Mattias Pettersson and Jon Clements for Armani, Rimmel and Chanel. Todd Martin lensed Morrisons’ Farmer Christmas ad with Somesuch director Nick Gordon.

Craig Dean Devine worked on the BAFTA Awardwinning Derry Girls S3 with director Michael Lennox.

Filip Marek has wrapped on the feature Restore Point, directed by Robert Hloz, which filmed in Prague, Poland and Slovakia. Issac Bauman has completed on the feature, The Queen Mary, directed by Gary Shore.

Pete Konczal was in Seattle with Pulse Films director Ryan Booth for a US Army ad, and New York for a Don Julio Tequila spot with director Mark Seliger. Sam Meyer shot ads for BT, Pepsi, Pokerstars and Benza with director Tom Brown, and lit a Tanqueray TVC in Venice starring Stanley Tucci, for director Elle Lotherington.

SyTurnbull lensed for Knucklehead directors, The Dempsey’s, on Find My Past, and other ads for Great Guns’ director Duncan Christie and Girl & Bear director Zak Ravi. Nicolaj Bruel DFF has wrapped on the Sky Original feature The Hanging Sun for director Francesco Carrozzini, starring Charles Dance and Peter Mullan.

Adric Watson shot Hath in Wales with director Matthew Thorn, plus an Old Spice ad with PrettyBird director Yousef, and the short Social Car with director Cameron Perry. Ahmet Husseyin has been shooting music videos with Yellowfish director Kevin Hudson, plus Camp Productions’ director Samuel Douek, and flew to Lagos for a Baileys Delight TVC with Somesuch director Femi Ladi. Jallo Faber FSF has wrapped on Netflix feature Troll, directed by Roar Uthang. shot in

Norway, starring Marie Wilmann and Mads Sjøgård Pettersen. Arnaud Carney lit for L’Oreal in Paris and a short film in Tenerife with Anders Hallberg directing.

Gaul Porat shot music videos with Object Animal director Amber Grace Johnson for FKA Twigs ft The Weekend, The Chainsmokers with director Kid Studio and an Apple Music Interview with Adele with OBB Media director Jason Zeldes. Ekkehart Pollack shot for Porsche with director Jon Wentz at Marken Films, and Absolute Vodka with Marmalade directors Lydon & Todd. Paul O’Callaghan filmed an Ernest Jones ad with director Dominic O’Riordan, and for Audible with Sassy Films’ director Floris Ramaekers, plus SFX for His Dark Materials Season S3 in Cardiff. Tobia Sempi AIC lensed on Toyota in Saudi Arabia with Truffle Film director Alessandro Pacciani, and was in Dublin

Stuart McIntyre. David Lanzenberg continues on Netflix’s Wednesday with director Tim Burton in Bucharest. Ian Forbes shot for Air BnB with directors

Jack Cunningham and Nicoloas Menard at Clapham Road Studios. Allison Anderson was in Texas filming a Quicksilver TVC with director Micheal Johnson. Jon Chema lensed on Ice with Framestore director Anh Vu, for Spotify with Kristian Mercado, and a music video for Camila Cabello ft Marie Be Carra with Freenjoy director Charlotte Rutherford. Pieter Vermeer shot Zwift in Prague for The Mill with director David Lawson, and for Lancome with Michael Bailey Gates. Petra Korner AAC is prepping on Netflix/21 Lapse’s Shadow And Bone S2 in Budapest, shooting large format Anamorphic on the ARRI Alexa LF and the brand-new Alfa lenses.

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NEWMAN HOUSE Visit Newman House, home to the largest range of post and production equipment from leading manufacturers including ARRI, Sony, Canon, RED, Blackmagic Design and many more. This space provides a personalised ‘hands on’ environment to connect creative vision and technology in the company of our experts.experts.

COW•MAGDA KOWALCZYK

MAGDA KOWALCZYK•COW

MILKING IT

Images: BTS photos by assistant producer Tessa Morgan, who is also pictured opposite with headphones. Thanks to Halcyon Pictures.

By Darek Kuźma

B

IFA-nominated DP Magda Kowalczyk becomes our guide through the everyday life of a British dairy cow and her calf, in director Andrea Arnold’s affecting and acclaimed documentary Cow, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on 8 July 2021.

The ordinariness of cows, the sheer obviousness of their service to the world of humans, makes a documentary attempting to observe their grace and the challenges of their lives a tough balancing act.

How to sympathise with animals that seem to exist for the benefit of their milk and meat? Yet Arnold’s film is both a realistic view of the unending process of producing milk and all that is attached, including breeding, dehorning, grazing, growing old, and an emphatic glimpse into dairy cows’ mundane life cycle that may not be as different from ours as we tend to think.

Arnold had originally wanted to make a documentary revolving around an animal for years, and considered making one about a chicken, but ultimately kept coming back to a cow. As it was going to take to take several years to shoot, the director’s trusted collaborator, DP Robbie Ryan ISC BSC, could not commit to the project. A casting call was ordered and the producers decided to entrust the project to Polish-born cinematographer Magda Kowalczyk.

“My mom was a documentary filmmaker and editor, and I never imagined myself doing anything else myself,” says Kowalczyk. “I was born and raised in Warsaw and didn’t know much about cows, but I loved Andrea’s work and I knew I’d be able to commit to the project, to give her what she wanted, and that I’d be able to support her.”

The shoot began after particular prep for the film.

This involved choosing a dairy farm in Kent, selecting leading cows (Luma and her calf Malu), and

26 JANUARY 2022 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

establishing a flexible routine of returning for a few days a month, especially when something interesting was about to happen, such as the insemination process. And, needless to say, it was an adventure.

“When you make a documentary with humans, it takes time to earn their trust, learn their ways. It’s very different with cows. They are shy, but also curious, interested in new things, new people. And they don’t notice a film camera, at least not as something that looks at them.”

There were times Kowalczyk felt the cows behaved like humans would. “When you see a cow giving birth and then taking care of her calf, checking its dung, teaching it how to walk or socialise with other cows, you observe a maternal bond and see natural instincts kick in. I always believed this is human, conditioned by culture, society, but it’s not,” claims Kowalczyk. “Luma and others got used to my presence, I felt they liked me to be around them.

But at times they clearly wanted to be left alone.

Like when they were separated from their calves – I remember they seemed mad, ashamed, alone.”

Which is something that Arnold wanted to emphasize: that cows are not only milking machines, but living beings that deserve our respect for what they are forced to do to make our lives that little bit better. Kowalczyk tried to show it with her images.

“I tried to be a documentary DP and at the same time stay connected to the visual style Robbie and Andrea perfected over the years. I only adjusted it slightly to depict the world of cows, like panning from Luma’s face to what she sees instead of doing a POV shot. The film is a creative collaboration and it’s my interpretation of Andrea’s vision.”

Kowalczyk reminisces that the style nevertheless altered throughout the shoot. “Initially, I tried to frame the humans from waist down, or with their heads just outside the frame, or through angles that

seemed natural for how a cow would see them. I didn’t want them to be characters.

“At some point, however, Andrea said we had to make the farm workers more identifiable, as they seemed too aggressive, that my way would work in a short, but in a feature it makes people disconnected. She was right, the footage showed we needed them to be visible.”

The foreseeable unpredictability of the shoot was something Kowalczyk took into consideration when picking a Sony FS7 camera for the production.

“We tested 16mm film and it looked magnificent, but shooting on celluloid was too risky considering the location. So I chose to rent a reliable digital camera that wouldn’t be costly if something happened on the farm. Cows are big beasts that are not aware of their size. They wouldn’t harm a fly, but are easily scared. I saw one time how a terrified cow lead others into a sort of stampede. There’s always time to run, but, what if the camera was left in their path?”

All day exteriors and interiors were shot in 4K on the Sony FS7, with night scenes shot using ARRI Alexa Mini, with a solid set of tried-and-tested Zeiss lenses: Zeiss Planar 50mm and 85mm, Zeiss Distagon 25mm and 35mm, Zeiss Jena Flektogon

20mm, Zeiss 135mm.

“Andrea said she wanted to see the world as much through a cow’s eyes as much as it was technically possible,” explains Kowalczyk. “I crave old photographic lenses, the way they slightly distort images and diffuse light unevenly. There’s something unpredictable in them. They’re perfect for an imperfect view of the world.”

Having such equipment on the set of a realistic documentary, Kowalczyk did not need large light sources, yet she used some to give Cow a more filmic look.

“For day scenes I had three 650W Redhead and several small 160LEDs. Back then LED light was very expensive and not as renowned,” says Kowalczyk. “For night scenes I trusted Alexa, but I still needed some light for the exteriors on a field. I used 2kW Blondes, 1kW Fresnels and 20x20 LED panels.” When the footage finally reached colourist Ian Pinder at Golden Wolf it proved more than enough.

Cow took four years to shoot and was set to be released in 2020, but we all know what happened that year. So Kowalczyk’s journey will extend into 2022. But she does not mind, she is proud of the work.

“I was 15 when I saw my first Andrea Arnold film, and I was mesmerised. Now I’m a part of her film. I mean, wow! Sure, at some point I had nightmares about not being able to capture all of the interesting stuff at the farm, but when I saw the first edit, I knew we were fine.”

Kowalczyk’s BIFA nomination for Cow thus seems to be only the beginning of many other journeys to come.

CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD JANUARY 2022 27

CYRANO•SEAMUS MCGARVEY BSC ASC

SEAMUS MCGARVEY BSC ASC•CYRANO

ROMANCE OF STONE

Images: BTS photos from Cyrano by Peter Mountain.

Images © 2021 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures Inc. All Rights Reserved.

By Iain Blair

The Leitz Large Format Primes are incredibly crisp but very beautiful for portraiture

A

cclaimed Irish director of photography, Seamus McGarvey BSC ASC BSC, has twice been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Cinematography, and both nominations – for Atonement (2007) and Anna Karenina (2012) – came through collaborations with director Joe Wright.

Acclaimed Irish director of photography, Seamus McGarvey BSC ASC BSC, has twice been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Cinematography, and both nominations – for Atonement (2007) and Anna Karenina (2012) – came through collaborations with director Joe Wright.

McGarvey re-teamed with Wright for their fifth project together, and took on a very different challenge – the beloved epic love story of Cyrano De Bergerac, re-imagined as Cyrano, a musical in the tradition of the classic MGM movies. And there’s a further twist; instead of an actor with a large prosthetic nose, it stars renowned actor Peter Dinklage, who has a common form of achondroplasia, in the title role opposite Haley Bennett as the beautiful Roxanne.

For this new adaptation, scripted by Erica Schmidt and filmed in Sicily, Wright assembled a behind-the-scenes creative team that, in addition to McGarvey, included such frequent collaborators as Oscar-nominated production designer Sarah Greenwood (Atonement, Anna Karenina) and editor Valerio Bonelli (The Woman In The Window, Darkest Hour).

Here, McGarvey, whose eclectic credits include The Hours (2002), Nowhere Boy (2009), We Need To Talk About Kevin (2011), The Avengers (2012), Nocturnal Animals (2016) and The Greatest Showman (2017), talks about making the film, and his love of natural light and aspect ratios.

You must love working with Joe as this is your fifth collaboration. What were your visual references and inspirations?

Yes, I love working with Joe. The look for the film came from the place where we shot – Noto in southeastern Sicily, which is a very beautiful city, full of Baroque architecture, and built out of this wonderful pink stone that just glows in the natural light. So the location where we shot during the Covid lockdown, in October 2020, offered so much – from the colour of the Sicilian light and the way it reflected off the buildings.

This really changed all our initial thoughts and preconceptions of what the film was going to look like, especially as the it was made almost entirely in real locations with no sets.

We shot in real rooms and real landscapes. It was a lovely place to let yourself go and just let that be the visual guide and inspiration.

How did you make all your camera and lens choices?

We wanted to shoot digitally, although we did consider film at one point, but we knew that would be very tough in the middle of a pandemic, getting film

I love natural light and the apparent natural light

28 JANUARY 2022 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

out of Sicily and back again. So we abandoned that idea very quickly.

My camera package was an ARRI Alexa LF and an Alexa Mini LF, and in terms of lensing and filtration there was a clear choice for us. We didn’t want to luxuriate in the balm of the period, though it’s a period film, and go whole-heartedly into creating a memorial to that time. We wanted Cyrano instead to be crisp and urgent and vivid and tactile.

So I shot with these amazing lenses, the new Leitz Large Format Primes, which they brought out last year. They are incredibly crisp, but also very beautiful for portraiture. I’ve always loved still photography and still take photographs.

When I tested the Leitz Large Format Primes, they reminded me of medium format lenses – like Hasselblads and so on. And Joe really responded to them.

In the end I shot with a Leitz Large Format Zoom 25-75mm and an Angeniueux Optimo 36435mm, and initially I used them unfiltered, But, when we saw the first day’s rushes, we realised they were actually too vivid with the Sicilian light. So I used Dior 10 Denier Black nets and Tiffen Black Glimmer Glass filters, and alternated between them depending on the situation.

What about the aspect ratio? Tell us about that and composition.

We talked about this a lot and it’s one of my favourite things, discussing exactly which one to use. Because, at the start, we talked a lot about portraiture and filling the frame with the human face, we actually discussed shooting in 4:3 aspect

ratio – which weirdly we’d also initially considered using for Atonement. But once we saw Noto and all the locations, the inevitability of 2.39:1 was there right in front of us, and we knew we were shooting large format.

The way we approached it was thinking about opposites, and the idea of the triumvirate – being able to fit three people into a single frame as one.

That dictated this. With 2.39:1 we could split the frame into three and have three close-ups living in the frame together and singing together, which occurs several times in the film. But it wasn’t just for the montage sequences. It was also for the juxtaposition of people on opposite sides of the frame, either to create distance or space between people. So the compositional space between characters was actually gifted to us by that widescreen letterbox format.

What about the lighting? It looks like you used a lot of natural light.

We did. I love natural light and the apparent natural light, because although we shot in real locations, we did light. I’m always guided by the light you see when you first walk into a room. But that can be so elusive and fugitive that it’s gone as soon as you set-up your camera to shoot the actors.

And, of course, it traverses through the day. So you can’t rely on natural light, but you can rely on the inspiration natural light gives you when you first see it. I try to emulate that and stick with it and create the illusion.

I learned that approach years ago from the great Chris Menges BSC ASC. I was telling him how much I loved his use of natural light, and he said, ‘It’s not natural light. I just put a light outside and tell the actors to stand by the window.’ (Laughs) All the locations we used were beautifullychosen, and every time we shot, something happened accidentally – something I’ve never seen before, like the way a hot spot hits the floor and bounces off marble around the room. I would never light something like that, but when you witness that,

it gives you an idea. So if you’re open to what you see right in front of you, and the beauty of how real light interacts with a room and different surfaces, it’s so inspirational.

So did the Sicilian light change your process?

It did, absolutely. I’m from the Northern European school of soft winter light – that’s how I grew up, and how I always lit before. But this film taught me so much about Sicilian light and how to use just one hell of a big source, and bang it through a window or door, and let the rest do what it does.

So that’s how I lit all the day scenes. For the night stuff, I’d just say, ‘Well there’s a candle, let’s see what happens?’ So there was a great freedom in the innocence of the light. It was no less difficult, but it was certainly truer to how I’ve normally lit.

How I light has always been simple, but I tend sometimes to over-complicate things. But on this film I wanted to stay simple.

So, for outside windows, I’d use an 18K HMI, and sometimes it’d be on a cherry-picker for scenes like the palazzo. We had certain rigs for different windows, like 4K HMIs. Inside the rooms I tended to use LEDs – smaller S60 ARRI SkyPanels.

Joe likes a lot of movement, so the camera’s constantly moving and you’re effectively seeing 360 degrees a lot of the time. All the developments in LED technology really helped and we used a lot of Astera tubes in this respect. They’re colourcontrolled, dimmable and battery-operated, so you can hide them in corners and behind walls in these ancient palazzos, and they give you the fill you need and the source, without all the cables.

They’re also very safe and cool, so there’s no danger of fire – that’s another big plus with LEDs.

just too much to do in terms of lighting and camera movement and so on. I don’t even spend a lot of time in the DIT tent. We had an amazing DIT, Sandro Magliano, who had a lot of autonomy.

Knowing what our LUT was, he balanced everything. So at every location I’d set it up with him and then pretty much left him to his own devices. I’m so busy once we shoot that I’m not one of those DPs who labours over every shot in the DIT tent. I do all that later in the DI. As long as we’re in the ballpark on the set, that’s fine by me.

Tell us a little about the final DI grade?

The DI was done at De Lane Lea in London with colourist Peter Doyle, who also worked on the original LUT. He’s a genius. I’ve done quite a few films with him now, and this was very different. We talked with Joe before we shot, about the trajectory of the film, the rose-tinted opening, the romance of love, and how it should have a warmth and allure that was built into the LUT. And obviously with digital you can do that, and it’s why I love digital.

Did you work with a colourist in prep on any LUTs? Yes, but I don’t like to get involved in all the intricacies of the look while I’m shooting. There’s CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD JANUARY 2022 29

KING RICHARD•ROBERT ELSWIT ASC

ROBERT ELSWIT ASC•KING RICHARD

GAME SET MATCH

Opposite: (middle) DP Robert Elswit ASC with director Reinaldo Marcus Green on the set of Warner Bros. Pictures’ King Richard, photo by Chiabella James. Images © 2021 Warner Bros.

Entertainment Inc. All Rights Reserved.

By Darek Kuźma

This was the closest I have felt to being in a movie family

D

irector Reinaldo Marcus Green’s ambitious take on the unbelievable-yet-true story about the father of two of the most accomplished athletes in the history of sport was a welcome challenge for veteran cinematographer Robert Elswit ASC. Even if you are not interested in tennis, or sport in general, the chances are you have heard about Venus and Serena Williams, the African-American sisters who rose from poverty to become record-breaking winners and role models. Nee Elswit dless to say, a project about their rise to professional stardom would be a sure-fire hit, yet although they play a prominent role in King Richard, the Warner Bros. film is more about their larger-then-life father, Richard, and his arduous journey to make them champions without them losing their identities.

We meet Richard, played by Will Smith, when he is actively fulfilling a plan he wrote even before Venus (Saniyya Sidney) and Serena (Demi Singleton) were born, working his butt off, alongside his wife Oracene (Aunjanue Ellis), to support the dream of giving the girls (and their three half-sisters) the life they deserve. He is a man whose relentless drive to push his daughters over their limit is equalled only by his urge to protect them from social unfairness and drug-fuelled celebrity abuse the tennis world offers to eager teenagers. The film is a serious contender during the 2022 awards season, and Smith has already picked-up the accolade for best actor in a motion picture/drama at the Golden Globes.

Part biopic, part sports movie, part family drama, King Richard was a project with a number of possible pitfalls.

Elswit met Green at the Sundance Institute Lab where he developed his Sundance Jury Award-winning feature debut Monsters And Men (2018, DP Patrick Scola) and says he could not have imagined a better creative partner to make the Williams’ film.

“Rei’s stuff was above everyone else’s back at the Lab, and this project about Richard Williams looked interesting,” recounts Elswit. “Richard recognised that playing tennis competitively made young girls into automatons, and

focal lengths using zooms a few times when we needed the same focal lengths on both A and B-cameras,” explains the DP. The zooms were Panavision Primo 4:1 (17.5 to 75mm) and 11:1 (24 to 275mm). The camera crew also had a small lightweight 27 to 68mm zoom for some Steadicam and rare handheld shots.

Principal photography started in February 2020 with the idea of shooting as much as possible at real locations in Los Angeles County, including Compton where the Williams family lived until the early 1990s, and even scenes based in Florida. destroyed their childhoods. His ethos was about hard “We visited their actual house, which was basically work, delayed gratification, believing in yourself and your three boxes connected by a small kitchen, with almost no dreams – and having fun.” windows,” says Elswit. “Our production designer insisted Alas, the project was challenging from the very on using a building with at least some architectural design, beginning. With eight-week prep cut almost by half in early so we shot a mile further-on in a clearly middle-class house 2020 due to a change in Smith’s schedule, Elswit and to make it interesting visually. The house’s exterior was shot Green had to improvise more than they had anticipated. on yet another street that was less nice and manicured.”

“This wasn’t a film where you’d have Will play his The idea was to show that Compton was a crimepart off-camera to the script supervisor, he had to be there ridden neighbourhood without overtly dealing with its to interact with the other performers. Often the staging troubled past. “In real life, there was a crack house across was about finding the simplest way of how to have the street, but our film is like a memory of how Venus and seven or eight people in a room without endless pieces Serena came to be who they are. We didn’t need or want of coverage,” says the DP. “Which was difficult, plus to be graphic, and we knew the audience would fill in the California law is strict on how much time you can spend rest.” on-set with kids under age of 16.”

