Cinematography World May 2022 Edition (CW009)

WWW.CINEMATOGRAPHY.WORLD

THE ART AND CRAFT BEHIND THE CAMERA

ISSUE 009 MAY 2022

INSIDE THIS ISSUE CLAUDIO MIRANDA CSC ASC•JOHN MATHIESON BSC•KATE MCCULLOUGH ISC•ALI CIHAN YILMAZ•TOMMY MADDOX-UPSHAW ASC•SUZIE LAVELLE ISC BSC ROB HARDY BSC ASC•ARMIN FRANZEN•DANIELA CAJÍAS AEC•TRISTAN OLIVER BSC•STURLA BRANDTH GRØVLEN DFF•PETRA KORNER AAC

ISSUE 009•CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD The last two years have been tough for everyone.

Euro Cine Expo will provide a fresh, festival-type feel for the industry to come together again

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

Special Consultant ALAN LOWNE alan@cinematography.world Editorial Assistant KIRSTY HAZLEWOOD kirsty@cinematography.world Advertising Manager CLAIRE SAUNDERS claire@cinematography.world Subscriptions & Social Media KENISHA SMITH kenisha@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.

MUNICH It was great to attend the BSC Expo in London, at the start of April, where, in the spring sunshine, there was a wonderful sense of togetherness, meeting cherished friends and supporters, and making new acquaintances too, face-to-face after so long apart.

And what a lot of things there were to see and imbibe, which you can read about in our BSC Expo Round-Up in this edition.

Looking ahead, there’s a real buzz around Euro Cine Expo (1-2 July) in Munich, which is shapingup to be the biggest show of its kind in Europe this year. Cinematography World is the main media sponsor at the event, and we are delighted to be putting together a lively and inspirational seminar programme for this must-visit show.

Ron Prince photo by Joe Short www.joeshort.com

Editor-in-Chief RON PRINCE ronny@cinematography.world

Rob Saunders, SCS Exhibitions

If you have a new service, product or technique, that you want to showcase, or ideas for a panel discussion, get in touch now! There are a limited number of spaces on the seminar programme for you to highlight the genius of your ‘special something’ to the many eager attendees.

Don’t miss out. Please let us know as soon as possible about how you would like to get involved in what promises to be an incredible seminar line-up!

Until we meet again, be safe, stay happy, and keep reading Cinematography World!

“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.

Dylan Bruce is a cinematographer based in London working primarily on narrative shorts and music promos. Beside his love for simple, humanistic storytelling, he is a keen street-photographer too.

Celebrating the Films on Film at Cannes 2022.

Congratulations to the celebrated movies from the Official Selection, Un Certain Regard, Directors’ Fortnight, ACID and Semaine de la Critique who brought their stories to life with KODAK film. #SHOOTFILM Learn more at Kodak.com/go/motion © 2022 Kodak. Kodak and the Kodak logo are trademarks.

John Keedwell GBCT/UAV Pilot is a documentary and commercials cameraman who has worked on many productions worldwide. He has great knowledge of film, tape and file-based formats and their methods of production.

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.

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.

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.

Cover Image: Tom Cruise as Capt. Pete “Maverick” Mitchell in Top Gun: Maverick from Paramount Pictures, Skydance and Jerry Bruckheimer Films. © 2019 Paramount Pictures Corporation. All rights reserved.

Ron Prince Editor in Chief ronny@cinematography.world Official Media Partner SUBSCRIBE You can subscribe to the print, digital, or print and digital, versions of Cinematography World. This will cover you for the six issues delivered over a 12-month period. Your email will also be added to our monthly newsletter update, unless you decide to opt out of these news feeds.

Cinematography World is part of Rascals Publishing & Media Ltd! The publishers emphasise that opinions expressed within Cinematography World Magazine are not representative of Rascals Publishing & Media Ltd!, but are the responsibility of individual contributors.

Cinematography World is created using responsibly sourced paper. All inks used during the printing process are vegetable based and virtually free from volatile organic compounds. Waste, paper, ink and consumables are recycled. Where this is not possible waste is sent to specialist centres for safe disposal.

RECYCLE

Cinematography World is created using responsibly sourced materials

CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD MAY 2022 3

Meet the final puzzle piece.

ISSUE 009•CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

INSIDE ISSUE 009 MAY 2022

ZEISS Supreme Prime Lenses With 14 focal lengths from 15 mm to 200 mm, the ZEISS Supreme Prime lenses unite coverage up to Full Frame and beyond with high speed in a small, lightweight lens.

Their look is characterized by a gentle sharpness and a very smooth transition between the in-focus and out-of-focus areas. The Supreme Primes give the creator absolute control over the image by revealing subtle nuanced details in deep shadows and bright highlights. zeiss.com/cine/supremeprime

6 8 16 20 26 28 30 32 34 36 44 50 52 54 56 58 60 62 64 66 68 70 72 74 76 78

VIEW FROM THE TOP•LYNDSAY DUTHIE, CEO PGGB

28 AN CAILÍN CIÚIN

PRODUCTION NEWS LETTER FROM AMERICA•RICHARD CRUDO ASC WHO, WHAT, WHEN & WHERE JOHN MATHIESON BSC•DR STRANGE IN THE MULTIVERSE OF MADNESS KATE MCCULLOUGH ISC•AN CAILÍN CIÚIN TOMMY MADDOX-UPSHAW ASC•THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH TRISTAN OLIVER BSC•COPPELIA

34 ROOM 7

ALI CIHAN YILMAZ•ROOM 7 BSC EXPO ROUND-UP CLAUDIO MIRANDA CSC ASC •TOP GUN: MAVERICK SUZIE LAVELLE ISC BSC•CONVERSATIONS WITH FRIENDS ARMIN FRANZEN•DAS BOOT S3 ROB HARDY BSC ASC•MEN INDUSTRY LENS• DAN SASAKI PANAVISION

44 TOP GUN: MAVERICK

STUDENT UNION• FILMAKADEMIE BADEN-WÜRTTEMBERG ONE TO WATCH•BRENDAN HARVEY SMOOTH OPERATOR•CHRIS PLEVIN ACO SONY VENICE 2 REVIEW•DP MATT LEWIS DANIELA CAJÍAS AEC•ALCARRÀS PETRA KORNER AAC•THE ROAD DANCE

66 ALCARRÀS

STURLA BRANDTH GRØVLEN DFF•THE INNOCENTS ON TOUR •MOVIETECH SPOTLIGHT •DOPCHOICE GAFFER’S CAFÉ •INTERNATIONAL CINEMA LIGHTING SOCIETY SHOOTING GALLERY•EURO CINE EXPO 2022

68 THE ROAD DANCE CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD MAY 2022 5

VIEW FROM THE TOP•LYNDSAY DUTHIE

JOINED UP THINKING

Managing industrial relations, skills and soundstage space needs a joined-up approach

Lyndsay Duthie, CEO, The Production Guild Of Great Britain (PGGB) gives her perspective on the current ‘rude health’ of UK production, the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead, and how PGGB is responding to keep UK production professionals at the top of their game.

W

hen I reflect on the past two years, what stands out most is how resilient we have proven as an industry – from mobilising so quickly back to production during the pandemic, to our extraordinary film and HETV drama production spend figures for 2021, worth a record £5.64 billion.

Industry is working closely to support this unprecedented boom, at pace and scale to ensure talent pipelines are secure. The BFI’s UK Skills Review Group is engaging with a strong array of stakeholders, including ourselves at PGGB, to identify key needs and solutions.

Broadly speaking, it’s got to be about the longterm aim of opening-up the industry at every level, pulling together to make UK film and HETV careers accessible and a realistic option for people in all parts of the country.

We’ve partnered with the British Film Commission to target training on areas that have been identified as priorities in line with their UK Stage Space Support Strategy. To support this, we’ve developed an innovative Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) with modules that can be completed asynchronously, which better suits those already in work and with limited time. Our VLE has also created ‘learning communities’ within different cohorts, that continue to support each other beyond the life of course.

The UK is a worldclass content producer, with an attractive tax relief system. It’s a filming destination of choice, and rightly so. Audiences want to watch British-made content more than ever and our membership is in demand. It’s inevitable that high demand causes a very active picture on the ground, in some cases with shifting schedules and experienced crew considering more options before committing.

On the one hand, this presents challenges, but on the other it means there has never been a better time to work in production.

Your experience will work in your favour and could secure you a faster pace of progression than before.

There’s more investment than ever going into training, not just via the ScreenSkills levies, but also through the screen sector giants rolling out their own programmes, such as Netflix’s Grow Creative scheme.

At PGGB we have quadrupled our training provision in the past year. If we get it right and adapt well, our industry will benefit in the long term and become even stronger. We want the boom to long continue and there’s no reason for it not to. But this means that 6 MAY 2022 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

You can’t make great films without investing in the people

managing industrial relations, skills and soundstage space needs with a joined-up approach is more vital than ever.

In recognition of the UK-wide boom and increase in stage space – which is set to rival Hollywood’s – we’re particularly proud to have begun our rollout of PGGB National and Regional Committees.

These new committees are intended to provide a strong voice for those working in production in each region or nation, whilst also enabling targeted support to strengthen the workforce around the country. Locations are being established in line with the British Film Commission’s Stage Space Support Development hub centres. The first to go live has been the PGGB Bristol & South West England Committee.

The challenges and opportunities faced by teams on the ground will differ depending on where they are working. Through these new committees we can have direct, regular dialogue, which will enable us to provide more targeted support, ensuring local crew benefit from national interventions intended to strengthen the production sector, opening more doors to people from all backgrounds and ensuring effective training is provided to help career progression. The other five committees due to be formed in the coming months are: Scotland; Wales; Northern Ireland; the Northwest of England; and Yorkshire. This is all underpinned by the belief that together we are stronger.