The same thing applied to colour palette. “The whites, As there was no 4K mandate from the studio, Elswit reds and blues of 1990s tennis clothes and neutral colours chose to shoot with ARRI Alexas – an Alexa XT Plus as of the Williams’ house contrasted with saturated greens of A-camera and an Alexa Mini as B-camera/Steadicam – Florida. This doesn’t need explaining. You watch it and you equipped with Panavision spherical lenses. get it.”

“It was a set-up that provided the necessary elasticity King Richard was shot in ARRIRAW in Open Gate to the shoot. We had Panavision PVintage Super Speeds, mode on the 4:3 sensor, and composed for spherical from 14mm to 100mm, but ended-up duplicating a few 2.39:1 aspect ratio.

30 JANUARY 2022 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

“I didn’t want the film to look overly stylised, but did want to keep away from any sort of clinical digital quality” Elswit says. “I tend not to use filters, but employed some here to reduce the highlights from very bright backgrounds and sort of blur them. So we had neutral density (ND) filters for exposure control and Schneider Black Softs for slight diffusion.”

Elswit had an eclectic lighting package, but relied heavily on LEDs. “Because we wanted to be as real and honest as possible to the emotions our characters feel in different surroundings, LEDs were the way to go,” he says.

Daylight interior/exterior sources included: Alpha 18Ks, ARRI s-360s, K5600 Jokers and miscellaneous Lightgear LED panels and softboxes. Night lighting was based on Condors with assemblages of 6K softboxes with half-blue/lightgrid GelFab diffusion, T-12s, 5K Pars, ARRI s-360s and s-60’s, 1200W VNSP Parcans, LightGear 4x8 and 2x8 LED softboxes, and lots of LiteGear, LitePanels and Litestix.

All of a sudden, after two weeks, in March 2020, the pandemic began and every film production came to a halt.

“We were shutdown for seven months, which was difficult for the project but allowed Rei and me to actually plan comprehensively the rest of the movie, while the actors stayed in touch and became close,” recalls Elswit.

Unfortunately, once they restarted in October 2020, the cast and crew were not allowed to go back to the house in which they shot the interior scenes, so these had to build on-stage. Again, not an easy decision, but one that provided Elswit with more control.

The staging of tennis practices and games were crucial to King Richard’s visual identity, but Elswit and Green wanted to try a different approach.

“We looked at every single modern tennis film, such as Wimbledon (2004, dir. Richard Loncraine, DP

Darius Khondji AFC ASC), Battle Of The Sexes (2017, dirs. Valerie Faris/Jonathan Dayton, DP Linus Sandgren FSF ASC) and Borg vs McEnroe (2017, dir. Janus Metz Pedersen, DP Niels Thatsum), but didn’t want to walk up with Steadicam to a player when she’s about to serve,” reminisces Elswit. “We wanted to be honest and real, use long and wide lenses, stay behind the baseline, be where you could really be with a camera. We wanted to focus on our characters.”

The idea would not be particularly revolutionary if it was not for one aspect that made it resonate unlike any tennis film before.

“We found 16mm documentary footage shot during many editions of the French Open<’ says Elswit. “They had cameras on each player without ever indicating what happened on the other side. You weren’t following a match per se, you didn’t know the score, but you could understand where the player was emotionally. You would see the intensity and focus and other exciting stuff you don’t see when you watch a match on TV.” This in turn chimed with Green’s dislike for on-screen tennis commentators telling the audience what was happening on the court.

“It’s all in their faces and body language,” says Elswit.

“When Venus plays her first pro tournament, first against Shaun Stafford and then Arantxa Sánchez Vicario, we needed an actor, not a tennis player. Saniyya had never played tennis before this project, didn’t have to, her job was to look believable. There are digital balls, a digital audience, face replacements on photo-doubles of her opponents, but what happens on Saniyya’s face is real.

This is Venus playing.”

The project’s troubled shooting period made Elswit work hard during the DI. “I was shooting another film in Rome and was going to a nearby digital suite for a couple of hours each night, doing virtual sessions with Stefan

Sonnefeld at Company 3 in LA. I basically had to fix all the things I screwed-up. I made the opening much more colourful and shaped the lighting in many places. But the most work I had to do was with interior costumes – I had to push down all the white T-shirts and things like Richard’s red shorts, because we would have otherwise ended up with his clothing being the brightest thing in scenes which would have destroyed the emotional quality.”

“The things I screwed-up with staging and lighting, they’ll all be in my diary one day, but that was nature of the movie – it was never going to be perfect. And I have to say it ended-up being much more than the sum of its parts, because of Rei and who he cast. I guess this was the closest I have felt to being in a movie family. After we wrapped, there were lot of handkerchiefs and Kleenexes.

We knew it was special.”

It’s a very fitting end to the story about a film that uses a very special family to celebrate family values and believing in your dreams.

CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD JANUARY 2022 31

DRIVE MY CAR•HIDETOSHI SHINOMIYA JSC

HIDETOSHI SHINOMIYA JSC•DRIVE MY CAR Images: © 2021 Culture Entertainment, Bitters End, Nekojarashi, Quaras, Nippon Shuppan Hanbai, Bungeishunju, L’Espace Vision, C&I, The Asahi Shimbun Company

ROAD TRIPS

By Ron Prince

H

aving earned a trio of prizes at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival, plus the 2022 Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film, Drive My Car, from Japanese director Ryusuke Hamaguchi, shot by DP Hidetoshi Shinomiya JSC, looks a sure-fire contender for more accolades in the approaching awards season..

With a running time of three-hours, the low-budget (¥150million yen/£960,000/$1.3million), movie was actually adapted and significantly expanded for the big screen from Haruki Murakami’s stark, 40-page short story of the same name.

The story focusses on Kafuku (Hidetoshi Nishijima), a successful actor and theatre director who specialises in experimental multilingual productions. Two years after the death of his beloved, but deceitful, wife Oto (Reika

Kirishima), Kafuku receives an offer to direct a production of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya at a theatre festival in Hiroshima. As tensions mount amongst the cast and crew, Kafuku is forced to confront painful truths about his past.

He forms a profound platonic bond with the emotionallyshutdown Misaki (Tôko Miura), the young woman who is assigned to ferry him around in his cherry-red Saab 900 Turbo, whilst listening to lines from Uncle Vanya recited

by Oto. The absorbing film has been described as a quiet masterpiece of filmmaking, with satisfying layers of storytelling exploring jealousy, love, loss, grief, guilt and the therapeutic power of art. Along with Hamaguchi’s direction, the film has been praised for Shinomiya’s beautifully-composed imagery, with long takes delivering a sense for the rhythm of the road and the quiet energy of the free-moving actors, which enabled them to communicate as much with glances and gestures as with the dialogue.

How did you first get to know your director Ryusuke Hamaguchi?

I first met Mr Hamaguchi after graduating from The Film School Of Tokyo, around 2009, when we worked on a TV commercial, directed by a mutual friend. He was the assistant director and I was the cameraman. It was before I really started working on features, and was still filming shorts. At that point, Mr Hamaguchi had already directed a film called Passion (2008, DP Yûichi Yuzawa), and had made a name for himself as an outstanding young film director. Drive My Car was our first opportunity to work together as director and cinematographer.

What did you feel about the screenplay for Drive My Car? I had a hunch that this film was what Mr Hamaguchi’s career had been leading up to. Rather than relying on traditional methods of filmmaking, he has built his career on innovating and inventing anew each time.

One of the most important things for Mr Hamaguchi, when making a film, is to work closely with how the actors express themselves; and the character expression in this screenplay is very direct. So, I felt it was part of my job, as cinematographer, to create a filming environment in which the actors had full reign to express themselves.

The other thing that struck me was how large-scale this film would be, both in terms of time and space.

The film is broadly made up of three parts, set in three

32 JANUARY 2022 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

regions – Tokyo, Hiroshima, and Hokkaido. The first part focusses on the main character, Kafuku, and his relationship with his wife Oto. The next part is after Oto’s death, at the Hiroshima International Theatre Festival, featuring the actor Takatsuki. The final part is about the driver, Misaki, and her past.

I felt pressure that, unless each storyline was dealt with sensitively, the whole thing might become confused and not come across properly to the audience.

However, I was really excited to think that we could draw these elements out carefully and establish them within the film. In order to avoid confusion, I wanted to select the most appropriate expressions from all the footage we were going to shoot, to give the work a sense of unity.

What were your initial discussions about the look of the film?

I didn’t receive detailed instruction as to the look of the film from Mr Hamaguchi, but we did discuss a plan of action regarding filming and the composition of shots. Also, he did not give detailed directions to the actors either, and they had a lot of freedom on-set. This was because he wanted to actively incorporate the

wonderful expressions of the actors, captured by chance, as well as unexpected events, into the film.

To achieve this, there were hardly any rehearsals for the actors, or technical rehearsals, and great emphasis was placed on the expressiveness of the actors in the first take. Therefore, the subsequent takes I needed to shoot often changed according to the first. I think the director’s quick and accurate judgement on-set was because he was always thinking about editing in his head.

How about the colour palette of the film?

What the film needed was for the colour palette to depict the world view and narrative of Haruki Murakami’s original work. The colour needed to be slightly divorced from everyday life, not monotone and easy-to-understand, but something able to express the

depths of the human heart.

It was important for me to try to find ways to express time, space and events connected to elements which deeply affect the characters emotionally, such as the period before dawn, the echo of rainfall at midnight, the wife’s betrayal, intimate conversations and the deceased’s voice being played back within the car. It was necessary to strike a balance between the delicate treatment of colour, and respect for the actors, so that the expression was not accentuated to the detriment of the acting and that it did not detract from the enjoyment of seeing or listening to the actors.

I referred to the works of the Portuguese cinematographer Eduardo Serra in the look I used in Drive My Car, and to the final three films directed

by Claude Chabrol. The images in those films are characterised by pale blue, which gently wraps around

the entire film, are clear and realistic, but also mysterious and disquieting. I thought this kind of look would be perfect and used this colour as my base, but developed it to reflect the characteristic landscapes of Tokyo, Hiroshima and Hokkaido.

How much preparation time did you have, and when/where did you shoot?

We made preparations under a pretty tight schedule. I received the screenplay around 2019, and got involved in scouting locations, etc., about a month before the start of filming.

We didn’t shoot on any sets. All the filming was done in real locations.

Initially, filming was due to take place over 40 days from the first half of March 2020. However, after filming the first half of the film in Tokyo for ten days, we were forced to stop for nearly half a year due to the coronavirus pandemic. Filming resumed in November, but the scheduled filming in Pusan, Korea, was cancelled due to restrictions on overseas travel, so we changed the setting to Japan, and the location to Hiroshima.

Hiroshima, being so historic, international and varied in climate and landscape, brought something wonderful to the film. It made my heart pound when I scouted the location and thought of the red Saab driving through the islands.

Which cameras and lenses did choose?

I wanted, at all costs, to avoid any trouble, in order not to miss shooting a single second of the actors’ finest performances, particularly as filming often took place in confined spaces, such as inside the car, or at low temperatures in the snow, in Hokkaido. With these factors in mind, I chose the Alexa Mini, with its expressive power, as my weapon of choice, along with Ultra Prime lenses. I shot in 1.85:1 aspect ratio because it was the perfect size to express the characteristics of each place were going to shoot, and to achieve a good balance between the people and the background.

Tell us a little about your framing?

In order to convey the unembellished charm of the acting, I tried to cut out anything unnecessary between the lens and the subject. So, I chose to work in a way that didn’t add anything extra to the acting and captured the genuine expression. Other than an ND filter, I just used a Tiffen Digital Diffusion filter to soften the hard impression of the lens. We rented the filming equipment from Sanwa Eizai in Tokyo.

Did you work with a colourist to create any LUTs for the film?

I took some test shots to the lab and graded in DaVinci Resolve to create a LUT that was incorporated into the camera. It was the only one used for filming

everything, whether indoor or outdoor, day or night. It is more efficient and less confusing to use one variety

The colour palette needed to express the depths of the human heart CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD JANUARY 2022 33

DRIVE MY CAR•HIDETOSHI SHINOMIYA JSC

R O T O L I G H T T I TA N A N E W E R A O F C I N E M AT I C L I G H T I N G

When I am filming, I always remember the expression: ‘God is in the detail’

of LUT. It was necessary to keep things as simple as possible, so I did not grade on-site.

What was your approach to motivating the camera for storytelling purposes?

It was the director’s policy that the camera only moved when the actor, who was the subject, moved. The movement was also kept to a bare minimum to enable the characters to be seen clearly. This was because Mr Hamaguchi wanted to ensure that nothing else was emphasised other than the actors’ performances and their emotions. For moving shots, the only pieces of equipment used were rails and dollies.

And what was your approach to the lighting?

It was naturalistic. We used HMI, LED and Tungsten sources, rented from Nihon Shomei Inc., and did not use any special items. The premise was that most scenes would be filmed using the natural light at the location, only supplementing it when there was not enough. This

meant that shooting largely depended on the weather of the day.

I have quite an emotional attachment to the opening scene of the film, which I shot on the first day of filming, in which Kafuku and his wife Oto are talking in bed before dawn, although we actually shot it during magic hour. It’s a sensitive scene, and the balance between the ordinary and the extraordinary, between reality and fiction, was very important. I wanted to create the magical feeling of the light enveloping the two of them, but felt a lot of pressure because the timing was tricky and it was also the first day.

The scene begins with a take in which a woman’s

silhouette appears in front of a large window through which you can see a pale blue sky before sunrise. The woman begins to tell a story, as if haunted, and we later realise that it’s after she has made love to the man who is listening to the story. You can tell that the silhouette is a naked woman, but it is too dark to see the expression right away.

I think the imbalance between knowing she must be naked, but not being able to see it, is deeply related to some of the themes of this film – realising that you are not actually seeing what you thought you were, finding there’s a part of a person you thought you understood, but that you didn’t know at all.

The view through the window is not a composite shot but what could actually be seen at the time. We decided to film it like this, thinking it might make the acting easier, as the actors shared in the atmosphere and tension of the scene.

I started off shooting several takes towards the window and then began shooting takes without the window in the frame.

The silhouette is made of a negative fill using a black sheet in front of the character. I originally aimed to film after the sun had gone down, but the gradation of the sky was at its best during magic hour, balancing perfectly with the dark side of the figure. I feel that I managed to film at the perfect time when what seemed visible was not visible.

Who were your camera crew?

It was mainly a single camera shoot, and I operated the camera the whole time. I usually work with crews I trust and have worked with multiple times before. This time, however, I worked for the first time with gaffer Taiki Takai, who has been the lighting assistant on many films and has an amazing wealth of experience, so I was not worried about working with him for the first time. He was really consistent in his work and contributed lots of ideas and inspiration.

When we needed a second camera, I chose

34 JANUARY 2022 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

Ryuichi Shimokawa as the operator. He has worked with me as an assistant for many years, has a great feeling for the lens and framed the film exactly right. Working with Mr Hamaguchi, there are virtually no acting or technical rehearsals, so the focus pullers need to be really skilled.

Both Mr Yamada and Mr Tomori improved the quality of the project through their precise focus skills.

There was no grip on-set, so the camera crew had to set-up the camera in the Saab car. It was a painstaking process, setting-up the camera time-aftertime with such a small crew, but we made things faster by doing the usual things such as having pre-shoot meetings, sharing information, getting into a rhythm and clearly identifying the role of each crew member.

Where did you do the final DI colour grade?

The final grading was done at Imagica in Tokyo, with colourist Yumeto Kitayama. I have worked with him on many projects before. He totally understood my aims and expressed them, so completing the work was stressfree. The grade itself was simple as it was based on the pre-made LUT, but there was quite a lot of work as the film is 178-minutes long.

Do you have any other thoughts to share about working on Drive My Car? When I am filming, I always remember the expression: “God is in the detail”. One of the joys for me is to work with this mindset. It allowed me to focus on the actors and enabled me to draw on their expressions to enrich the film. Also, I want Mr Hamaguchi to become a global director, working on an even larger scale, and for him to get more and more opportunities to exercise his talent.

Thanks to Caroline Buxton and Akiko Wakefield for assistance with translations.

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SAFETY FIRST AND FOREMOST

We have a safety crisis in our industry

It’s time for a global, industry-wide safety summit

I don’t believe there are any freak accidents

Depression and burnout related to stress are commonplace

By Michael Goldman

Opposite: DP Halyna Hutchins at the camera.

LEADING VOICES SPEAK OUT ON THE NEED TO ADDRESS THE INDUSTRY’S “SAFETY CRISIS.”

T

he tragic on-set death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins last year led to calls for major changes regarding safety protocols on-set.

Industry veterans who recently spoke with Cinematography World vividly recall similar reactions over the years in the wake of other on-set tragedies. The car-crash death of assistant cameraman Brent Hershman, following a 19-hour workday in 1997, brought calls to reexamine working hours and conditions – a debate that continues today.

More recent on-set catastrophes include the death of camera assistant Sarah Jones in 2014, when she was hit by a train on location; South African stuntwoman Olivia Jackson’s loss of an arm following a horrific motorcycle crash; and camera operator Mark Milsome’s 2017 death shooting a TV drama in Ghana when a car stunt went awry.

“The death of Halyna is not the first time we’ve seen these tragedies,” emphasises John Lindley ASC, president of Local 600, the International Cinematographers Guild. “Personally, I’ve had enough of simply saying my thoughts and prayers are with people’s families. I want to see if we can move from thoughts and prayers to actually doing something more substantive.”

The infamous 1982 Twilight Zone incident, which killed three people, did lead to some firm changes, including broader safety training.

Eventually, studios financed an independent organisation known as the Contract Services Administration Trust Fund (CSATF), which today administers a series of training classes required to work on productions in the 13 US Western States.

The CSATF also maintains an Industry Experience Roster (IER) that tracks union craftspeople in the US who have safety experience and certifications.

However, the death of Hutchins has come to symbolise that “we have a safety crisis in our industry,” in the opinion of Stephen Lighthill ASC, president of the ASC and cinematography discipline head at the AFI Conservatory.

The question of how to address these issues in a global and unified way remains challenging.

The following are opinions about that from a few major industry voices, with a more in-depth article available on the Cinematography World website.

Stephen Lighthill ASC Lighthill, speaking for himself and not on behalf of the ASC or AFI, feels that a foundational problem in this area is the lingering issue of obscenely long working hours.

“The kind of hours we all work has the biggest impact on safety,” he says. “It’s well established that after about 12 hours of labour, a human being

would “bring together all the major organisations involved in filmmaking to discuss these issues.”

Lighthill also hopes the issue of enforcement can be addressed in the form of an independent safety officer for every production. He emphasises such a position already exists in many countries, and that other precedents exist.

“LA County Department Of Public Health made us have proper, Covid-related safety enforcement with the position of Covid Compliance Officer,” he says. “Safety officers already exist in Australia, South Africa and elsewhere. These ideas need to be expanded so that we have full-time healthand-safety officers on all sets. I hope the death of Halyna Hutchins will be a watershed moment for getting this done.”

John Lindley ASC ICG president Lindley strongly agrees that the industry needs to formally introduce the concept of a safety officer on every set.

“This is the one positive step we can take,” he says. “That person’s entire job should be to keep an eye on the practices that are going on around workers, to make sure they are safe. This could be a real, substantive step forward in preventing

becomes impaired from their normal ability, whether that involves driving a car or working on a set. I congratulate the ICG/Local 600 for working on this with producers in recent labour negotiations, but there is much more work to be done.”

Many feel the working hours issue has been made more pressing due to the twin demands for content from consumers and revenue from studios.

“As the popularity of streaming has increased, there is lots of production everywhere,” Lighthill elaborates. “Consequently, there is much production that takes place not in the 13 Western states or the LA area, where safety training is taken seriously, and there is more production going on involving entry-level people with less experience.”

He stresses that whilst safety protocols exist, the challenge of making sure everyone strictly follows them remains vexing. Therefore, Lighthill believes it’s time for a global, industry-wide safety summit that

36 JANUARY 2022 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

accidents, and I think it’s something we ought to do. The industry has shown it is able to make such changes – the question is about the will and timing.

In the US, a coalition was formed to create return-towork agreements between producers and guilds that followed the Covid shutdown. That coalition worked with employers to create safety guidelines to open the industry back up, which we successfully did.

“I think the will from the rank-and-file is clear, and so, the only real question is can we get employers to agree to move forward on something that would ultimately benefit them as much as their workers?”

Lindley adds the issue of reporting safety concerns is another challenge in an industry, where freelance employees fear employment retaliation for speaking out. He reminds that the ICG offers a Safety Bill Of Rights about procedures to follow if members feel unsafe, and a state-of-the-art digital app that provides a portal for reporting concerns anonymously.

“A film set, like many industries, has a hierarchical system and chain of command,” he says. “I believe there is a social contract between the director of photography and their camera, grip and lighting crews to bring concerns forward. But people fear it might hurt their career to do that, and it can. One of our reporting mechanisms to insulate members is the Local 600 Safety App, which allows reporting to our business representatives.

You can report data, or you can request somebody intervene without attribution.”

Kurt Brazda AAC, IMAGO One international entity focussing on safety challenges is IMAGO, the International Federation Of Cinematographers, and its Working Conditions Committee. Austrian director/cinematographer, Kurt Brazda AAC, chairs that committee and was central in that organisation’s “urgent call” late last year to address safety issues.

That urgent call implored crews to “assert their rights,” “show solidarity,” and suggested that strong labour guild advocacy for changes in working hours, firearm rules, and more, were needed to move the ball forward. Brazda feels the global production industry is currently operating in what he calls “a big austerity situation” in which reasonable working hours and existing guidelines are often sacrificed or circumvented.

“The big players, the streaming platforms, the big TV stations, all are using austerity politics,” he says. “They want to produce as much content as

possible while saving as much money as possible.

We think labour guilds need to demand familyfriendly working times, efficient resting times, and less dangerous situations.”

Brazda adds that an associated issue is the matter of mental health support. He suggests that “depression and burnout related to stress” are commonplace, which is another factor in why accidents happen on sets. Thus, IMAGO has been surveying crew members across Europe about how they are treated, what their working conditions and hours are like, and what their concerns are – data Brazda says the organisation will publish within the coming year. Additionally, he says IMAGO is currently preparing a white paper detailing what the federation calls “urgent demands” designed to increase momentum for improving working conditions.

“Eventually, the working environment has to change,” he declares. “There is no law of nature that says you have to work 14 hours.”

Kirk Jones, Chairman, Mark Milsome Foundation UK-based producer/filmmaker Kirk Jones personally knows the agony of losing a friend due to a tragedy on set. In 2017, his film-school friend and his son’s godfather, camera operator Mark Milsome, was killed filming a car stunt in Ghana.

Jones quickly joined the effort to launch the Mark Milsome Foundation, and it soon put a laser focus on the issue of safety on sets.

“I don’t believe there are any freak accidents,” he explains. “These things happen because something has been ignored, neglected, rushed

or common sense has been overruled to ‘make the day.’ There is an imbalance there. We need a world where the producer ultimately puts health and safety of the crew first, above everything – the director’s vision, the schedule, the budget. When that isn’t the case, things go wrong.”

Pursuant to his belief that education is central

to changing this situation, Jones recently produced a detailed safety training programme under the Foundation’s auspices with support from the UK’s National Film & Television School and Media Safety Limited. That course, dubbed the Mark Milsome Foundation Film & TV Online Safety Pass Course, is now available on the Foundation’s site. Primary goals for the course were to make it comprehensive, affordable, accessible and, eventually, mandatory in the UK for prospective crew members to earn a “Safety Passport,” good for five years.

The Foundation also conducted a healthand-safety survey of rank-and-file crewmembers.

Among the conclusions that came out of that survey, he says, was the fact that a significant number of respondents didn’t feel production sets were nearly as safe as they could be, and that production companies did not always respect working hours.

“Sleep deprivation was a huge issue,” he explains. “Mental health problems and lack of support for them was another. We asked if we presented this course, whether people would be interested in taking it? Around 72% said they would voluntarily take it immediately, and that number rose to 92% if it was eventually accepted as a qualification within the film and television industry.”

CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD JANUARY 2022 37

SAFETY ON SET•INDUSTRY LENS

INDUSTRY LENS•SAFETY ON SET

Opposite: (top) a BTS from 007 No Time To Die. Image © 2020 Danjaq LLC and MGM. All Rights Reserved; (below) images from Sahara.

This page: BTS on Indiana Jones; and Harvey Harrison BSC during production on Sahara.

CAN SAFETY BECOME BULLETPROOF?

By Harvey Harrison BSC

A

fter the tragic shooting of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on Rust in Santa Fe, I felt that I had to put pen to paper, to allay a few fears there might be amongst camera crews, and to suggest some positive steps for the future.

Over the last 50 years I have worked on many films that required weapons of one type or another – from pistols, shotguns and .50 Browning machine guns to tanks, as well as stunts using helicopters, pyros and big bangs. All very dangerous.

Luckily in the UK, from the 1950’s until recently, we have been blessed with formidable teams of professionals in camera, electrical, grip, props, armoury, production design, stunts, riggers, aerial coordinators, construction, ADs, SFX, transportation, wardrobe, makeup and hair.

With the UK booming, producing large and expensive action movies, like 007 James Bond, Mission Impossible and Indiana Jones, we have to be ever-more vigilant, which means training. The majority of armourers here are more likely to be in their 30s, 40s or 50s, and certainly not in their 20s, having either served with the police or armed forces and been well-vetted for their knowledge of firearms and ammunition.

I should say that absolutely no live rounds are ever allowed anywhere near a film set, they are totally barred. Only blanks that have been thoroughly tested are ever used for firing. The armourer will know exactly

the amount of wadding that is released and how far it can travel. Nobody else on the crew should handle any firearms, except the armourers, actors or stunts,

who have been given strict supervision. Not even the props person.

There is a strict regime between the armourer and the 1st AD when using weapons that fire on-set, plus instructions between them and the DP on where crew

should be safe, and the erection of barriers between the cast, stunt persons and the position of the cameras.

Nobody on the crew should ever be in the direct line of fire unless behind a barrier and perspex shield. Even blanks can be a danger in flying out from a firearm with great velocity and at an extremely high temperature, and the armourer will always advise on this. Of course if the firearm is particularly close to a camera especially a large calibre gun then the camera should always be remotely operated.

I will explain a brief on-set etiquette. For any type of firearm before a rehearsal or a take, the armourer will show the weapon to the 1st AD and announce ‘Empty Gun’ and the AD will confirm with ‘Final Check’. If it is to fire a blank the AD will say ‘Make the weapon(s) hot’.

The armourer will load the gun, show it to the AD and say ‘Weapons hot’. The action will take place and on the AD saying ‘Cut’ they will add ‘Armourers in’. The armourer will take the weapons off the actors or stunts, check the blanks have been fired and that there are no jams and then announce ‘Guns clear’. After a take is probably the most dangerous time, as the crew relax and start moving around before it is definitely known that the firearms are safe. Best to wait until the armourer confirms ‘Gun or Weapons clear’.

At which point the armourer and his assistants will relieve the actors or stunts of their weapons take them

38 JANUARY 2022 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

away, do their checks and lock them up in a secure trunk or vehicle.

This is certain to be second nature to ADs, DPs, operators, armourers, grips and prop prople, who have worked their way up through the ranks, and learned through experiences over time. There is no substitute for experience, you cannot expect a twenty-something to arrive on a film set, having spent a few months in a film school or having been employed as a runner or gopher, to suddenly be elevated to a higher position in the pecking order and take on greater responsibilities. Films don’t work like that. Experience counts.

A good many are entering the film industry without sufficient training

the film industry without sufficient training, and not coming up through the ranks learning from their seniors, and being put into positions without sufficient knowledge to make a set safe. A film set is a dangerous place to be, although some departments have made extraordinary gains in safety – especially grips and sparks.

As for health and safety officers, some are very good, but others don’t have a real sense of actually how a film set operates, and I think that that is a problem.

Since the digital age has come about, there has been a breakdown in discipline on the floor. Cameras are often left to run/record, without proper takes – there’s no ‘Action’ or ‘Cut’ or ‘Reload’, just the 1st AD or director shouting ‘Do another one’.

I know not all films are like this and thank god there are still hundreds of very talented crews out there, but it’s the future that concerns me. With all these grand projects in new studios, where are all the new crews coming from?

Will they get the learning they need by working with the experienced?

You can’t get that type of experience at film school, and there’s no substitute for working on the floor. It is absolutely essential that producers are made to employ trainees in every department, the price is infinitesimal compared to the overall cost of the production. Trainees are the future of films and our wonderful industry, they need knowledge and experience. If they don’t, it’s inevitable accidents will happen.

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Over the years I have worked on many films that involved large amounts of gunfire, often exceeding 100,000 rounds per film – such as Sahara, Goldeneye, two of The Mummy films, Equilibrium, V For Vendetta, Rambo and Red 2. We always employed true professionals and never had a single incident or injury, although I had to fire a first armourer once for test-firing a .50 Caliber machine gun at lunchtime without informing myself or my 1st AD. Today it would seem that a good many are entering

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WEST SIDE STORY•JANUSZ KAMIŃSKI ASC

RAZZLE DAZZLE

JANUSZ KAMIŃSKI ASC•WEST SIDE STORY Ariana DeBose as Anita and David Alvarez as Bernardo in 20th Century Studios’ West Side Story.

Photo by Niko Tavernise. © 2021 20th Century Studios.

All Rights Reserved.

By Ron Prince

T

he trouble with remaking classic, much-loved movies, is that they simply might not live up to expectations. But, Steven Spielberg’s vivid re-imagining of the iconic West Side Story seems to have defied that sort of outcome. And then some.

40 JANUARY 2022 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD JANUARY 2022 41

WEST SIDE STORY•JANUSZ KAMIŃSKI ASC

JANUSZ KAMIŃSKI ASC•WEST SIDE STORY Mike Faist as Riff in 20th Century Studios’ West Side Story. Other images show Ansel Elgort as Tony, Rachel Zegler as Maria and Rita Moreno as Valentina.

Cinematographer Janusz Kamiński ASC on set. Photos by Niko Tavernise. © 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.

“The dance sequences were intrinsically important to the film, and you need to shoot coverage, but filming coverage in a traditional way does not apply in dance routines,” says Kamiński. “You must go with the rhythm of the song, the tempo of the dance, the story beats and sometimes several different locations. You simply can’t have a regular three or four-camera set-up. Things have to be much more precise.

Film emulsion has an incredible aesthetic ability to evoke nostalgia

C

ritics have hailed the new movie as a sensation, one of the very best from the celebrated filmmaker and his collaborators, largely for its enterprising fusion of colourful, Hollywood musical entertainment with today’s social sensibilities, a movie that is in harmony with its origins whilst being attuned to contemporary issues.

Directed and co-produced by Spielberg from a screenplay by Tony Kushner, and shot on Kodak 35mm film by the director’s longtime cinematographer Janusz Kamiński ASC, West Side Story is the second feature-length adaptation of the 1957 Broadway stage musical of the same name, conceived by Jerome Robbins, with music by Leonard Bernstein, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim.

The 1961 feature production of West Side Story (dirs. Robert Wise/Jerome Robbins, DP Daniel L. Fapp ASC), is regarded one of the greatest musical films of all time, and won ten Academy Awards. Now, along with critical acclaim, Spielberg’s version was named one of the top ten films of 2021 by both the National Board Of Review and the American Film Institute. It also received four nominations at the 79th Golden Globe Awards, winning three, including Best Picture – Musical/Comedy, and looks well-placed to receive many more nominations and accolades in the 2022 awards season.

For those who are unfamiliar with the narrative, West Side Story is inspired by William Shakespeare’s tragedy Romeo And Juliet. It takes place during the mid-1950s in the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City, then a multi-racial, blue-collar neighbourhood. The story, set to Bernstein and Sondheim’s original songs, explores the rivalry between the Jets and the Sharks, two teenage street gangs of different ethnic backgrounds. The members of the Sharks, from Puerto Rico, are taunted by the Jets, a white gang. Tensions between the two crews rise when Tony, a former member of the Jets and the best friend of the gang’s leader, Riff, falls in love with Maria, the sister of Bernardo, the leader of the Sharks, and the feuding soon escalate into an all-out, deadly rumble between the adversarial gangs.

Spielberg’s West Side Story stars Ansel Elgort as Tony, and newcomer Rachel Zegler as Maria, with Ariana DeBose, David Alvarez, Mike Faist and Rita Moreno in supporting roles. Moreno, who starred in the 1961 film adaptation, also served as an executive producer.

West Side Story represents Kamiński’s 18th consecutive feature film with Spielberg, over a span of 25 years, all but one of them (The BFG, 2016) shot using celluloid film. Kamiński earned Best Cinematography Oscars for Schindler’s List (1993), his first title with the director, and Saving Private Ryan (1998), as well as six Academy nominations for his other films with Spielberg.

“Steven and I still use celluloid to make movies, as film emulsion has an incredible aesthetic ability to evoke nostalgia,” remarks Kamiński. “Additionally, the rhythm of the ‘take, cut and reload’ process is a familiar ritual, and we see no reason to work in any other way.”

In conjuring-up the looks for the film, Kamiński says,

42 JANUARY 2022 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

“I have seen the original 1961 film many times over the years, and I really like it, especially for its period glamour. But I did not really study it in any depth, and things were different aesthetically, psychologically, philosophically and technically back then.

“I also remember being blown away by musicals like Singin’ In the Rain (1952, dirs. Gene Kelly/Stanley Donen, DP Harold Rosson ASC), La Cage Aux Folles (1978, dir. Édouard Molinaro, DP Armando Nannuzzi AIC), and Chicago (2002, dir. Rob Marshall. DP Dion Beebe ACS ASC), but other than the impressions they made on me, filmic references were irrelevant.

“Steven and I were more inspired by the razzle dazzle of Broadway musicals, than anything else – where things look glamorous, the people look spectacularly beautiful, the action is full of colour, energy and panache, whilst also being gritty and dramatic when appropriate.

“So, in finding the look of the film, I was more intrigued with contemporary photography, of New York back in the 1950s and ‘60s, that the production designer Adam Stockhausen had compiled. I was especially interested in the colourful depiction of dailylife in Puerto Rican and Dominican neighbourhoods, which were nice, close-knit communities.

“Yes, New York life had a tough underbelly, that you can see in movies like Midnight Cowboy (1969, dir. John Schlesinger, DP Adam Holender), The Panic In Needle Park (1971, dir. Jerry Schatzberg, DP Adam Holender) and Taxi Driver (1976, dir. Martin Scorsese, DP Michael Chapman ASC), but we thought this sort of depiction would give a false, grim perspective to the storytelling.”

Filming took place over the course of 79 days, from July 2019 to the end of September that year. Production was mainly location-based, encompassing Harlem in Upper Manhattan, Flatlands in the borough of Brooklyn, and Paterson, New Jersey, where an outdoor set was also built. Filming also took place in Newark and other parts of Essex County, New Jersey, with interior sets constructed at Steiner Studios.

Prior to commencing principal photography, Kamiński had ten weeks of prep, during which the capture of the dance routines were amongst the key creative

deliberations – such as the show-stopping routine for ‘America’, which Spielberg and choreographer Justin Pack transposed away from rooftops, as depicted in the 1961 film, and on to the city streets.

“Being part of the dance rehearsal process, we quickly realised that the dancers – many of whom have been stage professionals for 10 or 15 years - are really precise, even more so than stunt people, in their coordination and performances. Their exactness meant we could gracefully move in and around them, and not be in danger of us crashing or bumping into them, or vice versa.

“When we got on-set, where there were things like kerbs, pavements and fire hydrants to contend with, and we needed to change a camera position or movement, Justin, the choreographer, worked with the dancers to quickly adapt and accommodate their routine to meet our requests. This was very comforting and is a great example of the collaboration between

different departments.”

The routine for ‘America’ was shot over ten days, at locations across Harlem, Queens and Paterson, where fable has it that Ariana DeBose’s dance shoes melted and had to be replaced multiple times due to a combination of hot weather and the intensity of the choreography. Of course, shooting one set-piece over such a protracted period of time, meant Kamiński and his crew having to protect the light for consistency and continuity during days that fluctuated between overcast and sunny conditions, but he says, “that’s one of the jobs you are hired for as a cinematographer, that’s what we do.”

After extensive testing, Kamiński went with Panavision Millennium XL2 35mm cameras, shooting in widescreen 2.39:1 aspect ratio, using Panavision C-series Anamorphic lenses, supplemented by T-series Anamorphics whose contrast ratios were streamlined to match the C-series, whilst also being optimised for close-focus and performance in low-light situations, by lens guru Dan Sasaki.

“Shooting widescreen was a natural choice,” Kamiński explains, “This was a classic Hollywood musical, with many shots involving groups of people, and we wanted to try to keep as many dancers in the picture as possible. So we really needed that width of the frame.

“When it comes to lenses, Dan is a great asset to Panavision. He is very knowledgeable and gave me a fascinating tutorial about Anamorphic lenses and how they evolved over time during the 1930s, ‘40s, ‘50s and ‘60s. At my request, he tweaked and adapted

CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD JANUARY 2022 43

WEST SIDE STORY•JANUSZ KAMIŃSKI ASC

JANUSZ KAMIŃSKI ASC•WEST SIDE STORY Director Steven Spielberg with Rita Moreno as Valentina on the set of 20th Century Studios’ West Side Story.

Photo by Niko Tavernise. © 20th Century Studios.

All Rights Reserved.

enhancing the monochromatic grittiness of our more edgy scenes, and finessing the inviting colour of the New York neighbourhoods.”

Regarding camera movement, Kamiński says, “The technology has moved on a lot since 1961, when the camera was pretty static. We wanted to bring a modern, active energy to the way the camera moved, so we employed an array of ways of moving the camera.

“For example, the prologue sequence, in which the tenement slums are being destroyed by wrecking balls ready for the construction of the Lincoln Center, was an invisible blend of separate Technocane, drone and cable-cam shots. We shot the gang walk-and-talks

a couple of lenses so they would exhibit increased propensity to flare.

“I purposely wanted to encourage flaring in the visual vocabulary of this movie. Flares can look pretty, and add lyricism to a dreamy romantic sequence, such as Tony and Maria’s first kiss, but they can also add to the expressionist sense of intimidation and danger, as in the night-time rumble between the Jets and Sharks.”

The cinematographer also says that, “When I shot Bridge Of Spies (2015), I used Hawk Anamorphics, as I liked their aberrations and the way the image fell apart at the edge of the frame.

But that was not appropriate here. You can shoot with wider lenses Cand T-series without the same level of distortion.

“I also wanted to shoot at a high T-stop, between T8 and T11, as I do not like shallow depth-of-field, and did not want the performers moving in and out of focus.

You can work with the Panavision Anamorphics at these T-stops, but they required a lot of light. Consequently, our night scenes and larger interiors, such as the dance at the gymnasium when Tony and Maria meet, needed some pretty big lighting rigs.”

Kamiński went with Kodak Vision3 500T 5219 for all of the night exterior scenes, using the texture of its inherent grain to reflect the reality of the more seedy locations and edgy moments. Most of the apartment

scenes were shot using Kodak Vision3 200T 5213, with the emphasis on keeping the look warm and beautiful.

Kodak Vision3 50D 5203 was used for most of the day exteriors, bringing vivid colour to the dance routines, switching to Kodak Vision3 250D 5207 if shoots extended beyond normal daylight. Film processing was done at Kodak Film Lab in New York, with dailies scanning, and the final DI grade, done at Technicolor, NY, now Streamland Media.

“Whilst I know Kodak’s 200T and 500T filmstocks match well, you can also use them to create different aesthetics,” Kamiński remarks.

“I used a lot of Tungsten lights on this film, and corrected in-camera with an 85 filter when shooting with the Tungsten emulsions. The finer-grain structure of the 200T was ideal for my purposes of creating a welcoming, homely atmosphere on the interiors, while the 500T is naturally more light-sensitive, with bigger grain and more texture, and was more appropriate to depict the harsher, grittier moments in the movie.

“I have always liked a bit of grain, and find that I am more emotionally-involved when I see images shot on film. There’s a certain artificiality to high-definition pictures and, no matter how you cut it, the film just looks more natural. Whatever story you are telling, film is still the best, and I will keep on shooting it as long at is manufactured and as long as it can be developed.”

44 JANUARY 2022 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

from the crane or Steadicam or the dolly. Steven said he wanted not just to see the dancing but to get inside

I had an absolutely top-notch team… great professionals on whom you can rely

the routines and be part of them, for which we went with lovely sweeping moves with the Steadicam.”

When asked about his working relationship with Spielberg on the movie, Kamiński concludes, “Neither of us had never shot a musical before, but it was a lot of fun to do. Steven brings out the best of you in every respect – not just in terms of your work, but how you carry yourself – to be proud, but also be respectful and tolerant to other people. Making a movie about the lack of tolerance and the tensions that come with that, it was more important than ever for Steven to embrace everyone and to make them feel even more part of the movie.”

Kamiński reports that he enjoyed great collaborative relationships with his crew. “I had an absolutely topnotch team, most of them having decades of experience individually, which means they are great professionals on whom you can rely. Having worked with many of the before, they know how Steven and I make movies, which made things a bit easier and a little bit faster.