PGGB’s biannual awards are always a landmark in our calendar, as an important showcase for our members’ achievements. We hosted this virtually in 2020, with Jurassic World: Dominion’s UK production team winning the PGGB Innovation Award for Special Contribution To The Industry.

The first major studio feature to get back underway in the UK after government gave the greenlight to restart production, Jurassic World: Dominion’s crew included 27 PGGB members. The blockbuster wrapped filming in November 2020 after a multinational shoot, which required a total of 40,000 Covid tests and cast bubbling together for four months. An incredible achievement and one that is important to appreciate now as the film nears its global theatrical release.

And finally, we were back together ‘in-person’ with our 2022 Awards in March, with some amazing winners. The PGGB Film Production Team Of The Year Award was presented to the production team behind the action-filled Viking epic The Northman (DP Jarin Blaschke) (New Regency/Focus Features), with a raft of PGGB members in key production roles.

Akhilesh Patel | Camera

The Northman was the first major feature to shoot in Northern Ireland during the pandemic. It was an absolute trailblazer. When the UK entered lockdown just days before The Northman’s principal photography was due to start in March 2020, director Robert Eggers and crew quarantined in Belfast, rethinking production practises and schedules, devising innovative solutions to Covid-safety challenges, and navigating arrangements with a multinational cast. The result on screen is stunning.

Carmen Poulton | Costume

Film Forward is a programme for experienced Black, Asian and minority ethnic crew looking to step up into a more senior role – all chosen through a competitive process.

Chad Orororo | Sound

We’ve sought them out because busy productions tell us they want to extend their networks but don’t always have the time.

As we look to the future, I’m keen to ensure PGGB is at the heart of the agenda and that our work is visible, keeping our members’ talents and voices in the spotlight. Our inaugural Royal Patron, HRH The Earl Of Wessex, is now on-board to help us highlight key issues, such as the need to elevate diversity and inclusion and attract more entrants into the industry, to plug skills gaps.

PGGB’s Diversity and Inclusion Action Group (DIAG) has made great strides in the 18 months since its inception, with our Mission Inclusion Programme (#MI21 / #MI22) gaining momentum with its first mentoring scheme completed, which culminated in a wrap event at Westminster Palace, and a strong roster of progressive initiatives aimed at improving representation and strengthening skills in the UK’s production workforce.

I’m hugely proud of what we are achieving. We are at a point where the creative success of the UK film and TV industry is greater than ever and we are the fastest growing sector in the UK economy. Having His Royal Highness’ support and platform is a fantastic recognition of our members’ outstanding work that powers UK production and the importance of nurturing new talent entering the industry.

Lyndsay Duthie CEO The Production Guild Of Great Britain

Harfun Li | Edit

So meet the crew – and hire them Mari Yamamura | DoP

Abid Kahn | Edit

Aamir Riaz | Lighting

Contact Naomi.Joseph@ScreenSkills.com to discuss the funding we have available to support these crew members or other Film Forward talent on your next film

Lorene Dewett | Edit

www.screenskills.com/filmforward

PRODUCTION & POST NEWS

NEW SIZE. SAME FEATURES. AVAILABLE NOW.

C

inematographer Stephen H. Burum ASC will be honoured with the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2022 EnergaCamerimage Festival, which this year is celebrating its 30th anniversary and will run in Torun, Poland, on Nov. 12-19.

Burum is best-known for his collaborations with director Brian De Palma, on classics such as The Untouchables (1987), Casualties Of War (1989), Carlito’s Way (1993), Mission: Impossible (1996), Snake Eyes (1998) and Mission To Mars (2000).

His canon of work also includes Joel Schumacher’s St. Elmo’s Fire (1985), Danny DeVito’s The War Of The Roses (1989), and Ken Kwapis’ and Marisa Silver’s He Said, She Said (1991).

Born in California in 1939, Burum was interested in film from an early age and shot his first movie with a Kodak Brownie 8mm camera.

He attended the UCLA School Of Theatre, Film & Television, where he shot many student films

and was inspired further by meeting industry professionals.

His first professional experience working behind the camera came in 1964 on the NBC TV/ Disney Studios’ wildlife series Wonderful World Of Color, but he was then drafted into the army where he shot military training films.

On resuming civilian life, Burum was employed on commercials, TV shows and indie films, before working as second unit cameraman/director on Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, (DP Vittorio Storaro AIC ASC). Burum’s debut as a DP came in 1982 when he lensed The Escape Artist, a story of a boy exploring a magician’s world, directed by fellow cinematographer Caleb Deschanel ASC. Towards the end of his flourishing professional career Burum conducted film classes as part of The Kodak Cinematographer-in-Residence programme at the UCLA Film School. His achievements led to

MOVIETECH & WILLIAM F. WHITE INTERNATIONAL JOIN FORCES

M

ovietech, the UK-based independent UK camera, lens and grip rental specialist, has been acquired by Sunbelt Rentals for an undisclosed sum. Through its North American business, Sunbelt Rentals already owns film/TV production rental specialists William F. White International Inc. (WFW), and the strategic acquisition of Movietech will allow both companies to leverage their respective areas of expertise.

Movietech chairman, John Buckley, commented, “We are delighted to join the team at Sunbelt Rentals. Having enjoyed a long-standing relationship with our friends and colleagues at WFW, this represents a perfect opportunity for Movietech to offer a scaled-up version of the boutique-style service we are known to provide.

“With our existing team, supported by WFW and Sunbelt Rentals, Movietech now has a fantastic platform to grow its range of product and services, with the breadth and depth necessary to deliver these resources to new and existing

customers across the filmmaking community.”

Movietech’s senior team will remain in place to ensure the smooth integration of the business, with Trevor Huys, WFW’s VP of camera and virtual production, overseeing operations.

Renowned for customer service and technical knowhow, and with bases at Pinewood Studios and Great Point Seren Studios in Wales, Movietech provides professional image capture solutions and engineered production equipment to the cinema film, TV, advertising and music industries.

WFW similarly provides production equipment and expertise to the entertainment industry from offices across North America country, with an extensive inventory covering camera, lighting, grip, power, specialty equipment, location support and virtual production volumes, plus production-ready studio ad backlot properties. Sunbelt Rentals UK & Ireland forms part of FTSE 100 Company, Ashtead Group.

ANGÉNIEUX HONOURS DARIUS KHONDJI AFC ASC & EVELIN VAN REI AT CANNES 2022

A

n official partner of the Cannes Festival since 2013, cinema lens manufacturer Angénieux will once again host the Pierre Angénieux Tribute, and will honour renowned cinematographer, Darius Khondji AFC ASC, with the award at the 2022 event. Alongside this, Angénieux will bestow

8 MAY 2022 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

its Angénieux Special Encouragement accolade to Dutch cinematographer Evelin van Rei.

Khondji is the ninth cinematographer to receive this prestigious tribute after Philippe Rousselot AFC ASC in 2013, Vilmos Zsigmond ASC HSC in 2014, Roger A. Deakins CBE BSC ASC in 2015, Peter

Copyright@Douglas Kirkland

DP STEPHEN H. BURUM ASC TO RECEIVE CAMERIMAGE 2022 LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD

ASC nominations for The Untouchables and The War Of The Roses, and the ASC Award For Cinematography in Hoffa, which also brought him an Oscar nomination. In 2008, ASC bestowed Burum with its Lifetime Achievement Award.

STEFAN DUSCIO ACS WINS DP-OF-THEYEAR AWARD

A

t this year’s Fujinon Fujifilm Australian Cinematographers Society National Awards, held at the Hilton Hotel in Adelaide, Stefan Duscio ACS won the prestigious Australian Cinematographer Of The Year Milli Award. Duscio also won a Gold Tripod in the Feature Films - Budget $2m and over category for his work on The Dry.

Suschitzky in 2016, Christopher Doyle in 2017, Edward Lachman AS in 2018, Bruno Delbonnel AFC ASC in 2019 and Agnès Godard ASC in 2021.

Evelin van Rei is a London-based filmmaker and photographer who became interested in cinema from a young age, and discovered her fascination for the art of images whilst studying at the Cambridge School Of Art in England. She is the first self-taught cinematographer to receive the Angénieux endowment, after Pamela Albarrán in 2021, Modhura Palit in 2019 and Cécile Zhang in 2018. The prize will allow van Rei to use Angénieux lens technology on her next project.

SOFT LIGHT. PRECISE WHITE.

COLOUR SCIENCE

CONTROL

FORM FACTOR

With its innovative light engine, Panalux Sonara

Panalux Sonara provides the highest level

Available in 4:4 and 3:2 form factors,

produces a broad, even spectrum of variable

of creative control with adjustable CCT, HSI,

1600K-20,000K. Render natural skin tones,

DMX, LumenRadio CRMX, or EtherCON, or

Panalux Sonara offers a low weight, slim

white light at a high CRI, TLCI, and SSI, from

Gel, and x,y coordinate modes. Connect via

profile, and integrated ballast. Refine the

tune across an array of pastel hues, and

take command with the removable, ergonomic

diffusion, or eggcrate, and rig how you like

accurately emulate select LEE lighting gels.

controller with custom UI.

LEARN MORE AT WWW.PANALUXSONARA.COM

fixtures’ wraparound output via softbox, with comprehensive mounting options.

PRODUCTION & POST NEWS

IRELAND’S LARGEST FILM & TV STUDIO TO OPEN IN 2024

NANLUX, NANLITE & NANLINK CELEBRATE 30 YEARS IN LIGHTING

NOW £4,535

H

ackman Capital Partners, together with partner Square Mile Capital Management, is making significant further investment in the Irish creative industries. The group, that was behind the acquisition of Ireland’s Ardmore Studios and Troy Studios in August 2021, has been selected to develop the new Greystones Media Campus, a state-of-the-art film and television studio complex in the coastal town of Greystones, Ireland.

The two-phased development, approximately 15 miles south of Dublin, is a joint venture with the sovereign development Ireland Strategic Investment Fund (ISIF), and Capwell, a Sisk family investment vehicle. The total investment in the project is estimated at nearly €300 million.

Greystones Film & Television Studios will be the latest addition to the Hackman Capital/Square Mile Capital portfolio. The partnership’s affiliate, The MBS Group, will assist in studio design and also oversee operations, including production services and equipment rentals, when the campus opens its doors in 2024.

When fully-developed, Greystones Media Campus will be Ireland’s largest studio complex with more than 670,000sq/ft of studio space across 44acres offering sea views, including 14 sound stages. This development will double highend film and TV stage capacity in Ireland and help meet tenant demand as a growing number of international and domestic productions are vying for space.

The new development will create 1,500 new jobs once it is operational (and 450 jobs during the construction phase). The MBS-operated Ardmore Studios has recently been the home to productions such as The Last Duel, The Green Knight, The Tudors and Penny Dreadful.

L

ED lighting brands Nanlux, Nanlite and Nanlink, are celebrating 30 years in the design and manufacture of professional lighting equipment and technology for the film, television and photographic industries.

Formed in 1992, as NanGuang Photo & Video Systems, by Lin BiGuang, the company became established as an innovator in the design and fabrication of LED systems. As the business evolved, the introduction of new brands, such as Nanlux and Nanlite, gained the company significant recognition, and the Nanlux and Nanlite brands have established themselves in the field of LED innovation, with

ZEISS DELIVERS HIGH-END ZEISS SUPREME PRIME 15MM T1.8 CINE LENS

Z

eiss has added a new wide-angle lens to complete its popular Supreme Prime series of high-end cine lenses, with the introduction of the Zeiss Supreme Prime 15mm. The new lens provides an extremely wide-angle view and a maximum aperture of T1.8.

SONY SHIPS VENICE 2 CAMERA WORLDWIDE

T

he first shipments of Sony flagship Venice 2 digital cinema camera have now been received by rental houses and Sony specialist dealers and dispatched to productions.

Otto Nemenz has delivered its Sony’s Venice 2’s to the set of a Paramount series, whilst Keslow Camera has handed-over its first cameras to Oscar-winning cinematographer Claudio Miranda ASC for a feature production. Panavision has forwarded a batch of cameras to Gonzalo Amat ASC for a high-profile Netflix series. Sony Venice 2 also been used on commercials by cinematographers including Newton Thomas Sigel ASC, Tommy Maddox-Upshaw ASC and Rachel Morrison ASC.

a diverse range of lighting fixtures and accessories now sold in over 85 countries.

Today, the company employs over 900 staff, at a state-of-the-art design and manufacturing facility, and turns out more than one million products per year. Among the product releases that coincide with the 30th anniversary, are the new Pavo Tube II 15X, 30X and 60X fixtures – a range of RGBWW LED tube lights with studio-quality output. The Pavo Tubes join the Evoke 1200, a flexible fixture delivering high levels of illumination, whether used as a Fresnel, controllable spotlight, or a natural feeling soft source, available in 5600K and Tungsten 3200K variants.

With this 14-piece series, now ranging from 15 to 200mm and a maximum aperture of T1.5 to T2.2, the Zeiss Supreme Primes cover a wide range of camera sensors, such as the Sony Venice 2, the ARRI Alexa LF and Red Monstro.

The Zeiss Supreme Primes cover a wide range of camera sensors, such as the Sony Venice 2, ARRI Alexa LF and Red Monstro.

Sony Venice 2 is equipped with a 8.6K fullframe image sensor that can capture any format, including full-frame, Super35 and Anamorphic, at the 4K+ resolution required by many streamers and studios.

Director DP Gonzalo Amat ASC tested Sony Venice 2 around New York City in November and is now using it on the upcoming season of the Netflix series Outer Banks.

“The quality of the 8.6K sensor is first rate,” said Amat. “The latitude, colours, and highlights – everything was even sharper than before while still using a menu similar to what I was used to.

The cinematic look provided by the Zeiss Supreme Prime lens family – subtle and gradual focus fall-off, plus consistently warm and soft bokeh – comes into its own when used for feature film and high-end episodic production.

Cinematographers Armin Franzen and David Higgs BSC, used the Zeiss Supreme Prime lens family for the Sky series Das Boot S3. Supreme Primes were also used to shoot the sci-fi adventure The Adam Project, shot by DP Tobias Schliessler ASC and the sequel Knives Out 2, lensed

by Steve Yedlin ASC – both Netflix productions.

You can shoot on a very bright, sunny day without losing detail, plus the rendition of the colour and skin tone of faces is really quite cinematic. It doesn’t feel electronic—it feels more like a film camera.”

Cinematographer Robert McLachlan ASC CSC also commented: “We’ve been shooting the new LA mystery thriller series, American Gigolo, with two Sony Venice 2 cameras for eight weeks now. Every day, under every condition and setting, it continues to impress. Whether at night, at dawn, in the studio, on city nights, or at high noon and sunset in the desert, the highlights naturally rolloff, and our actors look gorgeous. Night-time cityscapes almost light themselves, and I’m using less light control than ever elsewhere.”

Blackmagic URSA Mini Pro 12K Introducing the world’s most advanced digital film camera!

URSA Mini Pro 12K is a revolution in digital film with a 12,288 x 6480 Super 35 sensor built into the award winning URSA Mini body. The combination of 80 megapixels, new color science and the flexibility of Blackmagic RAW makes working with 12K a reality. URSA Mini Pro 12K features an interchangeable PL mount, built in ND filters, dual CFast and UHS-II SD card recorders, USB-C expansion port and more.

Record to Blackmagic RAW

Digital Film in Extreme Resolution

Fast and Flexible Post Production

URSA Mini Pro 12K gives you the benefits of shooting with film including

Shooting RAW in 12K preserves the deepest control of detail, exposure and

amazing detail, wide dynamic range and rich, full RGB color. Incredible

color during post. Best of all, Blackmagic RAW is designed to accelerate 12K

definition around objects makes it ideal for working with green screen and

for post production, so it’s as easy to work with as standard HD or Ultra HD

VFX including compositing live action and CGI. Super sampling at 12K means

files. Blackmagic RAW stores metadata, lens data, white balance, digital slate

you get better color and resolution at 8K as well as smooth antialiased edges.

information and custom LUTs to ensure consistency of image on set and in post.

60 frames a reality! Constant quality encoding options adapt compression to match the detail of the scene. Constant bitrate gives you the best possible images at a consistent file size. You can record to two cards simultaneously so you can shoot high frame rate 12K or 8K on CFast or UHS-II cards.

Cinematic 12K Super 35 Sensor The URSA Mini Pro 12K sensor has a resolution of 12,288 x 6480, 14 stops of dynamic range and a native ISO of 800. Featuring equal amounts of red, green and blue pixels, the sensor is optimized for images at multiple resolutions. You can shoot 12K at 60 fps or use in-sensor scaling to allow 8K or 4K RAW at up to 120 fps without cropping or changing your field of view.

www.blackmagicdesign.com/uk SRP is Exclusive of VAT. Camera shown with optional accessories and lens.

10 MAY 2022 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

Blackmagic RAW makes cinema quality 12-bit, 80 megapixel images at up to

Blackmagic URSA Mini Pro 12K

£4,535 Learn More!

PRODUCTION & POST NEWS

DEDOLIGHT NEO BALLAST OFFERS SMOOTH LED DIMMING & LIGHT CONTROL

D

edolight has announced the Dedolight Neo Ballast, designed to improve light control, dimming and usability of LED lights across the Dedolight range. The new ballast delivers absolutely smooth dimming from 0.1% to full power and can drive all 34 of the latest Dedolight LED lights from 2090W, whether they are monocolor, bi-color,

infrared or ultraviolet.

The ballast is based on an all-new technical platform of advanced electronics, packed in a new housing with a new unified connector layout. Key features include: a simple, intuitive menu via OLED display; auto-sense of the connected light head, and automatic adjustment to the electronic settings and display; a flicker-free mode, and high-speed flicker-free mode up to 50,000fps; perfect 8-bit or advanced DMX control to RDM and 16-bit, smooth or linear, firmware upgradability; plus optional CRMX and bluetooth control.

ARRI RELEASES TRINITY 2 AND ARTEMIS 2 CAMERA STABILISERS A RRI has introduced the second-generation of its Trinity and Artemis camera stabilisers. The new, modular-based system incorporates enhancements to camera movement, connectivity, power management, user-interface, balance options and product longevity. A quick and easy upgrade transforms the purely mechanical Artemis 2 into the hybrid Trinity 2, which adds electronic stabilisation for an even wider range of movements and angles.

Wide-ranging compatibility is assured through the use of ARRI’s precision-engineered

SAM plates, enabling cameras from different manufacturers to be securely and rapidly mounted to the stabilisers. The SAM standard permits fast, tool-free camera switching from either the Trinity 2 or Artemis 2 to a tripod or ARRI’s stabilised remote heads.

A new, modular battery hanger facilitates the flexible, efficient and dependable power management. Users can choose batteries from any manufacturer, and will experience

intelligently-regulated 12V and 24V high-capacity power delivery.

In addition to the standard centre post, two new post lengths are also available for Trinity 2 and Artemis 2, as well as for both first-generation stabilisers. The longer Super Post allows more extreme camera positions and angles, either higher up or further out from the operator’s body. The Shorty Post is suited to fast, agile work or space-constrained locations, and will be especially useful with the compact Artemis 2.