I purposely encouraged flaring in the visual vocabulary of this movie “Although West Side Story was mainly a singecamera shoot, it’s a big ship to steer, so I did not operate. I had Mitch Dubin on A-camera, assisted by Mark Spath on focus, both of whom I have worked with regularly for over 25 years. When we needed Steadicam we secured the talents of John S. Moyer, who is tall and strong, and was a dancer when he was younger, so he really understood the visual requirement and was able to move around really beautifully with the dancers and follow the action. In charge of lighting was the great New York gaffer Steve Ramsey, with whom I have made several films and many commercials, and who made sure I had plenty of beautiful, poetic light to shoot between T8 and T11. And my key grip was Mitch Lillian, a regular collaborator with Sir Roger Deakins CBS BSC ASC. “I also have to mention two people who have helped with the colour on my last half dozen movies: John Vladic, my dailies colour timer who spent time onset, supervised the neg scanning and did correction for me every evening; and colourist Mike Hatzer who did a great job of matching John’s dailies in the final grade, CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD JANUARY 2022 45

THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH•BRUNO DELBONNEL AFC ASC

KNIFE EDGE

BRUNO DELBONNEL AFC ASC•THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH Images from The Tragedy Of Macbeth courtesy of Apple.

forms in the tabletop architectural models that were devised, lit and photographed by James Casebere ­– one of the ‘Picture Generation’ of post-modern artists – were further inspiration as regards our ideas about set design and lighting. When it came to thinking about our exterior backgrounds, the layered landscape illustrations that often accompany Japanese haiku poems, such as mountains ranges shrouded in mist, had an appropriate theatrical lyricism about them.”

With all of this in mind, Delbonnel collaborated with production designer, Stefan Dechant, to develop sets that spurned ornamentation and practical lighting as much as possible, stripping the imagery down to the barest of essentials.

“There was no furniture, no carpets, practically

By Ron Prince

nothing to distract from the performances,” Delbonnel explains, “and from this idea came the notion of shooting in B&W and framing in Academy 1.37:1 aspect ratio.

“In many ways, B&W helps the image to become more abstract, because you don’t relate to anything much apart from the performances and the atmosphere created by the lighting. For me, the Academy format is probably the most beautiful format, because when you shoot a close-up, it really is a close-up.”

Indeed, this in-turn informed Delbonnel’s choice of ARRI Alexa LF camera and its 14+ stops of dynamic range, paired with the look of Cooke S7 lenses, to capture the portraiture, with a target of T4.

“On the advice of my longterm colourist, Peter

Doyle, we shot in colour and converted to B&W in post, as this would allow him to use the blue channel as a form of filtration to soften the sharpness of the look on skin and costume, and the other RGB channels to adjust the grey scales in the final picture,” says the DP. Principal photography on The Tragedy Of Macbeth took place on sets constructed inside the voluminous Stage 16 at Warner Bros. Studios in LA, which included the film’s exterior scenes that had 150-meter-wide painted backdrops, designed

by Dechant.

Production started in early February 2020, however, the arrival of Covid-19 in the middle of the seven-week production schedule, led to a four-month shutdown, before shooting resumed at the end of July.

I

“ don’t see filmmaking as a challenge per se, but rather more as an opportunity to try something new, especially with the lighting and camerawork,” says French DP Bruno Delbonnel AFC ASC. “And this was exactly the case when Joel Coen called me and announced that he was going to make The Tragedy Of Macbeth as a thriller.”

Starring Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand, along with Kathryn Hunter and Brendan Gleeson, The Tragedy Of Macbeth has earned rave reviews for its bold direction, the fierce performances, as well as the otherworldliness of Delbonnel’s beguiling and lustrous B&W cinematography in Academy format, which earned the DP a Silver Frog at the 2021 Camerimage Festival of Cinematography. Since then, the film has been honoured as one of the top ten movies of 2021 by both the American Film Institute and the National Board Of Review, and might well garner further trophies in the 2022 awards season.

“Joel explained to me that he wanted to avoid shooting his adaptation of the Shakespeare classic

as a stageplay,” Delbonnel continues. “He wanted it to be a movie, but was keen to explore theatricality, to bring a sense of the theatre to the cinematic experience.

“Also, the last thing he was interested in was realism, such as shooting in the highlands, in a Scottish castle and having people roaming around

the landscape in purple heather. He wanted to shoot it all on a soundstage. These concepts put a new stamp on a story that has been told many times before on the big screen and made it very intriguing to me.”

Admitting to finding Shakespearian-English prose somewhat impenetrable, and in order to familiarise himself with story, Delbonnel immediately headed to his favourite book store in Paris and purchased French translations of The Bard’s original play.

In brief synopsis, Shakespeare’s Macbeth, thought to have been first-performed in 1606, dramatises the damaging physical and psychological effects of political ambition on those who seek power. A trio of witches convince the Scottish warlord Macbeth that he will become king, and when he reveals their prophecy to his wife, Lady Macbeth, she coaxes him to kill King Duncan and seize the crown. This soon leads Macbeth to further acts of murders, in order to cover his tracks and preserve his new-found regal status. However, whilst he becomes increasinglytormented by the monstrosity of his abominable deeds, Lady Macbeth likewise finds her own sanity severely challenged by pangs of conscience.

Delbonnel, a five-time Academy Award nominee, previously collaborated with the Coen Brothers on the comedic portion of the anthology film Paris, Je T’aime (2006), Inside Llewyn Davis (2013) and The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs (2018), but The Tragedy Of Macbeth was the first time that Joel had directed without his brother Ethan by his side.

“Joel’s script used the original Shakespearian language, and as we discussed the process of how we might visualise his screenplay, we focussed-in

46 JANUARY 2022 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

on the rhythm of the language, written in iambic pentameter, and the power of the lines in different parts of the storytelling,” says Delbonnel.

“Also, Shakespeare’s ideas and dialogue were so complex and beautiful that we did not want anything to distract from the acting and the language. So we felt it best not to represent external reality, and that the simplest-possible visual form – a minimal abstraction of shapes, textures, spaces and faces – would be the ideal way to express things aesthetically.”

Coen and Delbonnel watched a number of earlier film adaptations of Macbeth, including productions directed by Orson Welles (1948), Roman Polanski (1971), and Justin Kurzel (2015), as well as Kurosawa’s Throne Of Blood (1957), contemplating how sequences such as the famous ‘dagger’ speech, and the different murders, had been variously portrayed on-screen.

However, in terms of the overall look, Delbonnel says a trio of references formed the underlying foundations of their creative visual thinking.

Joel’s concepts put a new stamp on the story and made it very intriguing to me “An important reference for us was Carl Theodor Dreyer’s silent, B&W, historical film, The Passion Of Joan Of Arc (1928, DP Rudolph Maté ASC), with its many close-ups and fabulously simple sets,” he remarks. “Additionally, the essential, stripped-down CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD JANUARY 2022 47

THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH•BRUNO DELBONNEL AFC ASC

BRUNO DELBONNEL AFC ASC•THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH

Images from The Tragedy Of Macbeth courtesy of Apple.

Delbonnel says he likes to approach cinematography as if it were a musical score, and with The Tragedy Of Macbeth this created the opportunity to play with the concepts of light and dark in the representation of different beats in the storytelling.

“It was about trying to shape the flow of the images, as if they were a musical score,” he says.

“At the beginning of the movie it’s all grey and foggy, there was no black or white. But then, as the plot thickens, we shifted the look away from grey into atmospheric B&W, sometimes with silhouettes, sometimes with harder lighting, although I would not describe that as noir.

“The light in the film was never justified by the movement of a character. It was more of a graphic element, often with ambiguity about whether it might be day or night, shifting between dark and shadowy, grey and soft, looks according to the ebb-and-flow of the murder and madness in the story.

“Essentially, light was a counterpoint of the language. Sometimes the light on the set went against the rhythm of the language and sometimes it followed the rhythm of the language.”

However, the relatively short production schedule, combined with the need to create a steady flow of expressive, often sharply-cut, lighting designs, meant having to eschew the use of Fresnels. This saw Delbonnel working closely with gaffer Mike Bauman, and lighting desk operator Dave Kane, to introduce remote-controlled, rock ‘n’ roll, concert-style moving fixtures, in the form of ETC’s SolaFrame Theatre lights. These deliver constant, high-CRI, bright white illumination, the ability to focus the light, incorporate gobos for hard edges, and can project animation effects through prisms.

“I knew that no Fresnels would give me the very hard shadows I was looking for, so we moved toward these rock ’n’ roll lighting systems,” says Delbonnel. “With the SolaFrames we could create lines, stripes and sharp shadows on the set using the adjustable shutter blades. They also proved to be quick and efficient on our different lighting set-ups, as they bypassed the traditional, tedious and slow process of the lighting crew having to move, flag and adjust individual fixtures in greenbeds above set by hand from mechanical lifts.

“For the key ‘dagger’ scene, as Macbeth walks along the colonnade, we designed metal gobos in the shape of the arches and the columns, and carefully aligned 15 SolaFrames side-by-side on-set.

What you see on-screen is not the actual shadow of the arch, but the projected light through the gobos, which was pin-sharp.

“We also used multiple SolaFrames to project animated cloud effects onto our backdrops, and frequently used them as the source of bounced light on the actors. As they are remote-controlled, I was able make adjustments quickly, and could light the sets in a way that gave the actors a playground for freedom of movement. I told Denzel he could move wherever he wanted, and play with the light and shadows, and sometimes be in silhouette.”

Delbonnel concludes with a note about his

48 JANUARY 2022 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

crew. “The Tragedy Of Macbeth is quite different to other productions I have shot. It proved a wonderful experience, and I thank my team for their help – gaffer Mike Bauman, dimmer-board operator Dave Kane and rigging gaffer Adam Harrison, my 1st AC Andy Harris and key grip Ray Garcia, DIT Josh Gollish and my colourist partner, Peter Doyle, who completed the final grade. But most of all, I want to say how fortunate I was to collaborate with Joel, and the opportunity he gave me to create something very special.”

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CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD JANUARY 2022 49

HARRY BOX•LETTER FROM AMERICA

ANNUAL ACCOUNTS

P

ERG manager Harry Box looks forward to an action-packed agenda for the association and its members in 2022.

While the Covid pandemic continues to wreak havoc in the US, by now the health protocols are wellestablished and production continues at a break-neck pace. PERG’s membership of camera and lighting rental companies report record business.

Throughout the pandemic PERG has endeavored to continue its core function of focusing attention on challenges and opportunities for equipment providers, and to bring together the rental community, albeit virtually.

In November of 2021, PERG held a series of four virtual events, called the “Year-End Technology Roundup”, inviting representatives from 30 top manufacturers to speak to our membership about what is new and what is on the horizon in camera, lens and lighting technology. The aim of the event was to enable vendors and rental companies to reconnect in the wake of cancelled or poorly-attended trade shows throughout 2021.

In 2021 PERG also held monthly-ish virtual meetings – PERG Coffee Breaks – presenting a wide variety of topics of interest to the rental community, including legal questions about vaccination, mental health initiatives, equipment leasing, large format lens projection, care of Lithium-ion batteries, fostering diversity and inclusion in the workforce, and others.

While the program has been a great success, the members miss PERG’s usual slate of in-person meetings and events. The novelty, shall we say, of virtual meetings wore off some time ago. Nevertheless, PERG will continue the Coffee Breaks in 2022, hosting technology experts, business and health-related panel discussions. In addition, PERG is working with a unique educational trade show, Filmscape Chicago, to hold professional level workshops for rental company service technicians in the lead up to the Filmscape trade show in late June. All of the sessions will be recorded and made available on the ESTA YouTube channel.

PERG is also planning, tentatively, to host four inperson events in 2022 (assuming it is safe to do so), and working with NAB to hold the annual PERG General Membership Meeting in the Las Vegas Convention Center. In the past (most recently 2019), PERG cohosted two large diner events with the Association Of Independent Commercial Producers (AICP), a Cinco De Mayo party in Los Angeles, and an Oktoberfest bash in New York, and is working with the AICP to see if those events may be viable once again.

Later this spring, PERG will produce its annual theft report, assessing theft data reported via the Rental Guard platform. Rental Guard is the central international repository for equipment theft information. The report details the number of theft events and dollar losses due to break-ins at rental companies, equipment rented and not returned, thefts from vehicles, and equipment that has disappeared from sets. The data provides rental companies with information about trends and methods used by criminals.

It has been clear in the data over the past two or three years that there are two main sources off losses. The greatest losses are from big burglaries that appear to be by organized crime groups. The criminals clearly have scouted and prepared for the theft. They wear masks. They are often able to disable security systems and they are in- and-out in a very short amount of time. They evidently

Opposite: (top-down) Harry Box (centre) with Kristin Wilcha (AICP) and another guest at the PERG/AICP Oktoberfest Party, New York, 2019; Coffee Break with Paul Royalty (LiteGear), Lori Rubinstein (Behind The Scenes charity) and Taryn Longo (somatic trauma therapist) speaking about mental health & suicide prevention; Harry Box, PERG manager; camera prep at Daufenbach Camera, Chicago; and a PERG reception at NAB, Las Vegas, in the ‘before’ times.

Find out more about joining PERG at www.esta.org/PERG/

PERG will continue the Coffee Breaks in 2022, hosting technology experts, business and health-related panel discussions have a network to move a large amount of high-end professional equipment quickly.

The second main group of losses is from clients leaving equipment in unattended vehicles. Of the different types of theft, this is sadly one of the most common. PERG provides flyers with statistics to help rental companies educate their clients about theft. Most crew members, camera assistants and drivers don’t realize that professional thieves target this equipment. They follow vehicles leaving a rental facility and watch for opportunities to take the equipment.

In addition to raising awareness, the Rental Guard data helps involve law enforcement. Generally, law enforcement will not pursue an isolated case of equipment theft, but if they are able to see a pattern of theft, and if they are given multiple reports and security camera footage, they stand a far better chance of success. This was the case last summer and fall when a group of PERG members in Atlanta joined forces to put together a clear road map of related incidents for law enforcement, where over $3 million of equipment was stollen in a relentless series of break-ins.

Rental Guard is provided by PERG as a free service to the industry. Anyone can search serial numbers and find out if equipment was reported as stolen to Rental Guard. PERG strongly encourages anyone buying used equipment to search the Rental Guard site beforehand, and also to check lens and camera serial numbers with the equipment manufacturers, who often also maintain lists that show who owns equipment.

PERG’s executive body, the PERG Council, is working on new programs and initiatives to support the industry.

We look forward to making an exciting announcement later this year.

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Cineo Lighting’s StageLynx control interface, featured on all fixtures using a C2OS operating system, is a cross-platform ecosystem designed to meet and grow with the demands Film and Television Lighting require in the new age of digital control. Not only does this provide consistency in controls across fixture types, it delivers an identical and seamless user experience - whether you are controlling the fixture on the back of the light, in a stage networked environment, or using your smart phone or windows PC as a remote.

Key Features in the stageLynx C2Os Operating system

•

Intuitive and full color touch screen control interface.

•

Network data control via RDM/DMX, Wired and Wireless Ethernet, WiFi connectivity for APP based remote.

•

Ability to find and remotely set up universe and address assignments on every networked fixture.

•

Supports library of LUTs for color matching to variety of fixtures and industry standard color spaces.

•

Customizable library of effects and presets, featuring an effects recorder that can store and play back any console driven script or locally created adjustment for repeatable use off network.

•

Library of tools featuring time stamped log files and system diagnostics data.

•

Remote software updates capable of updating all fixture on network simultaneously.

THE LOST DAUGHTER•HÉLÈNE LOUVART AFC

HÉLÈNE LOUVART AFC•THE LOST DAUGHTER

TROUBLE IN PARADISE

By Darek Kuźma

M

aggie Gyllenhaal’s daring directorial debut, dealing with the profound complexity and moral ambiguity of motherhood, would not be the same without the skillset of French cinematographer Hélène Louvart AFC. On the face of it, Leda (Olivia Colman) seems an accomplished comparative literature scholar, yet she used to be identified primarily as a mother of two cute and fairly possessive girls, as well as the wife of a successful man. When young Leda’s (Jessie Buckley) academic/ professional work – completed in extra time in addition to changing diapers, feeding, hugging and indulging the children’s shenanigans – was finally recognised, it came with her peers’ concerns as to how it would impact her family. When Leda decided to leave her family and pursue a career, her own shame was heightened by societal pressure.

Leda is now middle-aged and has persisted in her ambitions, whilst learning to accept the good, the bad, and the ugly of being herself. But, all of a sudden, she is forced to confront her inner demons in the one place she thought she would be completely safe: during her holidays on an idyllic Greek island, amid other folks who have chosen the place as an asylum from the outside world, as well as an extended family of brash patriarchs and trophy mothers vacationing at the same beach resort. Initially furious, Leda is drawn to one of them, Nina (Dakota Johnson), a dazzling young mother who is clearly as lost as Leda herself used to be at her age.

Gyllenhaal based her script (which was awarded the gong for best screenplay at the 2021 Venice International Film Festival) on Elena Ferrante’s eponymous novel, and recognised that navigating her way through such an emotionally-charged cinematic exploration of a fiercely independent yet regretful woman would require the assistance of a DP who knew how to capture human nature in all of its fascinating and frightful glory.

Being a fan of Alice Rohrwacher’s Happy As Lazzaro (2018), Eliza Hittman’s Never Rarely Sometimes Always (2020) and Karim Aïnouz’s Invisible Life (2019), Gyllenhaal’s first pick was Louvart, who was the cinematographer on each of those films, and who also shot two episodes of My Brilliant Friend, HBO’s quintessential screen version of Ferrante’s four-part set of Neapolitan Novels.

“I was really convinced by the emotional range of the screenplay for The Lost Daughter, and met briefly with Maggie in London, for just one hour or so, to check if we would be a good director/cinematographer match, and the connection was instant,” says Louvart.

The pair then spent the next several months on Skype discussing all scenes in detail, although they were not prepared for what was about to come.

“We were supposed to shoot the film in New Jersey,

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but then Covid came and forced us to alter our plans,” the DP reveals. “They considered making The Lost Daughter in Canada, but one day a new exciting opportunity arose. It turned out Greece would be feasible. And, in fact, it turned out to be the best thing that happened to us because this story deserved the Mediterranean vibe.

“When the film was greenlit to be shot at the island of Spetses, Maggie adapted the script to support the new scenery, but overall it was only a series of minor tweaks,” states Louvart.

The director and the DP arrived on the island pretty much at the same time, five weeks before principal photography began, but, as Louvart declares, “We were put under immediate quarantine and spent two weeks in hotel lockdown, discussing everything –locations, schedule, gear list, etc., – all over again on Skype. However, when we were finally able to meet in person – for the first time since that one hour talk in London – most of the prep work had been done.”

The visual idea behind The Lost Daughter was always to prioritise emotional honesty, using locations, lighting and camerawork to gradually reveal how the characters deal with their crushing moral dilemmas.

“Maggie wanted to be close to the actors, for the camera to be with them physically, to react with them, to breathe with them. So we framed mostly with 32mm, 40mm and 50mm lenses,” explains Louvart. “We also tried to avoid using tripod and long lenses, with the exception of the beach scenes, where we had 180mm and 300mm lengths to support the storytelling from Leda’s point-of-view.

For the most part, I was close to the actors, just four to six feet away, reacting to the acting, which was awesome.”

Although the camerawork feels as though it was shot in a handheld style, Louvart used a bespoke Easy/hanging rig solution – involving ropes and sand bags to balance the weight of the camera, with the contraption often manoeuvered by the grip team – to have the desired level of control over the image.

“Maggie is generally not comfortable with Steadicam – she thinks it is too smooth, and thus artificial,” Louvart explains. “On this project the camera never leads, it only follows the actors in a dance of sorts. It moves a lot, but the movement is always linked to a character. It’s very personal, but we didn’t want a shaky, handheld feeling distracting the audience from the image. So the Easy/ hanging rig was the ideal solution to preserve the intimacy of the visual storytelling, and at the same time blend with all our medium and wide shots that subtly drive the evolving bittersweet relationship between Leda and the other characters.”

Louvart and Gyllenhaal considered shooting on Super 16mm film, but the unpredictability of Covid convinced them to use the battle-proven combination of ARRI Alexa Mini and Cooke S4 Primes.

“This story deserved a certain softness – on faces,

This story deserved the Mediterranean vibe

Images from The Lost Daughter © 2021.

Yannis Drakoulidis/Netflix © 2021

bodies, and light filling the spaces in-between,” says Louvart. “Shooting on Alexa Mini at 2.8K with Cooke S4s is such a nice option, as it gives wonderful skin tones and images that are not too sharp, especially with the addition of some Mitchell Diffusion filters.”