MOTION IMPOSSIBLE LAUNCHES AGITO MAGTRAX

D

olly systems manufacturer, Motion Impossible, has innovated with a new magnetic-strip-guided system, called MagTrax, for its Agito dolly. MagTrax enables the Agito to follow a magnetic strip laid on a surface, underneath a carpet or embedded within a set. The strip can be arranged in various ways beyond what can be done with a regular track, including curves and the ability to move seamlessly from one strip to another. The Agito will autonomously follow each path while freeing-up the control for camera

movement, with guaranteed repeatability, plus speed control along straight or curved tracks. It also offers collision detection with automatic e-stop. In addition, MagTrax

12 MAY 2022 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

has a configurable front and rear lighting system for pre-production and production state awareness.

PRODUCTION & POST NEWS

ASPEC’S SUSTAINABLE ROAD MAP A SPEC (Association Of Studio & Production Equipment Companies) provides a crucial collective voice to camera, grip and lighting-hire companies, plus studio and production facilities. Here, ASPEC’s chair, Dana Harrison (director of operations at ARRI Rental UK) writes-in with an update.

“ASPEC has origins going back to the early 1980s. Originally it was represented by major, competing lighting rental and studio facility companies supplying the film, television and multi-media industries.

Prime movers at the time were Mr Lighting, Grip House and Lee Lighting, along with smaller, niche firms, such as Bell Lighting, On The Spot and Rainbow Lighting, names which have passed into the mists of time.

Initially, called the Lighting Contractors Association, its success as a representative

SUMOLIGHT INTRODUCES SUMOMAX LED LIGHT

S

umolight GmbH, known for its Sumospace+ and Sumosky products, has introduced the high-output, Sumomax LED light. With a distinctive hexagonal design, highlumen output and modular form factor, this 700W, 1800-15,000K, full-spectrum, RGBWW fixture is designed to serve and inspire creative lighting, performing as a keylight, hardlight, punchlight, spacelight or softlight.

The Sumomax retains a similar form factor to the Sumospace+, and its hexagonal profile measures 561 x 500 x 175mm / 22.1 x 19.7 x 6.9 inches. Fixtures can be arranged honeycomb-style to create unique patterns or shapes to suit the job. For enhanced lighting creativity, cells within the structure can be controlled as a group or individually.

Thanks to its “swoptic” module interchangeable optics, beams may be enhanced and directed from narrow 20° native up to super-wide 120° via clip-on optics. Intensity is fully-dimmable 100% to zero. Built-in effects include 0-30Hz shutter/strobe and automated programmes. For added control, the system works with an array of light shaping tools that transform it from a spacelight to softlight to a high intensity fixture.

Each fixture comes complete with internal power supply, on-fixture touch display panel and DMX/ RDM, ethernet, WiFi control ability. Its design and build offers silent passive cooling, and the Sumomax is IP65 rated.

14 MAY 2022 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

body, resulted in a decision to incorporate it as a vehicle to best represent the interests of its members, and so was born the Association Of Lighting & Studio Facility Companies Ltd. When one realises that the initial membership comprised of companies that were the fiercest of competitors, it reveals the determination and desire to work together.

Some of the association’s early successes include working with the Ministry Of Transport to achieve sensible and workable tachograph rules for the industry. A Crane Guidance document, the first of its kind, saw all member companies supplying camera cranes, working together to put in place a concise publication. This would go a long way in ensuring the safety of the camera crews and the production personnel working around them. This document has stood the test of time and has recently been updated to include all the new crane and remote heads currently in use throughout the film and television industry.

With an increasing membership, which went beyond lighting equipment, it was decided to rebrand the old association to reflect its current members, which now included rental companies specialising in camera, lenses, remote systems, and several other equipment types.

And so, the Association Of Studios & Production Equipment Companies (ASPEC) was born!

Throughout the period of both the old association and the new ASPEC, key people played an active role in committees set up by the Health & Safety Executive, which was originally set-up as the Broadcast Joint Advisory Committee (BJAC) and later became the Joint Advisory Committee for Entertainment (JACE).

ASPEC also chaired the Film Broadcast & Multi-media Safety Group (FBM-M) subcommittee of the HSE over several years and was involved in various initiatives including Rental Guard, a global vehicle for tracking and tracing stolen equipment.

In 2002, ASPEC negotiated a formal labour agreement for the provision of gaffers, electricians and electricians to commercials following failed negotiations between the Electricians’ Union (AMICUS) and Production Companies Association (APA). This agreement is still in place today.

In recent years ASPEC gave up some of its independence in favour of becoming an association within PLASA (Professional Lighting & Sound Association). However, after a period, it was recognised, that PLASA better-represented the events industry and therefore, it was agreed that the two associations would split amicably, with ASPEC once again independent and representing its own unique market sector.

Fast forward to 2020, when Covid-19 hit our shores – a challenging and trying time for the whole of our industry. The members of ASPEC found themselves under a degree of pressure

to re-open their businesses to production. It suddenly dawned on associations, representative bodies and other interested parties within the industry, that without camera, grip, lighting and ancillary equipment, facilities and studios, any return to work was near-impossible. Members began working immediately to create a ‘Return To Work’ strategy.

The aim was to reach a consensus amongst all members where an agreed and consistent approach was achieved when it came to pandemic guidelines, risk assessments, protocols, hygiene and sanitation. A successful ‘Return To Work’ strategy was achieved by 1st June 2020, when all member companies were able to reopen their doors with the confidence that they could provide a safe working environment for their employees, productions, and crew.

There was a realisation amongst the industry’s representative associations that the companies making-up the membership of ASPEC play a crucial role in the development, formulation and implementation of policies and strategies relating to the film, television and multimedia industries. With pride, the association can now rank itself amongst the decision makers within the industry, having been recognised and given stakeholder status for any future initiatives.

It goes without saying that all member companies were dealing with the fears and unknowns of Covid. It was a scary time. But the results of this experience created a strong unity amongst all members that honestly will outlive the memory of the pandemic.

With Covid protocols established across the industry, our members were able to get back to doing what they do best – successfully supplying to a booming industry in the UK – and it has resulted in many member companies reporting record-breaking business.

Looking over the horizon, the association has leant its support to member company initiatives, such as the Camera Technicians’ Apprenticeship Scheme, a fully-funded placement scheme for young leavers. With Barry Bassett (MD of VMI. TV) leading the cause, and in collaboration with ScreenSkills, LSA and Next Gen Skills Academy, they are looking to support the second intake late in 2022/2023. Have a look online at the Camera Prep Technician Apprenticeship (www.nextgenskillsacademy.com).

For many years, ASPEC member companies have been training young people within their organisations. Many of them are now successful freelance crew in the industry. Rental companies provide the best opportunity for young people to learn the tools of the trade and prepare them for a career in the industry. All members take great pride in seeing so many people come through their doors and spread their wings.

So what’s next on the agenda for 2022?

Sustainability. ASPEC is looking at different ways to work collaboratively to make meaningful changes to the industry and the environment. This will include waste reduction, equipment life cycle and recycling, facility energy efficiencies and more. Watch this space!”

Consider joining ASPEC, visit https://aspec.website/joining-aspec

OUTSTANDING OPTICAL PERFORMANCE

LEITZ PRIME WWW.LEITZ-CINE.COM

RICHARD CRUDO ASC•LETTER FROM AMERICA Euro Cine Expo

Ladd Observatory, Providence, Rhode Island on Saturday, 26 March 2022, 2:16PM

stand 208

ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATIONS I

had been wanting to make this photograph of the Ladd Observatory for the best part of 25 years.

While shooting the feature Outside Providence (1999, dir. Michael Corrente) in – appropriately enough – Providence, Rhode Island, I used to drive past the corner of Hope and Doyle every day on my way to work. No matter the conditions, the dark building, crowned by the astronomical observation dome, always drew my attention. Maybe it was its long setback from the street and the greenery that surrounded it, but the obsession was certainly rooted in the past; I wouldn’t have been surprised to see Theodore Roosevelt, fresh from a daring expedition, bounding down the steps..

As is typical, the demands of the job kept me from going deeper and I’ve been sorry about that ever since. Once again finding myself in Providence – this time to shoot a pilot – I made my way to that intersection and realized that neither the building nor the feelings it evoked had changed.

I figured the moment had finally come to trip the shutter, so I did. The result represents exactly what I envisioned in 1997 and highlights the staying power of such random, low-simmering obsessions.

As special as the image is to me though, it carries little significance in the broader sense. Considering that Instagram alone uploads 95 million photographs a day – some of them very good, by the way – it’s meaningless! Would I have been foolish to imagine someone connecting with it? The thought never occurred to me. I took the photo for the joy of doing so; my satisfaction came from just being there. If the result goes no further than my personal archive it will all be the same to me.

But there’s another aspect to that motivation, and I believe it’s common to most cinematographers. We are obsessed by the notion of freezing a moment in time. This has nothing to do with the peripherals, i.e. the when, where and how of what we’re shooting. Instead, it reflects a drive to share things that can originate as easily in the pit of our chest as in our intellect.

Sometimes we don’t know why we execute our craft in a certain way beyond the conviction that ‘it felt right.’

How lucky we are to make that claim! This is a hopeful trait, one that’s life-affirming and filled with optimism.

16 MAY 2022 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

The simple act of rolling our camera makes us witness to things that will never occur in the same way again. It also marks an instant in our lives, one we will have the privilege of revisiting should we so desire.

If I could possess any superpower, it would be the ability to travel back-and-forth through time, while maintaining a contemporary sensibility. Watching a movie gets us close to that. Watching something we’ve personally shot gets us closer yet. Like hearing a song that was popular during childhood or projecting our imagination into the future, a later encounter with our own images can trigger a variety

It’s about the people you’re involved with and the effort you make together of powerful emotions.

While taking a break from writing this piece, I caught half an hour of Michael Curtiz’s 1936 B&W effort, The Charge Of the Light Brigade (DP Sol Polito ASC). It’s a terrific ride in many ways and, while not quite lost to the ages, it has become as obscure as most other eighty-six year-old titles. In addition to seeing Errol Flynn at the top of his game, it’s bursting with Sol Polito ASC’s resplendent, #25 Red-filtered day\exteriors.

Apart from that, I couldn’t help but wonder what was going on at the time in the lives of the people who made the movie. I don’t suppose they were terribly different from any of us, save for the fashions and vernacular of their era. But keeping in mind that the audiences of 2122 might be inclined to judge us in the same knee-jerk fashion, it would be a disservice to think of them as old fashioned or somehow disadvantaged. What they did was incredibly sophisticated and survives as a document of their existence, just as we hope our work will for us.

This speaks to something else I’ve become more aware of over the years. I wish everyone would give it some thought. Haskell Wexler ASC put it in plain terms.

“When we’re working, it’s not just about the art and the mechanics and procedures. It’s really about the people you’re involved with and the effort you make together, the relationships you create. It’s learning about yourself, experiencing things and growing as a human being.”

If more of us took that to heart, the witnessing aspect of our work would hold an immeasurably stronger significance.

I’m always grateful that I get to do what I do, even if it’s only knocking out a snapshot with my cellphone camera. While I wouldn’t advise waiting 25 years to take a picture, the long delay between visits to the intersection of Hope and Doyle did give me time to think. The fire is still burning.

So, maybe somewhere down the line I’ll have a look at my photo of the Ladd Observatory and remember that I once stood before it with camera in hand, fully engaged in that moment. And that will make me happy.

Supplying the film and broadcast industry with the latest innovations in lighting and accessories since 1999

LCA - Lights, Camera, Action Offices in UK | France | Germany www.LCAlights.com

Where creativity meets technology V I S I T U S AT

Euro Cine Expo

Find us at Stand 222 Learn more cvp.com/euro-cine-expo

222 The Main Stage Visit CVP’s showcase of the latest production solutions from leading brands such as ARRI, Sony, Canon, RED and many more. Compare the largest collection of cine lenses, monitors and stabilition systems all supported with impartial advice and first class service from CVP’s technical consultants and service specialists.

WHO, WHAT, WHEN & WHERE

WHO, WHAT, WHEN & WHERE Opposite: (top clockwise) – Sergio Delgado on The Pact S2, with 1st AC Elliot Hale (photo by Dan Edwards); Ruairi O’Brien ISC on the set of Jericho Ridge in Kosovo; Stephen Murphy ISC BSC scouting for Atlanta S3 with director Hiro Murai; and Ruairi O’Brien ISC on Jericho Ridge again.

This page: (descending) Sean Francis in Morocco lighting Queen Cleopatra for Nutopia’s African Queens series; and Zoe GoodwinStuart on The Rising (photo by Vish Sharma); James Frater in South Africa shooting Invasion for Apple TV.

THE SHOOTISTS

Our regular round up of who is shooting what and where WORLDWIDE PRODUCTION ASSOCIATES: Catherine Derry is prepping on The Great S3 for Starz. Mattias Nyberg BSC has started on The Elect with director Ben A. Williams, a 4-parter for House Productions/ITV. Stefan Yap is readying for the Sky Original feature Breaking Point with directors Max Giwa and Dania Pasquini. Stephen Murphy ISC BSC has completed principal photography on BBC’s Blue Lights with director Gilles Bannier, produced by Two Cities TV. Baz Irvine ISC BSC continues principal photography on Apple TV+’s

Matthew Fox filmed spots for Asda with director Tiny Bullet via Flipt, and Sainsbury’s for You Are Here and The Apiary. James Henry shot with January Productions’ director Thomas Lagrange for Gucci.

Nathalie Pitters lit an ad for Peloton with Whisper director Jessie Ayles. Matthew Emvin Taylor lit a promo in Barcelona for David Guetta and Becky Hill with Noir director Micahel Holyk. Dan Holland was in Mexico for a Rice-A-Roni TVC with Slash Dynamic director AJ Columb. Alexandre Jamin lit Nissan ad with director Franck Kinanga across Barcelona and Morocco.

UNITED AGENTS: Remi Adefarasin BSC has wrapped on Secret Invasion for Marvel Studios.

Søren Bay DFF is shooting Darkness: Those Who Kill S3 with director Jesper W. Nielsen for Miso Film/ Acorn TV. John Lee BSC is shooting Anansi Boys with director Jermain Julien for Amazon. Philippe Kress DFF has grading Fate: The Winx Saga S2 with director Sallie Aprahamian for Archery Pictures/

Invasion block 2 with director Brad Anderson. Ed Moore BSC has graded The Birth Of Daniel F. Harris with director Alex Winckler for Clerkenwell Films/ C4. Angus Hudson BSC shot pickups on Netflix’s I Used To Be Famous with director Eddie Sternberg.

PJ Dillon ISC ASC and Richard Donnelly continue principal photography on Netflix’s Straight Shooter. Tony Slater Ling BSC is lighting The Full Monty series for Disney+ with director Andrew Chaplin, in Manchester and Sheffield. Arthur Mulhern has started on BBC/Sister Pictures’ Better, with director Jonathan Brough. Anna Patarakina FSF is in Hamburg, prepping the feature The Tutor, with director Alice Troughton, for Bleecker Street.

Manoel Ferreira SASC is shooting The Ex-Wife for Paramount+ in Budapest with director Brian O’Malley. Joel Devlin is lighting Project IV for Netflix with director Marco Kreuzpaintner. Vanessa Whyte has begun principal photography Ted Lasso S3 for AppleTV+ with director Matt Lipsey.

Katie Swain shot 2nd unit photography on Warner Bros’ Batgirl in Glasgow. Ruairi O’Brien ISC has wrapped on the feature Jericho Ridge with director Will Gilbey for Dog Eat Dog. Paul Morris shot the documentary Explorer: Endurance in Antarctica for Disney+/National Geographic/ ABC News/Little Dot Studios. Matthew J. Smith wrapped a collaborative spot for Deliveroo in London and Los Angeles with Lucky Strike director Chris Dooley. Benjamin Todd lit a spot for Lydia in Bangkok with Birth Paris directing duo Zhang and Knight. Tibor Dingelstad NSC lit a spot for T-Mobile with Cake director Nina Aldering in Sofia.

Marc Gómez del Moral shot Dua Lipa’s latest promo with OB Management director Emil Nava.

20 MAY 2022 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

Netflix. Mark Nutkins is grading The Split S3 with director Dee Koppang O’Leary for Sister Pictures.

Donna Wade shot the short, The Silent Canary, with director Vera Graziadei for Luminous Arts Productions. Danny Cohen BSC is prepping Real Tigers S2 for Apple TV. Damian Paul Daniel is working on a new feature-doc with Stefan Stuckert.

David Higgs BSC is filming Shadow And Bone for Netflix in Hungary. Matt Lewis wrapped on Philip Barantini’s Accused and started prepping for World Productions/ITV’s Malpractice. Laurie Rose BSC is lighting Wool for Apple TV. John Sorapure is working on Warner Bros’ Barbie as second unit director/DP. Simon Tindall is prepping Lawrence Gough’s episodes of The Gold. Ollie Downey BSC is prepping Sister Pictures’ Pack Of Lies. Laurens De Geyter SBC is shooting Professor T S2. Sam Heasman is prepping Wolf.

David Rom has started on Ted Lasso S3 and Simon Stolland is grading Adam Deacon’s feature Sumotherhood. Sam Chiplin has wrapped on The Lost Flowers Of Alice Hart with director Glendyn Ivin. Charlotte Bruus Christensen DFF ASC is shooting Retreat for FX with Britt Marling and Zal Batmanglij. Anton Mertens SBC is lighting a Netflix film in Belgium. Milos Moore is shooting Netflix’s You S4. Neus Ollé AEC BSC is shooting commercials. David Raedeker BSC is lighting Best Interests for BBC1 with director Michael Keillor.

Niels Reedtz Johansen has begun prep for a TV series in Denmark. Kate Reid BSC is lighting the last block of Great Expectations with director Samira Radsi for BBC1/FX Networks. Ed Rutherford is with Lewis Arnold in Leeds shooting ITV’s The Long Shadow. Anna Valdez Hanks is shooting the second block of Culprits for director Claire Oakley and Disney+. Ben Wheeler has begun prep in Hungary for HBO’s Untouchable with director Christopher Smith. Barry Ackroyd BSC is lighting The Old Guard 2 in Rome for director Victoria Mahoney. Philipp Blaubach is in Europe shooting Culprits for Jay Blakeson. Daniel Bronks shot a First Bank commercial in Slovenia for directors UBIK, via 1st Avenue Machine. Simon Chaudoir was also in Slovenia shooting a Monster.com spot with director Benji Weinstein for Smuggler LA. Danny Cohen lit a Money Supermarket TVC for director John Madden through Pulse. Sara Deane has wrapped on Whitstable Pearl 2 with director Jon Jones. Tim Maurice-Jones BSC framed an Aldi ad for Vaughan Arnell in Bulgaria via Merman.

Matias Penachino shot an Asahi ad through Canada. Sebastian Pfaffenbichler AAC lit a Honda commercial for director Fernando Livschitz, via The Mill. Simon Richards lit an Ocado commercial for director Gus Filgate through Bite, and a Santander TVC with Declan Lowney at Merman.