Whilst Leda’s Greek present is sunny and vibrant, the flashbacks to her younger days were designed to be messy. “These are memories, essential moments without a timeframe, often pure images that speak louder than words,” says Louvart.

“For this purpose I used a mix of LED sources – mostly ARRI SkyPanels and Carpet Lights, sometimes Aladdins.

They give you great texture and a nice flexibility, as you can wirelessly adjust the colour and the intensity of the illumination. I also used different combinations of 1.8K 4K, 12K and 18K HMIs a few times to overexpose the windows and lose the landscape.”

Louvart used the same lighting package to create different moods for Leda’s increasingly troubled present.

As she explains, “Leda is filled with conflicting sensations and memories of past decisions, especially scenes in which we see the doll she has stolen from Nina’s daughter, and we wanted to make her beautiful apartment feel obscure and scary during the night, to create an uncomfortable feeling. So we lit and shot those scenes almost like a film noir.”

To shoot the previously mentioned beach scenes, Louvart relied on natural light, using butterfly grids to decrease the level of sunlight hitting the sand and the actors, and she maintained this approach on almost all day exteriors.

“We shot at the end of September and throughout October 2020, for exactly 28 shooting days, which is very good in Greece because the sun is not as harsh as it is in the summer, and there are also fewer tourists.”

Because the whole film was shot on Spetses, including young Leda’s apartment and the London hotel where she meets her future lover, the cinematographer was grateful for the Greek crew pre-lighting all scenes. “They went to each location one day ahead of us. It was crucial for maintaining the flow of the shoot.”

It certainly helped in shooting one of the most important scenes that takes place in a cinema where Leda is disturbed by a group of foul-mouthed boys.

“We used a few Astera tubes to put some green and red in a bar behind Leda, and had SkyPanels with different colours on the stage and on the balconies,” explains Louvart. “By increasing and decreasing their brightness we could thus simulate the effect of the cinema screening illuminating Leda’s face.

“It’s probably my favourite moment because it epitomises what the film is visually. Suddenly Leda loses

control, stands up and shouts at the boys. I had to be focussed on the actress, to be in the moment and to react instantly to what was happening. Maggie was close to me and when Olivia stood up and acted her part, it was electrifying to both of us.”

As it turned out, the DI also proved somewhat challenging to Louvart and Gyllenhaal.

“Maggie couldn’t join me in Paris and I couldn’t join her in New York because borders were closed,” Louvart relates. “Fortunately, my colourist in Paris, Isabelle Julien, set up a remote connection with Goldcrest in NY in such a way that Maggie could watch the grading session live, without delay. An iPad served as a phone and we shared our feelings and thoughts throughout the process. It was unusual, but we didn’t have a choice. However it worked perfectly, and the final film works perfectly, too.”

CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD JANUARY 2022 53

LICORICE PIZZA•MIKE BAUMAN

MIKE BAUMAN•LICORICE PIZZA

SLICE OF THE ‘70S T

he course of true love never did run smooth. Filmed on Kodak 35mm, and described as an exquisitely-crafted, nostalgic-hallucination, Licorice Pizza is the fictional story about Gary Valentine, a precocious, entrepreneurial high-schooler, and his unconquerable crush on the older Alana Kane.

Set in 1973, the comedic, coming-of-age comedy drama, tracks the haphazard course of first love, as Gary and Alana grow-up and run around the San Fernando Valley area of Los Angeles together, experiencing a variety of colourful, madcap and enlightening escapades.

Licorice Pizza stars Alana Haim and Cooper Hoffman, making their big-screen debuts, with cameo appearances from Sean Penn, Tom Waits, Bradley Cooper, Benny Safdie and Anderson’s longterm partner Maya Rudolph. It also has a memorable soundtrack featuring songs-of-the-day, plus original tracks and incidental music composed

by Radiohead musician Jonny Greenwood.

The acclaimed feature was written and directed

by Paul Thomas Anderson (PTA), with Anderson and Michael Bauman, perhaps best-known as an industry-leading gaffer, sharing the director of photography credit on the movie, with Colin Anderson collaborating as camera operator.

After its general release on December 25th 2021, Licorice Pizza received high praise from critics and garnered three awards from the National Board Of Review, including Best Film. It was also named one of the best films of 2021 by the American Film Institute, received four nominations at the 79th Golden Globe Awards, and looks set to attract further accolades in the 2022 awards season.

“PTA and I spent a lot of time, perhaps the best part of a year, working out the particular cocktail recipe for the visual language of this movie,” says Bauman, who has been the gaffer on more that 40 celluloid-originated movies, including Anderson’s The Master (2012) and Inherent Vice (2014). He previously worked as the lighting cameraman in the collaborative cinematographic effort on Anderson’s multiple award-winning Phantom Thread (2017), also shot on Kodak 35mm film.

“Before any production, PTA tests like crazy – at locations, with the actors, with different filmstocks, exposures, lenses and lighting set-ups – all to get to the look he wants, and it was no different on this production in order to create an authentic evocation of the 1970s.”

Filming on Licorice Pizza took place over 68 days, starting in August 2020 and wrapping in November, at locations chiefly around the west San Fernando Valley, in an area roughly bounded by the 405, 170 and 101 freeways. These included Encino, Van Nuys, Canoga Park and Woodland Hills. The

Tail O’ The Cock, a famed local restaurant that was demolished in 1987, was recreated for the film at Van Nuys Golf Course, where the movie’s motor cycle stunt sequence was also filmed.

“PTA grew-up in this part of Los Angeles, and I remember cycling around those areas with him during a CycLAvia event way before we shot the movie,” Bauman recollects. “It was clear he had a deep connection to those places. He knew aesthetically what he was looking for, and they played a fundamentally important role in the visual storytelling.”

So too did the creative references, which included American Graffiti (1973, dir. George Lucas, DPs Jan D’Alquen & Ron Eveslage, with Haskell Wexler ASC as visual consultant) and Manhattan (1979 dir. Woody Allen, DP Gordon Willis ASC).

“PTA has a screening-room at his house, where he can project 35mm and 70mm movie film prints,” Bauman recalls. “During prep, looking at film prints is a critical step in the process, and he asked me over to view a couple movies as reference points. We watched American Graffiti and Manhattan multiple times, and considered them as much for their filmic texture, lensing and widescreen framing styles, as we did for how they were lit… or not lit actually, because neither of them had very much money.

“For example, Woody Allen’s classic, Manhattan, has a walk-and-talk at night, for which the DP, Gordon Willis ASC, used something like a SunGun over the camera to illuminate the actors, and went with whatever was going on in the background, like street lights and car headlights.

So we embraced that style, that way of working, typically using a LiteGear LiteMat as the main source for our walk-and-talks, and letting the backgrounds be dark, all as part of our 70’s visual ingredients.”

Digital capture was never an option for Anderson, who prefers to shoot and post-produce all of his features exclusively on film. Working with Panavision in Woodland Hills, California, Bauman and Anderson settled on shooting with the same pair of Panavision Millennium XL2 35mm film cameras as used on the JJ Abramsdirected Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens. At the behest of that film’s DP, Dan Mindel ASC BSC, the cameras were

specially-decorated in matte black and individually engraved with the monikers ‘Millennium Falcon’ and ‘Death Star’.

Lenses were another crucial item in creating the period aesthetic Anderson was going for. As Bauman explains, “In the digital world where everything is

54 JANUARY 2022 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

about super-clean, 4K images, and getting as much information and resolution on the screen as you can, PTA likes to use lenses and film processing to degrade the image, so it has texture and delivers a connection to the audience. That’s where a lot of our decisions about the lensing came from.”

This saw the director working closely with Panavision vice president of optical engineering, Dan Sasaki, on the choice of glass.

“Dan is the foremost lens master on the planet,” says Bauman. “He and PTA have a really good working relationship. We shot Licorice Pizza primarily with old-school Panavision C-series Anamorphics from the ‘60s and ‘70s, which bring nice contrast, fall-off and aberrations to the image, as well as the characteristic blue flare that you can see in shots such as in our golf course motor-cycle stunt scene.

“However, Paul owns his own lenses, such as an old 50mm Pathé and other vintage spherical glass, and depending on the movie, and format we shoot, Dan will convert them from spherical to Anamorphic.

On this film, Dan also came to the party with a bunch of other, ‘Frankenstein’ lenses, that he had made up himself.

“So we ended-up with two or three versions of the same focal lengths and would see how they responded to the light, their flaring and bokeh characteristics, at any given moment, before PTA decided on-set which one to use.

“A good example, is the sequence when Gary and Alana go to see Mrs Grady, the talent agent. The vintage glass we used on Mrs Grady’s close-ups gave such a beautiful soft flare and bloom to the image that really

supported the period look-andfeel.”

Bauman also notes, “When it came to choosing lenses or camera positions, it was very much a collaborative decision between PTA, myself and Colin, our world class camera operator. PTA typically puts a stake in the ground, shares his opinions about what he wants, and we build off that idea.”

As a rule of thumb, Bauman shot using Kodak Vision3 500T 5219 for night and low-light scenes, Kodak Vision3 200T 5213 for day interior/ exteriors, and Kodak Vision3 50D 5203 for day exteriors.

The vintage glass we used gave such a beautiful soft flare and bloom that really supported the period look

Images: Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza.

All images © 2021 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures Inc. All Rights Reserved.

“I love shooting on film for many reasons,” he says, “the first amongst those being the kind and realistic way it captures skin. Plus, there is a unique quality to the overall image – a patina and softness that is difficult to achieve in digital – that helps you evoke a period in time.

“I also like the process, the rhythm of ‘Lights… camera… action’ that comes with celluloid production. There are some good things about digital image capture, but one of the downsides of digital production is when the camera is just kept rolling and rolling. When you have four or 11 minutes of film in the magazine, people get really focussed on-set.”

Working under the auspices of post-production supervisor Erica Frauman, Fotokem did all of the negative processing and printing of film dailies, as well as the celluloid deliverables for the eventual film neg-cut and photochemical finish on the movie.

“Yes, we had the luxury of watching printed dailies,” Bauman remarks. “All selects were printed and the different heads of departments were invited to view them with PTA at projected screenings each day. Nowadays, its rare but wonderful to watch projected film dailies on a regular basis, but it’s part of PTA’s process in making sure the performances and aesthetics look on-point, and allows everyone to look at previous work with fresh eyes.”

While the lighting team, led by gaffer Justin Dickson, deployed modern LED fixtures, such as ARRI SkyPanels and LiteGear LiteMats and LiteTiles, Bauman reveals that, “Carbon arcs and incandescents were how they lit in movies in the ‘70s, and PTA was insistent we use them as much as we could to support our authentic ’70’s look, although it can be hard for find carbon arcs in working order.

“Fortunately, we tracked down the guy who had supplied carbon arcs to Once Upon A Time In Hollywood (dir. Quentin Tarantino, DP Robert

Richardson ASC), and secured five units for this production. We used them as daylight boosters, to combat strong sun and shadows, and on the interiors.

The quality of light they give is remarkable, especially on skin tones, and especially when recorded on to celluloid film.”

Bauman also divulges that he harnessed a lighting technique pioneered by DP Chris Menges BSC ASC, of using clusters of 50 or 60 15W incandescent bulbs, to deliver warm and glowing keylights.

“I learned of Chris’s technique when working with the late, great Haris Savides ASC,” says Bauman, “and I decide to used a heavy dose of these on our interior sequences, such as in the Tail O’ The Cock, to bring a real radiance to the restaurant scenes.”

Bauman concludes, “The thing about working with PTA is that his fingerprint is on every aspect of the movie. He’s involved head-to-toe in the whole thing, including the old-fashioned colour timing at the lab. How the final picture looks is all in his wheelhouse. It’s great to work with someone who has such a precise vision that threads through the entire picture, and the result looks great.”

CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD JANUARY 2022 55

STUDENT UNION•LONDON FILM SCHOOL

LONDON FILM SCHOOL•STUDENT UNION

CREATIVE BREW

This page: LFS camera team of Michael Tselepis, Timo Heinanen, Belinda Parsons, JoeDyer and Alex Slack, photo by Dom-Kersey; (top) Philip Sindall teaching students, photo by Joe Dyer; (below) Timo Heinanen, photo by Sami Kuokkanen.

By Natasha Block Hicks

The atmosphere at LFS is family-like and intimate

S

ince its foundation in 1956, the London Film School (LFS) – the oldest film school in the UK – has heralded the principal that “film is a language without borders”. In recent times, this ideal has been reinforced to include the cultural and class borders that have hitherto kept people of a certain gender, race or physical ability, from access to the industry. Head of cinematography, DP Timo Heinänen FSC, joins us to discuss London Film School’s MA Filmmaking degree.

“When I started at LFS,” begins Heinänen in his soothing Nordic lilt, “I attended a cinematography conference with a student film unit thinking, ‘She’s coming from China, he’s from the USA, he’s from India and isn’t it great that we share the same passion?’”

The school has also exemplified its objective of diversity, inclusivity and equity in the engagement of

shot on location and in the studio using the ARRI Alexa (fifth term). Projects are supported by lectures, classes and workshops relevant to the termly learning outcomes, such as ‘The Use Of Light Meters’ in term one and ‘Directing Actors’ in term five.

16mm celluloid projects are offered alongside HD to ensure that students have a chance to work across analogue and digital filmmaking formats, using a range of industry-standard kit. The school owns its own Aaton 16mm film cameras, ARRI ST and LT 35mm film cameras, three ARRI Alexas and a range of lighting including Fresnels, Kinoflos and LED pads.

There is a pre-production design studio with modelmaking facilities, two stages of 87sq/m and 67sq/m respectively, sound suites with Pro Tools 24 HD, editing suits with Avid Media Composer and Final Cut Pro, and even a 16mm cutting room.

The main school library contains an archive of past LFS productions. A 35-seat cinema and a 110-seat cinema, both with facilities to project digital and 16mm formats, are available for screening student films.

The LFS teaching ‘method’ is based on practical

a varied and talented teaching staff. LFS’ director and CEO, Gísli Snær Erlingsson, is a respected Icelandic film director and educator, who is himself a graduate of La Fémis in Paris. MA Filmmaking is headed-up by course leader Tiana Harper, an award-winning writer, director and producer. Head of studies is NFTS alumnus Femi Kolade, who counts a position as a board director of the BFI’s Black World amongst his many accomplishments. Heinänen himself is a respected Finnish DP who is known to his compatriots

as the cinematographer behind 12-part TV drama Vuoroin Vieraissa (1997, dir. Pekka Milonoff), an oftrepeated hit back in Finland.

New students needn’t feel intimidated by this cultural soup. “The atmosphere at LFS is family-like and intimate,” reassures Heinänen, “we get to know people very quickly and we have our doors open anytime.”

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In any case, students will hardly have time to feel homesick during their studies. From the moment of enrolment they are guaranteed an intense learning experience in a hotbed of creative energy and cross-department collaboration. The two-year course covers all the major disciplines: directing, screenwriting, cinematography, producing, sound, production design, editing and music.

Students will author at least one film per term in an HOD role such as a director or DP, as well as performing crew duties for their fellows in many other productions running alongside. They can expect to leave with at least ten credits to their name.

LFS has a new intake of between 14 and 36 students each term on MA Filmmaking, whilst also running MA Screenwriting and MA International Film Business degrees. This means, at any one moment, there are between 250 to 350 students registered at LFS, and the syllabus for all six terms is running simultaneously.

This results in a graduate screening every term, with industry guests, such as cinematographers Oliver Curtis BSC and Nina Kellgren BSC, in attendance to provide their professional feedback. In all, the LFS generates around 180 films per year.

LFS is transparent about its syllabus and a tantalising breakdown of the scheduled termly projects is available on the school’s website, such as: a silent monochrome short shot on 16mm (first term); a 15-minute HD documentary (third term); and a drama

experience – ‘learning by doing’ – and students must solve real-world challenges, such as casting actors, arranging locations and managing a budget to realise their productions. Each project is allocated a fixed production allowance, which increases each term, but entrepreneurial types are free to expand on this or combine funds in the graduation term.

Starting simply, the projects build in complexity, so that by the time they come to produce their graduation film – often in their home countries – students have built sufficient skills, their filmmaking repertoire and industry connections, to create a feature or short worthy of competition at international film festival level.

Many students win awards too. LFS cinematographers have claimed the BSC Student Short Film Award for the last two years running: Transylvanian DP Tamás Apor Méder in 2020 for his work on Summer Shade (2020, dir. Shira Haimovici), a film about gender discrimination shot on location in Israel, and Eng Teck Ng in 2021 for Caravan (2021, dir. William Michael Anderson), a drama exploring prejudice and false accusation. Another graduate cinematographer singled-out as “one to

We look for talent, commitment and passion watch” by Heinänen is Taiwanese DP Hsien Yu Niu, AKA Sunshine Niu, whose work on graduate short Underneath (2019, dir. Calif Chong) won her the Panalux Prize for cinematography.

As alumni of LFS, Méder, Ng and Niu add their names to an ever-expanding list of DPs who have passed through LFS’ crucible of filmmaking. These include: Oscar-nominee Roger Pratt BSC, the DP on

fellow-alumnus Mike Leigh’s early picture Meantime (1983); Tak Fujimoto ACS, known for The Silence Of The Lambs (1991, dir. Jonathan Demme); and Ueli Steiger ASC who lit The Day After Tomorrow (2004, dir. Roland Emmerich). All alumni have access to the LFS Alumni Hub, and many students will meet past LFS graduates when they come to give back to the school in the form of workshops and masterclasses.

“Around 30% of teaching is delivered by visiting lecturers,” describes Heinänen. “Sometimes they run the same classes as the faculty staff and sometimes they run specific workshops, like camera operator Philip Sindall ACO’s Alexa and studio dolly classes.”

Validated by the University of Warwick, the tuition fees for the two-year programme amount to around £60k, of which 13% is given back in the form of production costs for the termly projects, including graduation films. Students who have been offered a place on the MA Filmmaking course may be eligible for the full Leverhulme Scholarship, which covers 100% of the tuition fees, plus maintenance costs. The BAFTA Scholarship Programme and a number of other schemes also provide financial aid to qualifying students.

Applicants to the programme are expected to hold a bachelor’s degree or equivalent qualification, or have substantial experience in the field. The application process is via an online form and portfolio submission, which should include

an original script of around three minutes in length.

This is then subject to a two-stage review, after which an interview may be offered to qualifying applicants.

Filmmaking experience, in and of itself, is not an entry requirement, however storytelling skills demonstrated through alternative artforms such as illustration, music or writing, are essential for successful selection, as is an intent to pursue a career in filmmaking or related fields.

“We look for talent, commitment and passion,” says Heinänen, “and regardless of experience, it is important to be open and curious, because it’s all about learning. You need to surrender yourself.”

In the near future, the LFS will be saying goodbye to the converted ex-brewery in Covent Garden that has been its home for 55 years. A larger, purpose-built facility is under construction in London City Island. The new building, with improved accessibility, further opens up LFS’s programmes to a more diverse student body.

Leaving Covent Garden may be considered the end of an era, but regardless of location, the film school that started its life in a room above a grocer’s shop in Electric Avenue, Brixton, and was recently selected as one of Hollywood Reporter’s ‘20 Best International Film Schools of 2021’, retains its place as a global centre of filmmaking excellence.

The London Film School annual graduate showcase is being held online on 31 January 2022, followed up with an in-person event in Summer 2022. Industry guests are invited to see the latest crop of filmmaking talent. Tickets are available from Veronique Fricke: v.fricke@lfs.org.uk. For application dates and deadlines please see: lfs.org.uk.

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ONE TO WATCH•LUDOVICA ISIDORI

LUDOVICA ISIDORI•ONE TO WATCH

APPASSIONATA Selected filmography (so far) as DP: Features… Test Pattern (2019, dir. Shatara Michelle Ford), Sanctuary (2022, dir. Zach Wigon), Brother’s Keeper (2022, dir. Charles Murray), The Harbinger (2022, dir. Andy Mitton), Through The Eyes Of Others (2022, dir.

Meagan Lopez). TV pilot… High Heel (2021, dir. Rochée Jeffrey). Shorts… The Fourth Wall (2020, dir. Kelsey Bollig), Entitled (2020, dir. Kelsey Fordham), Hangry (2021, dir. Bola Ogun), Willing To Go There (2022, dir.

Laura Beckner).

Awards: Best cinematography for Intercept (2017, dir. Jackie J. Stone) at Gary International Film Festival. Miglior Fotografia for Peggie (2017, dir.

Rosario Capozzolo) at MovieFest Bologna. Best cinematography nomination for Cold Call (2020, dir.

Katherine Cronyn) at Idllywild Film Festival.

When did you discover you wanted to be a cinematographer?