Joost Van Gelder lensed an Army commercial for director Nicolai Fuglsig in Cyprus, via MJZ. Haris Zambarloukos BSC GSC is shooting The Meg 2 for director Ben Wheatley. Daniel Vilar is working on Heart Of Stone as second unit DP. INDEPENDENT TALENT: Chas Bain has wrapped on A Town Called Malice, directed by

Jamie Donoghue. Ole Bratt Birkeland BSC is prepping Never Let Me Go pilot with Marc Munden.

Caroline Bridges is shooting the TV series Commonality, produced by Donna Molloy. Jordan Buck has been shooting with directors David Mellor, Kevin Castanheira and Phoebe Arnstein. Miguel Carmenes lit promos for Robin Knightz and did further days on an F1 documentary. Chris Clarke has wrapped on the elements/VFX unit of Havoc, directed by Gareth Evans. Oliver Curtis BSC is prepping on Debutante, directed by Susannah White.

Ben Davis BSC is shooting JC Chandor’s Kraven The Hunter. Anthony Dod Mantle DFF BSC ASC is shooting for Amazon Prime with Jeff Low at Biscuit.

Adam Etherington is working on Project IV. Kit Fraser has graded I Came By, directed by Babak Anvari. Cinders Forshaw BSC is shooting on Vera S12. Sam Goldie has been shooting commercials with Sam Barker. Catherine Goldschmidt is prepping block 2 of The Ballad Of Renegade Nell with Amanda Brotchie. Eric Kress is shooting the new TV series The Turkish Detective, directed by Niels Arden. John Mathieson BSC is shooting a feature called The Shepherd, based on Frederick Forsyth’s novella, directed by Iain Softley. Seamus McGarvey BSC ASC has started on Angelina Jolie’s Without Blood. Bani Mendy has graded the TV comedy Pru, directed by Teddy Nygh. Andreas Neo is prepping Motive, a feature directed by Anu Menon, developed with the BFI. Mark Patten BSC is shooting Mechanical with Morten Tylden.

Stephan Pehrsson BSC is shooting Red Book Ep1 with Toby Haynes. Tat Radcliffe BSC is lighting Kaos with Georgi Banks-Davis. James Rhodes has been shooting live events – Wolf Alice with director Stroma Cairns, Liam Gallagher with Paul Dugdal, and Muse with Liccy Burke Wild. Ashley Rowe BSC has finished Seize Them, directed by Curtis Vowell.

Martin Ruhe ASC is on George Clooney’s The

Boys In The Boat. Alan Stewart BSC is lighting Our Man From Jersey with Julian Farino. Carl Sundberg is prepping Halo 2. David Ungaro AFC is lensing Black Flies with Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire. Erik Wilson BSC is filming Michael Gracey’s Better Man. MCKINNEY MACARTNEY MANAGEMENT: Ben Butler and Alessandra Scherillo have been shooting commercials. Denis Crossan BSC

is prepping Love Box for BBC with Daniel Kleinman directing. Sergio Delgado continues on BBC’s The Pact S2 with director Nicola Volavka. Michael Filocamo is working on You And Me for ITV. Jean Philippe Gossart AFC is shooting Netflix’s Treason, with Sarah O’Gorman directing. Steve Lawes is filming Beacon 23 for AMC in Toronto.

David Luther shot on Wool for Apple+ TV and additional photography for Netflix’s The Witcher prequel, The Lark. Dale Elena McCready NZCS is shooting on The Witcher S3. Sam McCurdy BSC is filming Shogun in Vancouver for FX. Andy McDonnell is lighting Happy Valley S3 for BBC. John Pardue BSC is shooting the feature Unit 324 in The Cayman Islands with Andy Tennant directing.

Mike Spragg BSC continues on Pitch Perfect: Bumper In Berlin for NBC Universal.

SARA PUTT ASSOCIATES: Death Of England: Face To Face that Sashi Kissoon worked on last

NEO ballast serves all dedolight LED 20 to 90 Watt.

Mono-, bicolour, UV, IR, battery or AC operation Dimming smooth to 0.2% High Speed Video mode up to 50.000 fps All DMX on board (8/16 bit) Option wireless

The ultimate solution UK and Ireland Rental and Sales Distribution: www.cirrolite.com ANZ_CineWorld_05-22_final.indd 1

Visit the dedolight website: www.dedoweigertfilm.de 05.05.22 20:42

CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD MAY 2022 21

WHO, WHAT, WHEN & WHERE year was BAFTA-nominated for Best Single Drama.

David Mackie has graded Mammoth Screen’s Tom Jones, and worked on Wonka second unit.

Yinka Edward is working on The Meg 2. Jan Jonaues working on the new series of Vera. Emily Almond Barr is in Dundee on a documentary for C4. Sean Francis was in Morocco lighting Queen Cleopatra for Nutopia’s African Queens. Andrei Austin ACO Associate BSC SOC is in Scotland working on Neil Gaiman’s Anansi Boys for Endor Productions/Amazon.

Andrew Bainbridge ACO sis Steadicam dailies on Ted Lasso and Riches. Jon Beacham ACO operated on A Town Called Malice for Vertigo Films/Sky. Danny Bishop ACO Associate BSC SOC did dailies for various projects including for Disney. Ed Clark ACO is confirmed on The Red Book – Demon 79 as A-camera/Steadicam. James Frater ACO SOC is in South Africa for the next instalment of Invasion for Apple TV. Ilana Garrard ACO has started on The Gold for BBC/Paramount+. Zoe Goodwin-Stuart ACO is B-camera on The Witcher. James Leigh ACO in Cornwall on the new series of Doc Martin. Will Lyte ACO has started on The Greatest Days. Vince McGahon ACO Associate BSC shot pick-ups on The Crown. Julian Morson ACO Associate BSC GBCT is operating on Kraven The Hunter. Aga

WHO, WHAT, WHEN & WHERE is prepping an Amazon Original embargoed drama.

Franklin Dow continues on an embargoed documentary project. Nicola Daley ACS shoot on The Handmaid’s Tale. Karl Oskarsson IKS has graded Netflix’s Man Vs. Bee. Nick Dance BSC is prepping Dr Who. Ben Magahy continues on Mary McCartney’s documentary. Dan Stafford Clark has graded his episodes of Extraordinary, Matthias Pilz is shooting the feature Excursion, directed by Una Gunjak.

Adam Gillham has completed the grade on The Man Who Fell to Earth. Carmen Pellon Brussosa shot the short Path To Ecstasy, directed by Abdullah Khan. David Procter shot with Man Vs. Machine, and Murren Tullet with Jonnie Malachi. Peter James has shot with Will Stud, Arran Green with Meeks and Frost, and Theo Garland with Tom Speers. Joe Douglas has lit for Björn Rühmann, Will Bex for Scott Lyon and Fede Alfonzo for Paul Butterworth.

Szeliga ACO worked on a commercial with DP Tat Radcliffe, and did dailies on Great Expectations. Tom Walden Associate ACO is confirmed on The Ballad Of Renegade Nell for Disney. Rick Woollard operated on a Google spot for Partizan and a Lucky Strike project with DP Callan Green.

WIZZO & CO: Congratulations to Oli Russell who received a BAFTA nomination for his work on Sex Education S3. He is now working with director Ben Taylor on Disney +’s The Battle Of Renegade Nell.

Patrick Meller is shooting I Hate Suzie S2, directed

by Dawn Shadforth. Aaron Reid continues to shoot A Town Called Malice. Susanne Salavati continues on Flatshare alongside Chloe Wickes. Sverre Sørdal FNF has graded Malou Reymann’s feature Defekt.

Hamish Anderson is prepping a feature, and Chas Appeti has graded an Amazon Original Jungle.

Gary Shaw has done the DI on His Dark Materials S3. Luke Bryant has graded Neil Marshall’s The Lair and the feature The Last Kingdom. Tim Sidell is prepping Chemistry Of Death. Antonio Paladino is fliming a feature directed by James Marsh. Molly Manning Walker has graded Charlotte Regan’s feature Scrapper. Charlie Goodger is prepping Silent Witness alongside director Max Myers. Ryan Kernaghan in readying for The Hunt For Raoul Moat, directed by Gareth Bryn. Steven Ferguson

INTRINSIC: in features, Bebe Dierken has finished Dr Jeckyll. James Mather ISC shot additional photography for The Last Rifleman, and is prepping on Kin. Ciaran Kavanagh continues on Charmed in Canada. Rasmus Arrildt DFF continues on Wolf.

Nic Lawson is working on Outlander. Tom Hines shot additional photography on Riches. Andrew Johnson and spent time on Casualty and Eastenders.

Lynda Hall shot a documentary on Angela Merkel.

Simon Hawken FNF shot an enormous corporate for Qatar Airways across five continents. Gabi Norland, Martin Roach, Dave Miller, Gareth Munden and Lynda Hall have all been busy on commercials, trailers, idents and corporates.

ECHO ARTISTS: Stuart Bentley BSC is shooting BBC1 drama The Gold with director Aneil Karia.

Nadim Carlsen DFF is shooting episodes of HBO/ Sony series The Last Of Us, directed by Ali Abassi.

Carlos Catalan is shooting episodes of Rain Dogs for HBO/BBC, with directors Richard Laxton and Jennifer Perrot. Federico Cesca is shooting on the new season of Top Boy for Netflix/Cowboy Films. Rachel Clark has graded on ITV/Apple TV+’s four-part series Without Sin with director Al Mackay. Andrew Commis ACS is shooting Robert Connolly’s feature Force Of Nature for Made Up Stories. Ruben Woodin Dechamps is lighting Apple TV+ documentary Whatnot with director Jerry Rothwell. Edgar Dubrovskiy has wrapped on Amazon/ITN’s documentary The Disappearance Of Patricia Hall, directed by Sam Hobkinson. Bonnie Elliott ACS shot Cate Shortland’s series Three Women.

David Gallego, ADFC is shooting the Netflix feature Rebel Ridge with director Jeremy Saulnier.

Lachlan Milne ACS NZCS ASC is shooting Alma Har’el’s Apple TV+ series Lady In The Lake. Lorena Pagès is shooting the feature Greatest Days with director Coky Giedroyc. Will Pugh is lensing the documentary Unlikely Heroes, directed by Addison O’Dea. Korsshan Schlauer has wrapped on

Opposite: (l) Edgar Dubrovskiy’s Ukraine Appeal Ad; and Zoe Goodwin-Stuart on The Rising (photo by Vish Sharma).

This page: (top clockwise) – Ravenna Tran DP-ing on a short with the Royal Academy Of Dramatic Arts; DP Gaul Porat; and DP Sophie Gohr.

episodes of The Pact II for BBC/Lionsgate/Little Door Productions. Evelin van Rei has graded the Apple TV+ series Bad Sisters with director Dearbhla Walsh.

Maria Von Hausswolff is shooting Annie Baker’s upcoming feature. Sean Price Williams is directing and shooting his own feature. Nicolas Canniccioni, David Chizallet AFC, Nick Cooke, Charlie Herranz, Jo Jo Lam, Macgregor, Anders Malmberg, Christopher Miles, Michael Paleodimos, Noël Schoolderman, Bartosz Swiniarski, Niels Thastum DFF, Chloë Thomson BSC, and Felix Wiedemann BSC have all been shooting commercials.

PRINCESTONE: Of the agency’s camera/Steadicam operators… Junior Agyeman ACO has finished on Sky

Studios’ pilot, Both Sides Now, for DP Nick Martin.

Simon Baker ACO is filming on The Crown S5, directed by Benjamin Carron, and shooting dailies on Napoleon, the Apple TV+ drama directed by Ridley Scott, with DP Dariusz Wolski ASC. Michael Carstensen ACO is working with DP Scott Winig on The Witcher at Longcross Studios. Matt Fisher ACO is on In the Land Of Saints & Sinners, a feature starring Liam Neeson and Ciaran Hinds, with DP Tom Stern ASC AFC, for director Robert Lorenz, shooting in Donegal. Rob Hart ACO is on Rain Dogs in Bristol, with DPs Carlos Catalan and Wojciech Szepel, and directors Richard Laxton and Jenifer Perrott. Tony Jackson ACO has been shooting dailies on Culprit as well as on Wool. Tony Kay ACO is shooting camera, Steadicam and Trinity on Invasion – Kanji S2, an Apple TV+ fantasy series, with DP Baz Irvine BSC ISC and director Brad Anderson in London.

James Layton ACO is shooting on Wool with DPS Mark Patten BSC and David Luther. Nic Milner ACO is filming The Continental, directed by Albert Hughes for Lionsgate Television. Dan Nightingale ACO recently finished shooting in Bristol on Sid Gentle/BBC/ HBO series Rain Dogs with DP Carlos Catalan, and is now in preproduction with DP Sam Care on Nolly, starring Helena Bonham Carter, directed by Pater Hoar.

Peter Robertson Associate BSC ACO is shooting on the thriller Apartment 7A, with DP Arnau Valls Colomer and director Natalie Erika James. Diego Rodriguez is the DP on Save Our Squad for Twenty Twenty Television and Disney+, following

David Beckham as he returns to the East London football pitches where he played as a child. Joe Russell ACO is filming on Netflix’s series The Diplomat with director Simon Cellan Jones and DP Julian Court BSC. Sean Savage Associate BSC ACO SOC is on Netflix’s sci-fi blockbuster Straight Shooter, with DPs Jonathan Freeman ASC and PJ Dillon ISC ASC, and directors Derek Tsang, Minkie Spiro, Andrew Stanton and Jeremy Podeswa. Fabrizio Sciarra SOC Associate BSC GBCT ACO has finished on Wednesday, the live-action series version of The Addams Family, directed by Tim Burton, and is now shooting Outlander S7 in Scotland with DP Nic Lawson. Peter Wignall did additional photography on Argylle, directed by Matthew Vaughn, starring Henry Cavill, shot by DP George Richmond BSC. Tom Wilkinson ACO has finished on the next series Amazon Studios’ action thriller Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan for, with DP Richard Rutowski ASC. MYMANAGEMENT: welcomes Sveta Aparina, Ravenna Tran and Minka Farthing-Kohl to its roster. Sveta is a cinematographer from Kyiv, Ukraine, who works on commercials, music videos, shorts and documentaries, and has a distinctive style, finding her inspiration in film photography. She has recently worked on Zalando in Berlin with director Laura Vifer, though 27km Entertainment. Minka recently lensed two features, Concrete Cowboys, starring Idris Elba, which premiered at TIFF and is available on Netflix, and The Nowhere Inn, written by and starring St. Vincent and Carrie Brownstein, which premiered at Sundance and is distributed by IFC. Most recently he was the DC unit DP

. . . A new chapter begins

movietech quarter 5 22 R

22 MAY 2022 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

12/05/2022

CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD MAY 2022 23

WHO, WHAT, WHEN & WHERE This page: (top clockwise) – Stuart Dryburgh ACS NZCS on a Mexican Avocados TVC; DP Minka Farthing-Kohl; DP Sveta Aparina; DP Jon Chema shooting a commercial on 35mm film for director Leigh Powis; Ekkehart Pollack on a Nissan shoot in Bangkok; and Lee Thomas in Qatar filming for FIFA.

for Adam McKay’s Don’t Look Up. Ravenna is a Chinese-Vietnamese American DP, filmmaker and artist, who hails from a successful career in illustration. She specialises in imagery that provokes emotional responses and shoots her own indies about the lives/stories of LGBTQ folks and people of colour. Her short, And Then, won the Audience Award for at Outfest.

Adric Watson joined forces with director Ahmed Hussein on an Anti Drugs TVC with Beautiful Productions, and with MY Accomplice director Ewen Spence for Diesel. Allison Anderson was in LA with Michael Johnson for Beyond Meat, and teamed-up with director Jared Hogan on Nike Mother’s Day. Arnaud Carney shot for L’Oreal in Paris, working alongside Phantasm director Masha Kondakova. Chris Dodds lit for Just So director Zak Harney on an M&S ad, and NSPCC Helpline with Fresh Film director Harry George Hall. Craig Dean Devine shot Sneakerheads with Simon Neal at Roughcut TV. Daisy Zhou is on maternity leave. Darran Tiernan ISC continues filming HBO’s Perry Mason S2. David Lanzenberg

is shooting with director Tate Taylor in LA on Mrs American Pie, starring Laura Dern and Kristen Wiig. Deon van Zyl shot with New Land director Emanuele Soffe on a couple of music videos, and lit a short film in Ramsgate.

Dominic Bartels continues shooting Chanel with Spring Studios’ director Mattias Pettersson. Issac Bauman wrapped on The Queen Mary with director Gary Shore, and is prepping on Loki S2 for Disney.

Todd Martin shot a Gensis car ad in LA with director Matvey Fiks via Czar. Tómas Tómasson wrapped on the TV series The Octet in Cairo, directed by Ahmed Medhat, and has been in Iceland filming True North.

Todd Banhazl SOC shot Dior J’Adore with Steven Kid at Boogie Nights. Sy Turnbull lensed a TVC for Kwikifit with Girl & Bear director Zar Ravi. Stuart Dryburgh NXZCS ASC has been on Paycom with Assembly director Chris Bean in NYC, and lensed the short film Khar with director Samin in Kent. Robbie Ryan ISC BSC has been working on McQueen with Prettybird with director Sophie Muller in New York. Pieter Vermeer was in Mexico filming Duracell with director Roman Coppola from The Directors Bureau.

Petra Korner AAC has wrapped on Shadow And Bone S2 for Netflix/21 Lapse in Budapest, shooting large

Gareth Johnstone. Nicolaj Bruel DFF has graded The Hanging Sun with director Franscesco Carrozini. Max Witting headed-off to Saudi Arabia for the feature-

doc Her Story with director Hannah Berry George. Lee Thomas was in Doha, Qatar, for the FIFA World Cup Draw with director Jacob Mackay. Jon Chema shot in NYC with Stink director Douglas Berndart for Arlo Parks.

Jallo Faber FSF lensed for Alpha Beer in Greece with Sunne Sorensen at Avion Films. Ian Forbes graded the feature In The Deep with director Kate Cox, before flying to Bucharest to lens on Persona with Film Deluxe director Ian Robertson. Gaul Porat shot a Venus campaign in Mexico with Stept director Courtney Yates. Filip Marek worked on a short with director Filip Engstrom in Prague.

Ekkehart Pollack lensed VW Cinemascope, in Serbia with Rattling Stick directors AirCastle.

24 MAY 2022 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

We are extremely proud to have supported Director of Photography John Mathieson BSC, Gaffer Chuck Finch, Rigging Gaffer Tommy Finch, Best Boys Jack Ridout and Richard Merrell and the entire Crew on Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.

Nuria Roldós has been working with director Marc Recha on Wild Road. The entire production was filmed in the canton known as La Cerdanya. The mountains, forests, luxury estates, the Segre river and its tributaries, the roads, the little villages and the aerodrome were all a large open-air set.

Photograph by Ana Stanič

Photography by Lucia Faraig

format Anamorphic on ARRI Alexa LF with the brand-new ALFA lenses. Pete Konczal lensed for Premiere Heure director Barnaby Roper on Lancome, and BMW with director Jonny Mass at Radical Media. Paul O’Callaghan was in Croatia with Al Clark for Honda, and then in Germany shooting a Sky doc with Raw TV and director

MBS Equipment Company Lakeside Road, Colnbrook, Slough, Berkshire SL3 0EL +44 (0) 1753 987 888 mbseco.uk Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. ©Marvel Studios 2022. All Rights Reserved.