That’s a tricky question and the answer involves love, loss and a lot of drama. I grew up in a small town on the Italian coast, within a family of doctors, so I didn’t know much about the various, intriguing jobs in the film industry. But I loved movies, and was attracted by the emotional quality of cinema.

That was probably the reason I did a masters in TV and Cinema in Milan, but I still wasn’t sure what I wanted to do when I “grew up”. So I gave myself options and trusted life would reveal a path to me.

I met a guy, a writer, musician, heavy metal dude, smart and charming, and a professor paired us to write a screenplay. A few nights and a couple of bottles of wine later, I had a partner; not just a lover, but someone to start making short movies with. The guy turned-out to be a self-involved, judgmental asshole, who wanted to control everything and everyone – to direct, write, score, edit, etc., “his” movies. Luckily, he didn’t think much of lighting and camera, and that’s how I accidentally stumbled upon and fell in love with cinematography.

Being behind the camera allowed me to express myself without the need to be under the spotlight, and gave me the privilege to create intimate, sacred spaces for the actors. Witnessing performances, in front of the lens, cast a spell on me and it is still one of the favourite parts of my job.

Going from that time (almost ten years ago), to where I am today, life took a few unexpected turns involving: the death of my stepfather; a mentor who helped me; and my very supportive mother, who put me on a plane to the US at a time when things were closing-in and threatening my future and my well-being. Add to this an acceptance email from the AFI, which I received on a gloomy afternoon in a McDonald’s in Milan, and you have the story of how my journey into cinematography started.

Where did you train?

I have a degree in Media & Communication from Scienze Della Comunicazione University, Bologna, a Masters in Cinema, TV & Multimedia Production from IULM Milano, and an MFA in Cinematography from the AFI. Plus I took a few photography courses at the IFC in New York.

Education was key for my growth, because it gave me time to slowly experience life and figure-out my passions and interests, while teaching me how to relate to people with disparate backgrounds and nuanced histories – something I don’t think I would be able to make movies without.

How did you get your first break?

I don’t know how to define “break”, or if I could say I had one yet. For me, success and career are under constant renegotiation when you’re an artist. I prefer to think about steps along the way that were milestones, each one different in size, with its own effects and ripples.

What are your favourite films?

As I mentioned, I grew up in a family of doctors, where blood cells and mental health were common dinner conversations, more than colour or composition. But my mum exposed me to a variety of languages – music, literature and cinema – and I get very passionate when I talk about movies I like.

Trainspotting (1996, dir. Danny Boyle, DP Brian Tufano BSC): a cult movie due to its ability to portray the excitement, struggle, adrenaline and absolute madness of youth. Not only with striking performances, but also camera moves that still make my heart race, and a mindblowing soundtrack. Powerful art-magic, don’t you think?

Amores Perros (2000, dir. Alejandro G. Iñárritu, DP Rodrigo Prieto AMC ASC): I was 16 when I saw it at an open-air cinema festival in my home town and remember feeling awoken, slapped in the face and mesmerised all at the same time through its innovative, powerful and very grungy looks and camera choices. Pain, desire, loss, tragedy, rage, passion and vitality – all so pure and raw – just went through me like arrows. I still love that movie.

In 2021, I shot three movies with incredible crews, all over the US, and I got to do so while pregnant. Those months were some of the best in my life. Creating movies felt so right, me being filled with this creative, universal fluid, that I was using to grow and nurture a life inside myself, while crafting arts on the outside. I felt hyper-focussed, filled with generative energy, expanded love and grounded power that I could only translate into my work.

Who are your DP/industry role models?

I honestly don’t think I have role models. I have DPs and directors that I esteem and wish I could work with or become, in terms of pursuing a similar career. For example, I adore Martin Scorsese because he has continued to make cinema his whole life. He has been committed to the art of it, like you commit to a lover, renewing your vows every other year.

I felt like a witch with unlimited powers of joy and life that I could bring to my collaborators everyday. Everyone was curious and attentive, kind and caring: but never judging or patronising me for my belly. It made me realise how spectacular this industry can be, when it revolves around humans and art.

I believe in respecting people for who they are and how they think. I honestly think that we need to let go of our ego, and the need to be validated, if we want to be able to portray stories with a camera. Without curiosity for humanity, and other beings, I would not be able to be a DP or create stories that enhance an empathic response.

As a cinematographer, you are only as good and valuable as your collaborators

quintessential for inspiration, imagination, the arts and cinema.

What have been your best moments on-set?

Until last year, it was shooting the feature Test Pattern.

The themes of the movie were consent, interracial relationships, assault and systemic racism. Sounds pretty relevant, doesn’t it? Not easy themes for Americans, and definitely not for an Italian immigrant, just getting familiar with this country. Creating it was challenging intellectually and emotionally, as it required a lot from the team.

What quote or mantra do you live by?

I believe we cross paths with people and places, accumulate experience, and synthesise all of that into a personal mantra that is flexible and in constant evolution.

It is more of an inner feeling, like a road map for your guts, that quietly guides your choices as you go.

A few years ago I realised I was the first choice DP among a group of incredibly talented directors, and I still am. As a cinematographer, you are only as good and valuable as your collaborators, and looking at the skills of these directors was a testament to my skills and my career.

Perhaps my biggest milestone was thanks to Shatara Michelle Ford and the movie Test Pattern we shot in Austin, Texas. Its existence is truly precious. It embodies everything I adore about movies and why I make them.

The subject matter was unflinching, and the care, courage and commitment required, from every single person on the team, were spectacular.

Melancholia (2011, dir. Lars Von Trier, Manuel Alberto Claro DFF): Kirsten Dunst’s visceral performance is impeccable, and the unsugar-coated visual depiction of depression was as powerful as an earthquake to me.

What are your most treasured cinematographic possessions?

Infinite interest in human stories, a curious eye, and a love for an actor’s performance. Also, my tiny physical presence – I’m 5ft 2inches ­– allows me to disappear behind the camera and usually makes performers very comfortable.

Tell us your hidden talent/party trick?

I don’t need party tricks – I am Italian! Jokes aside, I guess being extremely direct is one of those. I enjoy saying “Thank you” to people a million times, and meaning every one.

What advice would you give the ‘young you’, just starting out?

We are not saving the world, so there is no need for aggression, arrogance or misbehaviour on-set. But we are creating art, which is a privilege. So let’s be kind and appreciative of that.

Away from work, what are your greatest passions?

Reading, and having someone reading books out loud for me even more; movie-marathons at the cinema; looking at photography, especially photo-reportage; rollercoasters; pizza; taking hikes that end with a body of water; writing and receiving love letters; and cuddling with my partner and my son.

Where do you get your visual inspirations?

Walking down the street, riding on a train, museums, concerts, photography books. The observation of life, humanity and being exposed to the unexpected, are

What’s the best thing about being a DP? Everything. The world you travel around, the people you meet, the languages you are taught about life, cultures, emotions, colours and sounds.

I remember watching The Lover (1992, dir. Jean-Jacques Annaud, DP Robert Fraisse AFC) and Farewell My Concubine (1993, dir. Chen Kaige, DP Gu Changwei), when I was way too young for them, but was astonished and fascinated by the unapologetic nature of the art – the power of the image and its ability to imprint itself inside your brain.

Biutiful (2010, dir. Alejandro G. Iñárritu, DP Rodrigo Prieto AMC ASC): I lost my stepdad a couple of weeks before I saw this movie in Milan. I went by myself, almost predicting it would be a healing event, and for two hours I cried my heart out, so loudly and unstoppably that a man sitting in front of me offered me tissues. I will never forget how my heartbeat shifted pace, and how my perception of grief changed.

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SMOOTH OPERATORS•LUCY BRISTOW ACO

LUCY BRISTOW ACO•SMOOTH OPERATORS

SOLID FRAMEWORKER

By Natasha Block Hicks

L

ucy Bristow ACO was midway through a BA degree in Textiles at the Camberwell School Of Arts And Crafts in the late ‘70s when the film bug bit. She joined us from her home in Hackney to explain how this diversion took her on a parallel journey, from the Fine to the Audio-visual Arts, and the unique position of the most senior woman camera operator in the Association Of Camera Operators (ACO).

“Textiles is a very hands-on, technical discipline,” Bristow rationalises, “and I did complete my degree, but I spent far too much time doing photography and running the film society while I was at art school.”

She says she also passed many an hour at the Ritzy Cinema in Brixton, watching European cinema, and discovered some kindred spirits amongst her fellow students with whom she started to make Super 8 films, screening them at their own self-run club in Soho: the ‘Flea Pit’.

“We had such a great time,” recalls Bristow, “and I became very drawn into that world of making images and telling stories.”

In 1985 she gained a two-year placement on the first intake of the Joint Board for Film Industry Training scheme, set up by the Association Of Cinematograph, Television & Allied Technicians (ACTT).

“I was on a mission to get into the camera department,” relates Bristow. “As a trainee, you were generally making cups of tea and running around with boxes and batteries, but crucially you’d meet

people and make connections.”

In the final stint of her traineeship, Bristow was placed on Mike Leigh’s High Hopes (1988), under DP Roger Pratt BSC. “That was unbelievably significant for me,” Bristow declares.

Now working in the industry, Bristow began clocking-up additional credits when news came that the clapper/loader on Leigh’s successive project, Life Is Sweet (1990), had dropped out ahead of production. She hadn’t crossed paths with Leigh’s new DP, one Dick Pope BSC, but luckily the focus puller, Garry Turnbull, was a friend.

“I rang up Garry and asked, ‘Are you looking for a clapper loader?’ And that was how I got onto that film.”

Leigh and Pope – who went on to light every one of Leigh’s subsequent films – have left an indelible impression on Bristow’s CV. Indeed, Pope invited Bristow to take on B-camera on her sixth Leigh picture, Topsy-Turvy (1999), a musical charting Gilbert and Sullivan’s creation of The Mikado.

“I’d done a little bit of operating, but that was my first big chunk – four weeks in Richmond Theatre – and I was in heaven,” relates Bristow. “However I had to step back to focus pulling for the rest of the film, because after the stage scenes Mike went back to a single camera, which Dick operated.”

Bristow confesses to being thoroughly depressed for the first week back on focus. “I just felt like I couldn’t do that any longer. I really needed to move on and become an operator and leave the focus pulling behind.”

Opposite: (middle) Lucy pictured having a bite to eat during Me And Orson Welles; below on Peterloo with Dick Pope BSC and Mike Miller, photo by Simon Mein.

This page: (clockwise) Lucy Bristow ACO with focus puller Gordon Segrove on Gurinder Chadha’s Angus Thongs and Perfect Snogging, photo by Simon Mein; filimg on Artemis Fowl; pictured in 1996 with Dick Pope BSC, director Mike Leigh, producer Simon Channing Williams, and trainee Iain Struthers in the background on Secrets And Lies.

This put Bristow in an awkward position. Since Pope is a DP who prefers to operate himself, and Leigh is typically a single-camera director, choosing operating meant Bristow would never again be involved in a whole Mike Leigh production. Happily however, there has been an occasional call for two cameras on several of Leigh’s subsequent films, such as to cover the massacre scene in Peterloo (2018) and so Bristow has been reunited with the gang a further four times to date.

With several years passing between each Leigh picture, Bristow had amassed plenty of experience working with other DPs, such as Benoît Delhomme AFC and Nic Knowland BSC during her time as a camera assistant, so when she passed out as an operator she was fairly confident she could find work.

She has operated for Ulf Brantås FSF on Wuthering Heights (2009, dir. Coky Giedroyc), Mike Eley BSC on Jane Eyre (2006, dir. Susanna White) and Pope has turned to her regularly for other multi-camera projects including Angus, Thongs And Perfect Snogging (2008, dir. Gurinder Chadha), Me And Orson Welles (2008, dir. Richard Linklater) and The Outfit (2022, dir. Graham Moore), a gangster thriller starring Mark Rylance.

“I have admired Mark Rylance as an actor all my life,” says Bristow, “to be watching his performance through the camera was a real highlight of my career so far.”

Working with DP Danny Cohen BSC has bought Bristow some of her most satisfying operating moments.

“I’m very drawn to projects with strong storylines,” explains Bristow. “There were some TV films that Danny did that had fantastic scripts.” Notably Pierrepoint (2005, dir.

Adrian Shergold), with Timothy Spall in the lead role as the last professional hangman in Britain.

“It’s all about the storytelling,” enthuses Bristow, “Adrian was an absolutely wonderful director to work with and Tim Spall gave a fantastic performance. Plus I think those films really made me feel like I’d found my feet as an A-camera operator.”

Bristow is clear why operating is her true calling.

“I feel like I have a good eye for framing and composing,” she muses. “As the operator, you’ve got the energy and talent of the entire cast and crew concentrated through that camera lens, and it’s your privilege to frame all that hard work.”

Although not so widely adopted in her early operating

days, Bristow’s advice for newcomers today would be to get Steadicam on their list of skills.

“You’d be mad not to train-up on Steadicam,” she says, “you’re going to find it much easier to get work. Steadicam and proficiency on the wheels too are essential skills to have as an operator today.”

Operating a remote head has given Bristow one of her proudest moments.

“When I was on Artemis Fowl (2020, DP Haris Zambarloukos BSC GSC), I was asked to do a shot of Dame Judi Dench in a spaceship. The movement of the Technocrane had to make the spaceship look like it was whizzing through shot.

“I had Haris and the director Kenneth Branagh behind me while I was operating and I was absolutely bricking it.

Malcolm Huse, the key grip, came up to me afterwards and said, ‘You did really well, that wasn’t an easy shot.’ It felt like high praise coming from such an experienced grip.”

During her three-decade career, Bristow has had a front row seat in the attempt to diversify the British film and television industry.

“The training scheme I did back in the ‘80s was launched to get more women and ethnic minorities into crews,” explains Bristow, however its effect was felt only mildly. There were some wilderness years for her, when the ‘boys club’ nature of the camera department nearly froze her out. “Sometimes it was quite a lonely place,” she remembers, “But after 35 years in the industry it is exciting to see the emergence of space for women, where once there was almost none.”

In 2009 she was invited to join the ACO, and for some years was its only female full member.

“In 2016 Pete Cavaciuti ACO SOC asked me to look at why there were so few women camera operators, because nothing seemed to be changing,” she says. So, as well as writing an analysis of the challenges facing woman camera technicians, Bristow started to compile a list of female technical crew, including sparks and grips, which – with the help of Ilana Garrard ACO and Agnieszka Szeliga ACO, both upcoming operators at the time – evolved into the website and online database: Women Behind The Camera.

“WBTC highlighted that there were actually lots of women in the camera department,” says Bristow, “they just needed to be more visible.”

Now with the combined effects of the pandemic creating a production surge, together with the #metoo movement, the diversification of the industry has gone from a trickle to the beginnings of an exponential sea change.

“Once I would rarely mention the fact that I had children,” admits Bristow, “because I felt like that it might undermine my chances of getting work. Now suddenly every production company wants women in their camera crews. Not only are there now four women who are full members in the ACO, but there are also five associate members who are very much on the cusp of becoming full members. It’s very heartening to me.”

Now in her sixties and with plenty still to give, Bristow has nonetheless been considering her future.

“I’m not going to be able to do this forever,” she reflects, “so on my days-off I’ve been returning to my art school roots of printmaking, primarily etching. It’s very connected to camera operating in the way that you’re creating an image within a frame.”

It is exciting to see the emergence of space for women in the industry, where once there was almost none.

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NIGHTMARE ALLEY•DAN LAUSTSEN DFF ASC

DAN LAUSTSEN DFF ASC•NIGHTMARE ALLEY

DARK DEEDS

By Michael Goldman

N

ightmare Alley represents the fourth collaboration between director Guillermo del Toro and Danish cinematographer Dan Laustsen DFF ASC. Unlike the outlandish fantasy stories that del Toro is well known for, his new film takes place entirely in the real world, although with a film noir flourish.

The movie is a mystery-thriller that takes place on the eve of World War II. It stars Bradley Cooper as Stanton Carlisle, a man who learns the skills of a grifter whilst labouring at a seedy travelling carnival. He applies his new-found talents to ripping-off high-society types in Buffalo, New York, until he finally meets his match, with disastrous results, in the person of a mysterious femme fatale, a psychiatrist named Dr. Lilith Ritter, played by Cate Blanchett.

Laustsen, who was nominated for an Academy Award for shooting del Toro’s last film, The Shape Of Water in 2017, emphasises that he and the director followed their own vision for exactly “how noirish” to make the film, based on the 1946 novel of the same name by William Lindsay Gresham. Indeed, Laustsen says he never saw the original film version of Nightmare Alley (1947, dir. Edmund Goulding, DP Lee Garmes ASC).

“For me, the director is the most important thing,” says Laustsen. “Guillermo is a master, a genius, and a very visual director. He first told me about this story whilst we were still shooting The Shape Of Water, and then a bit later, he sent me the screenplay, which he co-wrote with Kim Morgan. Instead of watching older movies, we decided it was between us as to how we should play this game. Guillermo had a strong vision with his moodboards and sketches, and those gave me the cues I needed.

“It ended up being a long process, together with Guillermo and production designer Tamara Deverell, figuring out how the sets should look, what kind of camera and lenses to use, and what kind of lighting and colour palette to adopt. We eventually decided on the standard widescreen 1.85:1 aspect ratio. But the noirish look came from the fact that the movie plays-out in the 1940s as the war is starting, so the production design, cars and the wardrobe by Luis Sequeira, all had the ‘40’s feeling generally.

“However, the first part of the movie, which takes place at the carnival, was shot more like a 21st century thriller than a film from that period. Then, in the second half, as we move to Buffalo and high society, we wanted more of a noir look – more old-fashioned and precise lighting on the faces and close-ups of Bradley and Cate, and in the office of Cate’s character generally.”

Laustsen says he and del Toro knew early-on they wanted to shoot the movie using the ARRI Alexa camera platform following their use of the Alexa XT on The Shape Of Water.

“Here, we wanted to go more large-format,” he explains. “I felt depth-of-field with a large-format camera would be really good for the light we wanted to use, and the fact that there would be a lot of medium and close-up shots – it’s so strong for faces and skin tones. So, we chose ARRI Alexa 65 for its big sensor and low-light capabilities as our A-camera, plus Alexa Mini LF strictly for a limited number of Steadicam shots, and Alexa LF for highspeed work. About 80% of the movie was shot on a jib arm, hothead or Technocrane using the Alexa 65. We don’t have any shots where the operator was looking into a viewfinder.”

Laustsen says he and del Toro “wanted to move the camera a lot, but nothing crazy – just to keep attention on the story.

However, we did shoot more wide-angle compared to what we have done before. We lowered the ceiling as much as we could, so you could see it all the time, to evoke the feeling that Bradley’s character is metaphorically inside a box.”

All lensing was done using ARRI Signature Primes – 18mm through to 124mm focal lengths, with no zooms involved – according to first AC Doug Lavender.

“Those Primes have a consistent T-stop at T1.8 which Dan really liked, both for consistent lighting and for not needing to change iris rings on the remote iris control when we switched lenses,” Lavender relates.

“Dan also really liked that the Signature Primes could go quite close to the action, since wide and close was the basic look-and-feel of the movie, with a 14inch minimum focus on the wide lenses. They

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We lowered the ceiling… to evoke the feeling that Bradley’s character is inside a box

Nightmare Alley photos by Kerry Hayes, © 2021 20th Century Studios All Rights Reserved.

BTS shots of lighting rigs courtesy of gaffer Michael Hall.

also offered the option of using rear lens filtering, thereby eliminating the need for front filters and a matte box, and avoiding any interference from lens flaring and shadows when going in close.

“Dan wanted diffusion and neutral density combo filters so we could use diffusion with light control.

However, no rear filters had been manufactured at that time for the magnetic rear element filter retainer.

So we spent about a month working with our rental house, SIM Video (now MBS Toronto), and Tiffen to find filters with consistent thickness and density that would work.”

The first half of the movie takes place in the travelling carnival environment, with lots of rain, mud and dark skies – delivering a grittier feel than the later Buffalo sequences. A vintage carnival set, about the size of a football field, was built at a playground location one hour north of Toronto, including huge canvas tents held up by ropes and poles, plus small back-alley areas.

“One of the best things about the huge set was that we could do lighting tests before we started shooting,” Laustsen says. “That was a huge help for talking to my crew and Guillermo about various things.

“Another thing was that my gaffer, Michael Hall, was able to make sure we could backlight everything with Raptor lighting rigs, since the whole thing was so big. Our lighting company, Lux Toronto, made some dichroic filters for us. We could just prop them on top of the Raptors, so that half of the lights were dichroic steel blue and half of them were normal Tungsten, in a checkerboard pattern. That way, I could choose between Tungsten bulbs or steel-blue Tungsten, depending on what feeling we wanted the scene to have.”

Hall elaborates on that filtering methodology for the bulbs on the Raptor lighting rigs.

“Lux made custom-made steel-blue Pyrex glass lenses for each bulb to serve as the dichroic filtering system,” Hall explains. “We used two x 250ft

construction cranes with a rig of eight Raptor lights, all supplied by Dwight Crane in Toronto, on each. We also had six 135ft condors with two Raptors each. That gave us a total of 504 1,000W bulbs, all individually controlled on the dimmer board. That way, we could surround the carnival and adjust light levels accordingly without moving a crane, giving Guillermo maximum shooting time.”

Hall also adds that every light at the carnival was controlled via dimmer board operated by Desiree Lidon, who used a grandMA console with satellite control from her laptop in order to stand next to Laustsen and Hall and make any complicated or lastminute changes on-the-fly as requested. “The big lights on cranes and practicals on dimmer packs were DMX controlled, but all floor lighting was done wirelessly,” he adds.

The lighting team also figured out ways to efficiently light the location during what he calls “the biblical rain scenes” that are crucial to the story.

“For the rain scenes, we employed a half-dozen 150K to 200K Luminys Lightning Strikes,” the gaffer says. “A lot of the base lighting was provided by string lights hung throughout the carnival – all 50W clear bulbs, 2,000-plus bulbs in all. For the most part, all the ground lighting was handled by a combination of ARRI s60 SkyPanels and Kino LED Freestyles. For the day scenes inside the tent, we pushed ARRI M90 HMI’s through the tent doorways and flaps.”

The lighting style subtly changes as the story moves to Buffalo and the grittiness of the carnival is replaced by a more elegant look in high-society clubs, such as the Copacabana sequences, hotel rooms, and most notably, in the office of Blanchett’s character. That set required warmer tones and a more glamorous look to emphasise the beauty, power, and mystery of the character, according to Hall.

“The warm tones were accented by interactive firelight in her office, created by a few sixbulb tungsten Spacelights running through the board,” the gaffer explains. “In her office, we would often place Helios or Titan LED tubes set at a very low level to bring out the rich wood and brass accents in the sets. We used ARRI T-12 and 24k Fresnels during the day with a quarter CTS, and for night, we used 24K Fresnels with steel-blue gels and ARRI S60 SkyPanels colour matched to the steel blue gel.

“And then, for the Copacabana scenes, we used Titan tubes and RGBW ribbon to accent all the architectural features in the club, and give the atmosphere there an even

illumination, but we also allowed our 2K Molelipso fixtures to really stand out and give it that vintage club look.”

Laustsen concludes: “Guillermo and I know each other so well, and have the same feeling about colours and contrast, how dark or bright things should be – we both like silhouettes – and camera movement. So, when Bradley’s character is sitting on a stool in his hotel room smoking a cigarette, and fire comes up behind him, it was easy for us to agree on a low, wide-angle shot and get it seamlessly in-camera. We both already know we don’t have to see Bradley’s entire face – we want to see his body language. As a cinematographer, it’s fantastic having that kind of relationship with the director.”

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A VERY BRITISH SCANDAL•SI BELL

SI BELL•A VERY BRITISH SCANDAL Photos courtesy of Si bell, and images courtesy of BBC/Blueprint Pictures.

HIGHLAND FLINGS

By Michael Burns

A

Very British Scandal, a three-part BBC/ Amazon co-production by Blueprint Pictures, is writer Sarah Phelps’ story of how beautiful heiress Margaret Sweeny (Claire Foy) first falls madly in, then most definitely out, of love with the Duke Of Argyll, Ian Campbell (Paul Bettany). It spans the 1930s to the early 1960s, when the aristocrats’ divorce enthralled the nation, but director Anne Sewitsky created something more intriguing and richly-layered than the usual period drama.

Much of that richness is thanks to the cinematography of British DP Si Bell who, with striking work on Peaky Blinders, The Serpent, Pennyworth and A Christmas Carol to his credit, is no stranger to a bit of period drama himself.

“I got a call from Chris Ballantyne, who I worked with on Peaky Blinders.

He was producing A Very British Scandal, but the DP they originally wanted couldn’t get into the country because of Covid restrictions,” says Bell.

Bell agreed to read the script, but it was a Zoom call with Sewitsky that persuaded him to get on-board. “Anne is brilliant and passionate, the real deal,” says Bell. “She’s got strong opinions and a good vision of what she wants. I just thought, ‘I’m going to do this’, and the next week I was in Scotland on a castle recce.

“A Very British Scandal is a character study of two people and their relationship. They hate each other by the end,” says Bell. “We were trying to be intimate, to lean into the emotions and to tell the story in the best way we could. Anne wanted it to be as naturalistic as possible, and wanted a lot of close focus.”

After testing lots of spherical lenses, the vintage Canon K-35s won out. “They have such a strong

look, they flare up so nicely and they’ve got a lovely soft quality to them,” says Bell. “They’re such fast lenses too that you can shoot wide open and get a really low depth-of-field, which we used on the more intimate close-ups.”

After testing, the ARRI Alexa Mini was chosen as the principal camera.

“We were going to use the Ronin 2 DJI stabilisation system a lot, as well as handheld, so we wanted a really small camera and to be as flexible as possible,” says Bell. “Along with A and B-cameras, we had a separate body which was built for the Ronin, so we could shoot that and then go back to handheld without having to spend time changing or

modifying any bits of kit.”

This became part of the visual style; an early scene where Foy’s character is exploring the castle is handheld, cut with smooth shots from the Ronin.

“We used the Ronin on the dolly, or the grips would carry it through crowds of people, or whatever,” says Bell. “I’d be operating the head remotely with DJI Master Wheels and talking to the grips on their headsets. If we needed to do a crane shot, we’d just put the Ronin on that.”

Even though the shoot involved a lot of handheld work, such as close-ups with the actors, Bell

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another 4x4 in front of that, and that would have an egg crate in front of it too. So she was lit by a super soft natural-looking light that’s really close to her,” says Bell. “The frame would keep the light off anything that it wasn’t meant to be on.”

Positioning the light was also precise. “On a close-up of Claire, if she’s looking at camera left, I would have the key light on her left side, with very minimal fill light. So as the camera looks at her, you get the fall-off of light around the side of her face closest to the camera. It creates a three-dimensional feel to the shot.”

Along with the lighting, the period-accurate costume and the production design, something else that pins A Very British Scandal firmly in time and place is the overall look.

“We wanted to give this production a texture, for it to have a filmic quality,” says Bell. “We found this film-emulation LUT and tweaked it, then sent it to the colourist, Asa Shoul at Warner Bros. De Lane Lea Studios, to work with. The result was a two-tone LUT, so when it’s slightly underexposed it goes a bit cooler and the highlights are warmer, and on top of that we added a super-subtle grain.”

A Very British Scandal was filmed mostly in Lon-

tried to keep the lighting to a standard that was quite unlike a documentary.

“A lot of the sets were lit from outside so that we could keep the floor very free and let us move around the actors and give them a lot of space.

It allowed for the director and me to be organic, a bit more energetic with the camera and a bit freer,” he says.

“Generally we had big, 18K ARRIMAXs coming in from outside through the windows for the day scenes, and controlled the natural sunlight with 20x20s. We had tents for the night work so we could have moonlight on the windows,” he continues. “For night scenes, I’d use a lot of Springballs on boom arms and there were a lot of practicals too. We changed all the bulbs to Tungsten 40W and had them on dimmers so we could tweak them depending on what the shot was, or whether the light was in the shot or not. We had a Litemat that we could rig on the ceiling, or we’d have ARRI SkyPanel s30 or s60 that would be either in Tungsten balance or daylight balance depending if we were doing a day or night scene.”

don and Scotland around Loch Fyne and Inveraray, the ancestral seat of the Duke Of Argyll.

We wanted to give this production a texture… a filmic quality… something a little bit different

Canon K-35s flare nicely and have a lovely soft quality Bell says he engineered a more natural look for the close-ups.

“I’d always use 4x4 diffusion frames, so if I was shooting Claire, I’d have a SkyPanel for her keylight that would have a Chimera on it to soften it, plus an egg crate on the actual light. Then I’d typically put

“The weekend before we shot anything, Anne and I went up to Inveraray. In the hotel bar looking over the Loch we went through the script scene-byscene,” says Bell. “We’d obviously planned roughly around the locations, but now we went through everything in real detail and came up with not just shot lists, but what we wanted to do and the style of the scenes. It involved loads of logistics trying to figure out how we were going to make everything fit.”

A Very British Scandal has the look of a much higher-budget film production, including drone shots of speedboats and a sunken wreck on Loch Fyne, as well as sweeping shots of Glen Etive, and a full steam train.

“For the train shots, while we were rigging the

train with cameras for shooting the dialogue, we also had the second unit with cameras rigged on the outside of the train, on the roof to get the steam coming through, plus one right on the pistons; so we were shooting all of that at the same time,” says

Bell. “We were trying to maximise every single element that we had.

Bell is full of praise for the production team.

“Donald MacKinnon, our Glasgow-based line producer, was outstanding. He knew the ambition that Anne and I had and was fully on-board and made everything happen. He understood how to push the production value. He was totally hands-on – a brilliant person to collaborate with. Chris Ballantyne was also super-supportive of what we wanted to do, so we felt we could always just push as much as we wanted to.

“My grip Paul Kemp was really great, as was Ramil Sheriff on his first job as gaffer. It wasn’t a

small scale production by any means, and they did a really brilliant job, absolutely great,” adds Bell.

“Jamie Hicks, who was the second unit and B-camera operator also did outstanding work throughout, while both the focus pullers, Brian Dungan and Evalina Norgren, were absolutely brilliant and did some exceptional work. And Asa who did the final grade, was a pleasure to work with.”

Bell concludes, “ A Very British Scandal has come out really well. It was a really rewarding project because we had such a great director. It could have been quite a standard sort of period drama, but we tried to make it into something a little bit different and a bit more nuanced.”

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THE TENDER BAR•MARTIN RUHE ASC

MARTIN RUHE ASC•THE TENDER BAR

DOWN MEMORY LANE

By Darek Kuźma

The idea was to work fast and have a certain rhythm to the shoot Images/Photos by Claire Folger,images © 2021 Amazon Content Services LLC

C

inematographer Martin Ruhe ASC demonstrates his versatility in George Clooney’s latest directorial effort – the heartfelt coming-of-age drama The Tender Bar. It is understandable that, in bleak times, films tend to tell rather serious stories that reflect on fears and inadequacies of the human experience, or try to entertain their viewers with every visual trick possible. Yet such a divergence results in a pressing lack of narratives that fall somewhere in the middle – and a small number of films that do not shy away from life’s bitter moments, but express them in a crowd-pleasing manner.

Enter The Tender Bar, a 1970s-set tale of a vulnerable boy who becomes an admirable young man despite growing-up in the shadow of his absent father. Adapted from J.R. Moehringer’s memoir, the film was a distinct change of pace for Clooney and Ruhe, who previously collaborated on satirical war mini-series Catch-22 and the sci-fi drama The Midnight Sky. “It’s always fun to work with George – he challenges me to think outside the box,” says Ruhe.

“For The Tender Bar, the intention was to provide a

full-hearted experience, but without the need for visual trickery. A dive into the world of the 1970s, that makes a compelling background for creating intimacies between the characters. To emphasise the dialogue, the acting and the story and remain invisible.”

It starts with the return of a nine-year-old J.R., and his mother, to her family house in Manhasset, Long Island, after a failed attempt at living in New York, where Ruhe aimed at creating a small-town vibrancy.

“We talked about the naturalism of McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971, dir. Robert Altman, DP Vilmos Zsigmond ACS HSC) and Dog Day Afternoon (1975, Sidney Lumet, DP Victor J. Kemper ASC) ” recalls Ruhe, “but the only real reference we used was the photography of William Eggleston, and how he found beauty in the ordinary through using Kodak Ektachrome film. He is magnificent, watching life as it happened before his eyes. Without any fancy lighting, he was just there, focussed and perceptive.”

Clooney and Ruhe decided to shoot as much as possible on location around Boston, Massachusetts, whilst the interiors were built on stage in New England Studios in Devens, MA. The Tender Bar was shot in seven weeks, partly with local crews, in early

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2021, using ARRI Alexa Mini’s, starting at the end of February and wrapping mid-April.

“I’m not a fan of stylising period stories, it often drains emotions out of the image,” says Ruhe, whose colour palette included different shades of golden, brown, beige. “Our film is supposed to bring you back to this warm place of your childhood that feels like home. It had to be personal, nostalgic at times, yes, but not sentimental. Rather it was an emotional, cinematic memory of all of the heartaches and the beauty of growing-up. It was very subtle.”

That said, Ruhe did use some of the 1970’s visual language, such as crash-zooms, to underline specific moments or get the comedy across, but he remarks that these were, “Just an addition to the overall package. The film itself was created on-set, with a number of practical tools and LUTs from colourist Stefan Sonnenfeld at Company 3 helping us to make the Eggleston reference by making the contrast look less digital.”

There are two places that shape the protagonist’s childhood and then reverberate throughout his youth when he tries to find himself in college, namely the family home and The Dickens, a

bar owned by J.R.’s Uncle Charlie, who becomes his mentor, and a father figure.

“The bar is the most dynamic setting in the film,” Ruhe exclaims. “It’s exciting for J.R. to go there and learn about life, women and books. There’s a sense of discovery. That’s why we move around a lot, use different seats, but you still have the feeling they’re in the same spot. In the house, it feels stagnant, predictable, even Charlie is.”

Nevertheless, the house, the way it informs J.R.’s extended family’s identity, is essential to the boy’s maturation.

“The house is old and run-down, it feels like not much changed from 1950s. We had various open areas to help the actors and enable fluid camera movement. We moved a wall once or twice, but I treated it like a location,” says Ruhe. Interestingly, no one knows how the real house looked inside. “We chose this grand exterior, but the lady living there didn’t let us in. We shot the porch and the backdoors.

But I think it might’ve looked quite similar to ours.”

When J.R. goes to college, the scope broadens, but The Tender Bar remains an intimate affair.

“We didn’t need two visually distinct worlds.

I shot the whole film with Alexa Mini equipped with Angenieux Optimo 15-40mm, 28-76mm, 45-120mm and 24-290mm zooms, plus Cooke S4 Primes as an alternative. I wanted a small and compact camera set-up to shoot quickly,” says Ruhe.

“The idea was to work fast and have a certain rhythm to the shoot, rather than do a take and come back an hour later for another one. This way it feels more honest, personal.”

The same rule applied to his lighting package.

“We didn’t light day exteriors too much, maybe an HMI here and there. On night exteriors I mostly used ARRI SkyPanel 360s and a couple of softboxes to add to the overall cinematic look. There’s one scene where older J.R. walks a girl home where we changed the street lights into sodium vapour, as it wouldn’t work otherwise, but that was pretty much it. Like I said, no unnecessary trickery,” says Ruhe. “On stage, I’d usually set most of the light from outside and then just add with Rosco DMG Lumière from the inside.”

The Tender Bar is thus a feel-good movie with a lot of bittersweet moments thrown in between.

Clooney and Ruhe and the actors pat you reassuringly on your back, and say you can become

who you want to become, no matter what. Quite an important message in these times.

“It came naturally. There were no heavy concepts for the characters. We didn’t have a masterplan that there was a particular camera movement for one person and another for somebody else. We wanted it to be alive.

Sometimes when you put a lot of rules over yourself, you lose the spontaneity. It was a great experience, I hope to have many similar ones in the future.”

George challenges me to think outside the box

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BEING THE RICARDOS•DP JEFF CRONENWETH ASC

DP JEFF CRONENWETH ASC•BEING THE RICARDOS

FUNNY BUSINESS

Images: Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem star in Being The Ricardos. Photos, including BTS shots of DP Jeff Cronenweth ASC, by Glen Wilson.

Images © Amazon Content Services LLC.

By Iain Blair

A

merican cinematographer, Jeff Cronenweth ASC, has long been the go-to DP for some of Hollywood’s top directors. He’s collaborated with David Fincher on four films, receiving Academy Award nominations for his work on The Social Network (2010) and The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (2011), as well as shooting Fight Club (1999) and Gone Girl (2014) for the Oscar-nominated director. His other film credits include Sacha Gervasi’s Hitchcock (2012), Kathryn Bigelow’s K-19: The Widowmaker (2002), Peyton Reed’s Down With Love (2003), and Mark Romanek’s One Hour Photo (2002).

The latest director to join that exclusive club is Academy Award-winning writer/director Aaron Sorkin, who was first exposed to Cronenweth’s considerable gifts when the DP shot his script for The Social Network.

Now Sorkin, who says “I never want to shoot another film without Jeff,” and Cronenweth have teamed-up on Being The Ricardos, Sorkin’s behind-the-scenes comedy/drama, starring Oscar winners Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem, as Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, the pioneering power couple behind the beloved classic 1950’s television sitcom I Love Lucy. Shot in colour and B&W using Red cameras, the film provides a revealing glimpse into the couple’s complicated romantic and

professional relationship, taking the audience into the writers’ room, onto the soundstage and behind closed doors during a critical production week of their groundbreaking show.

How did you go about finding the look of the film?

Aaron gave me a lot of liberty. I pitched him this idea of making the movie contrasty, with good blacks, and having points of light so that there was depth to the image, as most of the spaces our characters work in were big. With these points of light you can see into the dark, but we’d isolate Lucy and Desi out by shooting wide open, shooting 8K, shooting 70mm glass with depth-of-field to keep them constrained in their world and show how claustrophobic it could be at times with all the pressures they’re having to deal with. So that was the broad approach to the look, and it was not really specific to an era.

How did you make your final camera and lens choices?

I wanted to utilise depth-of-field and be able to shoot in low light. I’m very fond of the colour science and the way that Red cameras interpret colour, and I’ve used their cameras a lot, so I was very comfortable shooting this in 8K spherical. Then I went to ARRI and asked them if I could use their DNA glass that had been used on Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018, DP Bradford Young

ASC) and Joker (2019, DP Lawrence Sher). The DNAs have built-in artifacting. It’s old glass, rehoused and reconfigured, and each lens has its own little personality.

Did you consider using vintage lenses?

When you do a period piece it’s tempting to think, ‘I’ll use the same lenses they used back then’. But one: they only had those lenses available to them back then. And, two: the old coatings are so different that you can get into trouble with bright windows and blinds and stuff like that. Things like hazing, and so on, are not very pretty either. Plus, I’d already gone through all that on Hitchcock, and I didn’t really want to do it all again. So this seemed like the perfect answer. I could use rehoused glass in modern lenses, but which still have all the weird artifacts and flares as they’re all different – even within sets nothing’s the same. And it seemed like a fun idea to use the same lenses from Joker in a more cosmetic way.

Was that a first?

I was told I was the first person to cross-pollinate ARRI lenses with Red cameras, so maybe it was.

What about dealing with the B&W recreations of the show? Was that a different set-up?

It was. I did a lot of tests with Red’s colour and monochrome cameras, which involved taking out all the colour from the one and comparing it to the other. In the end to me there was such a stark difference. I wanted

to shoot a modern version of an homage to the show, and I could get away with it as it’s not really the show – it’s only in her mind. So I added more contrast and highlights, but in the spirit of the show, and I used the Red Ranger full-frame Monstro monochrome sensor which has all the pixels dedicated to B&W, and gives you this beautiful silver tone, a sort of 50 ASA B&W quality, which I loved.

What about the aspect ratio? Tell us about that and composition?

I discussed all that in my very first phone call with Aaron.

‘Are the flashbacks only in her head, or are we going to go to 4:3?’ There are periods when they’re younger and we made changes, but it wasn’t necessary for the show bits. They’re in her head, we don’t owe anyone an explanation, and there’s never a time when you’re watching the B&W bits back on a TV. So we kept it 2.40:1. It’s a story about people and it’s so beautiful when you shoot a wide format like that and you can block things beautifully. There wasn’t really any need to be Anamorphic as our sets and locations were so small and more intimate, and I didn’t see the advantage in that. So we went 2:40 spherical, with 70mm glass, 8K Red Rangers and Red Monochrome.

What about the lighting? What did you use?

Ironically, I used mostly what they used at the time for all the stage lighting – such as Skypans, 10Ks and 5Ks.

They actually had footlights on the dollies and eye-lights above the matte box, and they had these rectangular softboxes, which were very surprising to me as they were so progressive for the time. So I used all those on the set, and a lot of work lights.

I lit all the catwalks so we had depth and you could see past the actors on the stage and into the audience. All the stage work was with actual units, though I dimmed, gelled and scrimmed down many of them so they weren’t doing anything to interfere with the picture, and then utilised a single key or a soft source. So all that stuff was pretty authentic.

Throughout the whole movie I tried to use as much lighting of the era as possible, if only because I love Tungsten sources and there’s such a great quality to it. I also used some LED units on some scenes where I had no choice, in narrow corridors and to control windows where we weren’t able to get on the outside of the building, and I kept them in the same colour range. But most of the movie was vintage lights, or modern versions of Tungsten lights, and then HMIs for exteriors.

I assume you worked with colourist Ian Vertovec in prep on LUTs? Yes, quite a bit. This is our seventh film together and, as usual, we shot tests and went to Light Iron and reviewed them all. The year before we’d done the Mark Romanek-directed Amazon pilot Tales From the Loop.

There were elements of that I really liked, and I wanted to bring some of that over to this production, but the rest was all new.

During production on-set I worked very closely with our DIT Michele DeLorimier. I tend to look at LUTs like filmstock, as I grew up with celluloid. Everyone does it their own way. I tend to stick with the LUT and change lights, change filters and so on, as opposed to having a different LUT for every location and set-up, night and day, and so on. Obviously we made little changes here and there, adjusted things like the colour-correction, but I just find it to be much more efficient working this way with a LUT. Tell us about the DI grade?

Ian and I spent a couple of weeks. I love the DI as it’s like a second chance to go back and fine-tune everything you did. But, I’m not a fan of doing everything in post. I try to do as much in-camera as possible as you just never know what might happen later, but there are certain things you know you can remedy in post. And doing the HDR version was so much fun.

Did it turn out the way you hoped?

I am. I’m very proud of what we did and it looks beautiful.

I pitched the idea of this movie being contrasty, with good blacks, and having depth to the image

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CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD JANUARY 2022 69

BEING THE RICARDOS•DP JEFF CRONENWETH ASC IAN VERTOVEC, SUPERVISING COLOURIST AT LIGHT IRON: Tell us about the look Aaron and Jeff wanted, and how you all collaborated together?

Jeff wanted a look that was reminiscent of the art of the period, but he also wanted to update it a bit. So instead of placing limitations on ourselves by trying to emulate a period look, we asked, ‘What if the filmmakers of the era had the tools available to us today?’

For example, rather than using vintage lenses, adding noise and cropping to 4:3 for the I Love Lucy moments, Jeff chose the modern ARRI DNA primes and Red Helium Monochome camera and framed for the full 2.39:1 aspect ratio. But he also shot those moments in the style of the original in terms of lighting, focal length and camera placement. That approach of asking ourselves, ‘What choices would artists of the era have made?’ informed the DI grade as well. Instead of leaning into the usual approach of adding grain and diffusion to ‘make it feel old,’ Jeff wanted to take the period style and update it.

What were your references?

We started by talking about mid-century art, and really focused on Art Deco architecture and the photographs of George Hurrell. Hurrell’s portrait work is very influential across cinema, and for good reason. We spent a good deal of time shaping the moments when we get in close to our actors, particularly Nicole as Lucy. We wanted to capture the old Hollywood glamour and the soft glow of Hurrell’s portraits when we had close moments with Lucy. Jeff is obviously a master of crafting the light on-set, but in the DI we were able to take his sources and define a shape across the face with a bit more control. We also used a bit of diffusion across the frame to really draw us to Lucy’s eyes.

Looking at references of Art Deco architecture, we noticed the Ricardos lived in a more California Art Deco style, which is lighter and softer than the East Coast references people might be more familiar with. So, we generally graded the film somewhat rich and soft, with an emphasis on colour separation. We focussed on creating what we called ‘soft contrast,’ which is different to ‘low contrast’ in the sense that it has a much higher and more natural contrast in the mid-tones and a much lower or softer contrast in the roll-off of the highlights and the toe (the darkest areas).

What equipment did you use?

We graded on Baselight and mastered for DCI projection, HDR and SDR video. We made extensive use of Baselight’s Base Grade operator for creating the natural soft-contrast look.

I also used vast amounts of texture equaliser along with various retouching tools to create the ‘Hurrell look’.

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Images (top) BTS photo of Tony Hale, director Aaron Sorkin and Nicole Kidman on the set of Being The Ricardos. All Photo by Glen Wilson.

Images © Amazon Content Services LLC.

TAKE SCENE SLATE•MIKE VALENTINE BSC

MIKE VALENTINE BSC•TAKE SCENE SLATE Opposite: (clockwise) shooting Basic Instinct 2; pictured with Angelina Jolie; working on Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children; and Mike making an adjustment to the sub-aqua illumination.

UNDERWATER LOVE Water is the great leveller

By Michael Goldman

T

he passion for the discipline of underwater cinematography exuded by Mike Valentine BSC, has not waned in the many years he has been working as a specialist camera operator/cinematographer. The UKbased Valentine is one of the world’s bestknown sub-aqua cinematography experts and a co-designer of the state-of-the-art underwater stage at Pinewood Studios. He says that, for cinematography, “water is the great leveller” in terms of both the degree of difficulty of the work, and the number of details the underwater cameraman is responsible for.

Indeed, Valentine calls filming underwater “a seesaw” because of the balance between the technical and creative challenges.

“A technical requirement would be, for instance, how to make a camera system work underwater,” he says.

“An artistic requirement would be how to move the camera to better tell the story. They are connected. The more you understand the dangers and the problems or challenges, the more opportunity you have to push artistic boundaries. At the start of production, I tell filmmakers to let their imaginations run wild and describe what they would like to see. We want to make the underwater process as friendly and as approachable as possible.”

And then, after those discussions, it’s largely up to

Valentine and his team to figure out how to get there safely and comfortably for performers and crew alike.

Lensing Valentine emphasises that underwater lensing “is an incredibly interesting subject”, as the skill of compensating for underwater distortions is not easy to master.

“Even when you think you are in clear water, it is actually full of little particles that will reflect, refract and absorb light rays,” he says. “That’s why I often use a slightly wider-angle lens to move a little closer into my subject, and thereby reduce the amount of water between the subject and the camera. That makes the images sharper and gives them more contrast.

“Another problem is that most viewers are not as familiar with how things are supposed to look underwater as they are on dry land. I have done tests with a circular fisheye lens and then a 24mm wideangle lens. I put a circular mask on both still slides and projected them, and people could not always tell which was the fisheye lens and which was the normal wide angle. This is because, on dry land, you know which is the fisheye because trees, buildings or people are bent.

“Underwater, though, you probably don’t have that experience with how bent or distorted a coral reef, a rare fish or the underside of a ship should be. With a face, it is easier to see if you shot with a very wide-angle lens, because of angular distortion. But we can still get away with murder.

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“Also, the water can appear milky, washed out, a little pale. To get around that, we use the idea of a domed port on the housing. When people first started shooting underwater, they used a flat piece of glass, a port. That was because of the laws of physics – the refractive index of air, glass and water would always be 1.333 [meaning that light travels 1.333 times slower in water]. But for a filmmaker, if I have a wider-angle lens combined with a flat port, I might lose a third of the angle of the lens. Everything will appear about 25% bigger, with chromatic aberrations around the side. This angular distortion, called ‘pincushion distortion,’ can lead to a pronounced loss of contrast.

“That’s why somebody came up with the idea that since, with a wide-angle lens, the light rays are more distorted at the edges than they are in the centre, what if we used a curved piece of glass – a domed port – so that there is less distortion of the light rays. That generally works really well, but the domed port can mess with your optics, because it creates an aerial image that is curved about 14-inches from the film plane. That means you need a wide-angle lens that will focus down to say maybe 12-14 inches, which will then focus on the aerial image that the dome is creating. In real terms, that aerial image is now in focus from roughly 14-inches to about six to eight feet.

“However, your focus puller on dry land, using a

remote focus tool, can’t see the scale. This is why, before we shoot, we go into the pool or tank and mark down the edge of the pool with tape, all the distances from the film plane to the subject. You write it on a big B&W board, very sharp, put it maybe two feet away with the camera in the water. Now, the focus puller at the edge of the pool can see exactly what your mark is. If the board is sharp at two feet, they will focus the system 14-16 inches. But then, it will jump if you move the board away at, say, one-foot intervals. So, anyone using a dome port underwater must calibrate the focus of the camera system if they want to use a wide-angle lens.”

Valentine adds that the cameraman will avoid the curved dome if they go tighter. “In that case, you put the flat port back on, because the angle of a tighter lens is traveling through far less glass and is therefore much less prone to distortion.”

Housing Despite a wide range of camera housing systems available on the market, Valentine, like many underwater cinematography experts, uses his own proprietary system.

“The same housing can take an ARRI 435, almost any Red camera, any ARRI Alexa camera, and others,” he says. “This is important, because it means we can switch from film to video to HD to large format all within the same camera housing.

“One of the problems with a lot of underwater housings is that they are designed by engineers, as opposed to operators,” he adds. “An operator might

have a different idea of how they want the camera to work. Mine looks very square and boxy. The reason for that is I have found that the ones that are long and slender and slim, like a torpedo, can move through the water too quickly and wobble. A camera itself is not hydro-dynamic. It’s more of a box, and thus, a little more difficult to push through water. But that is good, because the shots can grow steadier since the water is pushing back against the camera, so I designed my housing to have that same kind of shape.

“Also, I prefer to not look through an eyepiece underwater, but instead have my eye on a separate monitor attached to the camera. This means you can move more like a Steadicam, and have a better range of movement, while seeing the monitor at almost any angle.

“If you want to go up-and-down, since we essentially use our lungs as air pockets, you can breathe in just a little and float up, or breathe out and float down.”

Light and Colour Valentine suggests the No.#1 change in the world of underwater cinematography over the years has come with improved lighting options.

“In the old days, we would use 10K Tungsten lamps, but could only go down about six feet,” he says.

“Beyond that, the bulbs would implode. Also, Tungsten is typically not a clever as water absorbs red from Tungsten lighting.

“So, when the time came when we could use HMIs or daylight balanced LED tubes, that was a great move

forward for underwater lighting. Today, with Kino Flos, LED lights, backlit greenscreens, HMIs, we can have the whole gamut of underwater lighting toys that we use above water, plus the light that we set up above water and beam into the water. With a really good board operator, we are not limited anymore in terms of the number and types of lighting effects we can do.”

However, Valentine notes, that does not mean that lighting underwater is the same as lighting on dry land.

This is largely because of the issue of the way water can distort colours, particularly red, as noted earlier.

“The wavelength of red light is typically absorbed rather quickly within six to ten feet,” he says. “That means if you have a person holding up a colour chart, and they go down on a lift underwater, and you are watching them with no additional light underwater other than sunshine, red in the chart will disappear. Then, you go deeper and orange will disappear, followed by yellow, green and then blue.

“This is the primary reason we use newer lighting technologies. It’s not so much to lift the light level, but rather, to replace the lost colour. If I have an actress underwater, we will try and use a bit of soft light down there to put a bit of colour back into her face.

Valentine enjoys such underwater challenges. In fact, he sums up the discipline he quite literally dived into many years ago as, “an amazing medium. Water is a fantastic source of life, that helps control our atmosphere.

If we don’t drink it for a few days, we could even die! I love sharing the hidden beauty of the underwater world with audiences.”

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GAFFERS CAFÉ•MIKE BAUMAN

MIKE BAUMAN•GAFFERS CAFÉ

SHINING A LIGHT

Pretty much every light we use on-set now did not exist six years ago. That’s a huge change

Age// 52 Born// Waterloo, Iowa Education/Training// University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, American Film Institute Lives// Los Angeles Recent filmography (as gaffer unless otherwise indicated) Untitled David O. Russell film (2022) Licorice Pizza (cinematographer) The Tragedy Of Macbeth (2021)

Birds Of Prey (2020) Ford v Ferrari (2019) Vice (2018) Phantom Thread (2017) (lighting cameraman) The Conjuring 2 (2016) (chief lighting technician) Secret In Their Eyes (2015) The Gambler (2014) Alexander And The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (2014) (chief lighting technician) Inherent Vice (2014) (chief lighting technician) Nightcrawler (2014) The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013) The Bling Ring (2013) The Master (2012) (chief lighting technician) People Like Us (2012) (chief lighting technician) Rampart (2011) Cowboys & Aliens (2011) (chief lighting technician) Iron Man 2 (2010)

Getting started I was interested in lighting and movies from my undergraduate days, so I went on to study at the American Film Institute (AFI). It was definitely a turning point, as I spent an intensive year focused on film lighting, where every weekend was a shoot. It was there I met a lot of the cinematographers that I still work with today.

Working my way up in the 1990s I did tons of rap videos and low-budget movies with my AFI friends. I then started gaffing on some interesting feature work, and it essentially took off from there.

Working with DPs I enjoy trying to mix it up a bit to get some diversity into the resumé. So I’ve worked with a range of cinematographers including: Bruno Delbonnel AFC ASC on The Tragedy Of Macbeth, Mihai Malaimare Jr. on The Master, Matthew Libatique ASC on Birds Of Prey, Cowboys & Aliens, Iron Man (2008) and Iron Man 2, and Janusz Kaminski ASC on Munich (2005). I’ve also sat behind the camera as the DP, most recently on Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza. I’ve worked on quite a few films with Paul, including Phantom Thread, Inherent Vice and The Master.

Being a better gaffer Working as a DP has given me some great insight into how to be a better gaffer.

For some, cinematography is an end goal, the capstone of a career. But I don’t have that sense of calling. For me it’s all about doing interesting projects.

I’d much rather work on a smaller budget film than something that’s huge.

I know of cinematographers who have won Academy Awards, but still not been creatively challenged. I remember talking to Conrad Hall ASC 20 years ago. He was super unhappy at the time, because he had to make a lead actor look like he was 15 years younger, which influenced how he had to light. At the time he was the top of the heap, the Sir Roger Deakins BSC BSC ASC of his day, and to see him not be creatively inspired at that level was very insightful.

For me gaffing is creatively satisfying, because it needs a mix of the artistic and the technical versus the schedule. It’s the balance of this grab-bag of requirements that keeps the job interesting every day.

New talent New talent used to come up through more clearlydefined channels: the camera department or lighting.

When it was all shot on film, a lot more technical knowledge needed to be baked-in before you could jump into the DP chair. But now, with digital, you have different people coming into filmmaking with less deep knowledge of the process. I think it makes for a really exciting, liberating time for lighting.

New people, rapid developments in image capture technology and insanely rapid changes in lighting technology, make it a real free-for-all in how the creative workflow operates.

Technological change As image capture has become better, with higher ASAs, higher fidelity and colour range, a lot of nontraditional sources have become absolutely viable. You can go into a hardware store, buy a lighting package there and do stuff with it.

I find small budgets are always a creative opportunity, because you don’t adopt established ways of doing things. Instead of, “Let’s just get a bunch of Skypanels”, on a smaller film it’s more challenging and exciting. And that was the case with The Tragedy Of Macbeth.

Lighting Macbeth Joel Cohen’s The Tragedy Of Macbeth was a very high-contrast, high-chiaroscuro, expressionistic film. We were going to use Fresnels and flags, but when it became apparent we only had 35 shooting days, we had to get into faster, alternative sources. We used automated lights with shutters on-board so we could make quick creative decisions. We used the ETC SolaFrame series – in our case 1000W white LEDs. They have high beams and no noisy cooling fans, so they weigh a ton because they have to have a heat sink, but they allow you to put a light right next to an actor.

Key crew The most regular members of my crew are: best boy Tommy Dangcil, who I have done 40 movies with; rigging gaffer Mike Bonnaud, and desk ops Scott Barnes and Dave Kane. Also some great practical sparks, namely Phil Abayta, Mike Visencio and Mike Beckham.

Rise of the desk op The desk operator has become a really critical role. As I explain to DPs, if you have a really good desk op the quality of the photography will go up on a film, as will the speed of the day. They can make source changes faster, especially if you have somebody who can communicate effectively with the DP. On a show that is heavy on programming, what I really want is to include the desk op in lighting conversations.

On The Tragedy Of Macbeth I had desk op Dave Kane on the tablet, sitting next to the DP Bruno Delbonnel, while I would be working with another desk op on another part of the set. As Dave understood how Bruno wanted to light, he was able to bring some creativity to the party.

Innovations in lighting Cinematographers now assume that lights change colour and dim automatically. Pretty much every light we use on-set now did not exist six years ago. That’s a huge change. Plus there are lots of ways to move the camera, from Mövi rigs to drones, and you need programming to take full advantage of it all. It’s made the desk op a very valuable position, but it also requires people who are really passionate and dedicated.

Favourite lighting instruments At the moment I use LiteGear LiteMats a lot, and ARRI Sky Panels, of course. Fiilex is doing some interesting stuff – I’ve used a very handy unit called the P3, which is a very small LED source. I’m a big fan of the Creamsource Micros too, which are also small and punchy.

With Matty Libatique ASC we’ve developed this light called the Color-con – which has been refined with a company called CamTech. The idea is to take an optical flat on the front of the camera that has a bit of texture to it and wrap it with pixel ribbon so you can flare different parts of the lens with colour.

Around 2006, when we were making Iron Man, we struggled to find lighting that really worked with production designer Michael Riva’s vision for the film.

The practical spark on that job was Al Demayo, and he and I, along with Jeff Soderberg, formed LiteGear in 2006. At that time fluorescents and Kinoflos were where it was at, but we knew that we needed lights we could dim more or would fit into this or that particular space.

So we looked at flexible LED stuff. A lot of the products we have now are born from situations where people needed to come up with a solution to a particular problem.

As one of the industry’s premier rental resources, we are extremely proud to support crews around the world with an unrivalled collection of production solutions which embrace both the conventional and the very latest in advanced lighting technology.

Gaffing is creatively satisfying, because it needs a mix of the artistic and the technical versus the schedule

Whatever your production type, wherever you are, when it comes to lighting - we’ve got the lot.

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Biggest challenges Rising to the challenge is what I like about the job.

There have certainly been plenty of challenges-of-scale on bigger movies, but smaller films like Nightcrawler provide different tests. For example, we shot 70% of Nightcrawler inside a car over 26 nights, with not a lot of money. We had to create a system in the car that we could keep in the trunk and run wirelessly from a node to control the levels using a tablet in the car. They strapped the cameras on the actors and we followed in the car behind with a monitor to adjust the light as we went along.

Gaffers getting together Pre-pandemic it was clear there was a need for an organisation to discuss the huge amount that is going on in film lighting, which led to the formation of The International Cinema Lighting Society (ICLS). During the pandemic we took it online and made it more international.

Now we are getting non-profit status, and have people from nearly 30 countries involved. We run a weekly meeting with over 200 full members and are aiming at about 500 members focussing on gaffers, rigging gaffers and programmers, and eventually will include an associate membership programme for others.

We have had some great presentations – over 100 already, on subjects such as colour science, ETC on their new Source Four, as well as discussions with cinematographers and gaffers. A recent highlight was DP Erik Messerschmidt ASC who came to talk about his work with gaffer Danny Gonzalez on the Academy Award-winning Mank.

These deep dives enable us to share collective knowledge. It has been great for vendors too, particularly as trade shows have crashed. They really need a way to connect to their audiences, so we allow them to come on-board. They love it because it’s not a quick trade show pitch, but more of a deep discussion into what the lighting community needs.

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SHOOTING GALLERY•CAMERIMAGE 2021 MEMORIES

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(l) DP Jost Vacano BVK ASC, the Camerimage 2021 Lifetime Laureate, at the closing ceremony.

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(r) Bruno Delbonnel AFC ASC at the seminar about The Tragedy Of Macbeth.

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(l) Camerimage boss Marek Żydowicz with Dune director Denis Villeneuve (l) and DP Greig Fraser ACS (r). Photo by Krzysztof Wesołowski. (r) Camerimage boss Kazik Suwała (l) shows director Joel Coen (r) the plans for Torun’s new cultural centre. Photo by Krzysztof Wesołowski.

(l) DP Ari Wegner ACS at the seminar about her work on The Power Of The Dog. Photo by Krzysztof Wesołowski. (r) DP Alice Brooks ASC at Cinema City talking about In the Heights. Photo by Anna Rusiłko.

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(l) DP Piotr Sobociński Jnr. PSC collects his Golden Frog for Operation Hyacinth, from DP Amy Vincent ASC. Photo by Pawel Skraba. (r) DP Seamus McGarvey BSC ASC was at the festival with Cyrano, directed by Joe Wright, sporting a smashing corduroy jacket.

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(l) DP Ed Lachman ASC speaking at the seminar about digital restoration.

Photo by Maria Kowalska. (r) DP Philippe Rousselot AFC ASC took part in several special cinematographic seminars about his career. Photo by Daniel Raczynski.

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Photo by Maria Kowalska. (r) DP Linus Sandgren FSF ASC attended Q&As and the screening of 007 No Time To Die. 76 JANUARY 2022 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

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