DR STRANGE IN THE MULTIVERSE OF MADNESS•JOHN MATHIESON BSC

JOHN MATHIESON BSC•DR STRANGE IN THE MULTIVERSE OF MADNESS Images: Photos courtesy of Marvel Studios. ©Marvel Studios 2022. All Rights Reserved.

BE DAZZLED

By Darek Kuźma

B

ritish cinematographer John Mathieson BSC teamed-up with director Sam Raimi for Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness and made his hypnotic mark on the ever-growing Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Dr Stephen Strange – a key player in Phase Four of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) – rather shockingly dies in the prologue of Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness. The trick is, he is not the Strange we know, but a version of Strange in an alternate universe. As our Doctor Strange tries to protect naïve, multiverse-hopping America Chavez from ex-Avenger Scarlet Witch’s grim fixation, he confronts, and combats, different versions of himself.

The filmmakers wanted to make this ‘what if…?’ concept as dazzling, dramatic and cinematic as possible. And they succeeded. The Marvel sequel to Doctor Strange (2016, dir. Scott Derrickson, DP Ben Davis BSC), crossed $550 million mark at the global box office in just in nine days after its release.

Having shot Gladiator (2000), The Phantom Of The Opera (2004), Kingdom Of Heaven (2005), X-Men: First Class (2011) and Logan (2017), to name just a few, Mathieson is no stranger to grand visual spectacles, and he happily accepted the offer to join the ranks of MCU cinematographers, and to find himself working with Raimi.

“I liked the idea of doing a horror movie, to follow familiar characters through the looking-glass into uncharted universes, to tap into their fears, hopes and regrets,” he asserts. “I was originally signed by Scott Derrickson, but when he left the production they wanted to keep the rest of us on board. What happened next wasn’t ideal, but I’m happy that I stayed.”

What he means is the troubled schedule that affected the production. Due to the pandemic, shooting was postponed from May to November 2020, then halted between January and March 2021 owing to the UK’s surge of Covid cases. More than six months after they wrapped, Marvel then ordered six weeks of reshoots.

“We were going to shoot in wild locations, which is

26 MAY 2022 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

what I crave in this job, yet we couldn’t go to Iceland, Norway or Nepal. We mostly stayed at Longcross Studios, with 850 people going in and out and getting tested every day. This was a madness that I really did not expect.”

In retrospect, he says the most laborious aspect was prepping the film’s variegated look. “We followed what others had done before us, but the fact that our characters jump around different universes, hunted by the Scarlet Witch, allowed us to put our mark on the visual storytelling,” he says.

“What’s the sky like? Is it blue? How green is the foliage? Is everything slightly different, or very different?

I really didn’t want to overdo the colours, and make it look like the floor in Saturday Night Fever. Yeah, this is madness, but within that each of the universes has its own feel.

“We did tests with cameras and lenses, shooting digital and film, which Sam very much liked, using various lamps, filters and gels, taking colour in and out. I often referenced the work of the American painter and illustrator Maxfield Parrish (1870 – 1966): he was not afraid of odd colours, yet what he painted seemed real, even if he used blues or purples along with reds and ambers for sunsets. The idea was to make the film look less VFX-heavy than it was. A mix of old-style horror, with strong shadow and shape, and ‘colour’ noir.”

Mathieson decided to shoot Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness using a Panavision combo of DXL2 IMAX-certified cameras and Sphero 65mm lenses (14mm to 180mm). In addition to the DXL2s, he also had one Red DSMC2 Monstro VV, and used a variety of zooms – Primo 70mm Zooms (28-80mm 4PZW 70 series, 70-185mm 4PZM 70 series), Elite Zoom (120-520mm with 2x extender) and Angénieux Optimo FF (36-435mm). All of this equipment, especially the

zooms, were fundamental to make the diversified look of the multiverse seem believable and give Raimi the space to do what he is best at.

“Sam’s a horror guy,” Mathieson exclaims, “he’s into strong framing, wide angles, moving the camera.

Sam’s a horror guy… he’s into unnerving stuff that puts you out of your comfort zone We did tilts, vertigo effects, camera speed changes, POV shots, chase sequence with the camera going right into the eye of a bloodied character and pulling out fast. Unnerving stuff, that puts you out of your comfort zone.

“With the amount of VFX in the film – massive squids, third eyes in human heads, power coming out of fists and eyes – it had to be digital. Often, Strange’s cape isn’t real. They would have to perfectly align everything on-set each and every time, then map a digital cape into a deregistered grainy film image.”

Despite the VFX-iness, Mathieson tried to shoot as much in-camera as was feasible.

“Sam is not afraid of reusing the same sets. We had this horror chase in a tunnel dripping with water, but the set was only 20m long. Many would diversify the shots in post, but we kept changing lightbulbs and adding shadows, and it worked!” he reveals.

“Or, we were shooting an orchard on a farm in Somerset, but the spring flowers were slow. So we wired silk cherry blossom flowers on trees and used every inch of that location.”

Though the crew remained mostly at Longcross, they shot at several locations: Freemasons’ Hall and Royal Institute Of British Architects in London, and the aforementioned Burrow Hill Cider Farm in the West Country.

Mathieson too tried to play with the physicality of things as much as he could, assisted by his gaffer, Chuck Finch, and lighting desk operators, by controlling a myriad of light sources. The lighting package on the film was provided

by MBS Equipment Co. UK. “One of our big sets was Kamar-Taj, the Himalayan home of Strange’s order. It’s always difficult to light exteriors on-stage, and here we had a big battle when the Scarlet Witch attacks the monks,” he says.

“I had over a thousand 1K Par cans in the sky as backlight, they deliver 8.5 at 30ft at 400ASA. As the Witch comes with this sinister cloud of blackness, we pulled-up 12x12ft blacks in front of Dinos, dimmed the Par cans, leaving only spacelights. You can feel the shadow physically moving through the set, sucking out the warm light, leaving a gloomy blue-cold look.”

Mathieson and Finch used a similar approach to a climactic scene at the top of the ancient Mt Wundagore where the Scarlet Witch, Chavez and a zombified Strange, face each other in a surreal duel.

“The mountain temple was built on-stage, but we didn’t want it to feel greenscreen. We had SoftSuns to get real shadow and shape, and then, at the right moment, pulled big blacks in front of them to get a sense that the world ends. And it does, in a way.”

He complimented this through an extensive use of gels: Pale Blue, Flame Red, Red and Primary on Mt

Wundagore, using Cardbox Amber, Straw and Wheat directly, plus Mist Blue ambience, on the Kamar-Taj set.

Yet, the biggest set built at Longcross was a chunk of New York, measuring some 400m in length, 85m in width, with six cross streets.

“We shot day exteriors there and the fight with a squid thing,” Mathieson recalls. “I had SoftSuns, ARRI 18Kw HMIs, ARRI 12Kw HMI Pars to shape the streets with that iconic New York shadow, as everything is blanked by the monolithic buildings.”

For the different moods of the New York Sanctum, one existing in our world, the other in a post-apocalyptic universe, Mathieson again enhanced his lighting with gels. For our world Sanctum it was Peacock Blue, 101 Yellow and Cosmetic Silver Moss.

The surreal, wintery Sanctum involved Steel Green, Steel Blue and Liberty Green.

“I followed Ben Davis BSC’s lead from the first Doctor Strange film in many aspects of lighting,” Mathieson admits. “Our leads create portals that allow them to travel around places. We assigned them signature colours. For Strange and the monks we used shades of orange, Chavez has this searing, kind of nuclear white, whilst with the Scarlet Witch everything is red. We threw a bit of green, purple and other superior colours into the mix to highlight various moods and had sling LED rings for the actors to step in and out of.”

Mathieson’s interior lighting package included 20 and 10Kw Beam Projectors, ARRI 24 and T12Kw Fresnels, Lowel Rifa lights, Mini-brutes, ARRI SkyPanels, plus 1, 2 5 and 10Kw Fresnels.

All told, Mathieson relished his time on Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness and the challenges the project provided. Yet he is not sure how much of the final film is actually of his doing.

“I’m certain it’s more than 50-60%,” he laughs.

“The reality of doing such a VFX-heavy studio film is that some things are not in the domain of cameraperson anymore. I tried to make everything stem naturally from the story and assist the world-building with my bag of tricks, rather than put an artificial post-look on the various universes, but I understood some things would not go my way.”

Unfortunately, he also could not spent too much time on the grade.

With the amount of VFX in the film… it had to be digital “When I flew to LA in August for the DI and the reshoots, I thought it was going to be just one or two weeks of work, but it proved a lot bigger. It turned out they had to shoot stuff that we couldn’t get during Covid paralysis, to make the universe-hopping part of the film more understandable.

“I had other obligations, so two principal DPs, Dan Mindel BSC ASC and Russell Carpenter ASC, came in to shoot the rest. Later, I did remote grading sessions from Company 3 in London, but they were constantly adding new shots. I did what I could with the short time I had.”

Interestingly, Mathieson swapped superhero universes when he was recently engaged to shoot DC Entertainment’s Batgirl, set be released at the end of 2022, because, as far as grand visual spectacles go, he is one of the best. Yet he admits that he would love to do a smaller project with Raimi.

“Sam is the kind of filmmaker I was always attracted to. I hope we can do something together in the future, but without the big VFX shackles that come with superheroes, something with bit more freedom to experiment and mark-out our own path.”

CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD MAY 2022 27

AN CAILÍN CIÚIN•KATE MCCULLOUGH ISC

KATE MCCULLOUGH ISC•AN CAILÍN CIÚIN

PURE AND SIMPLE

By Darek Kuźma

D

irector Colm Bairéad’s Berlin Awardwinning debut feature An Cailín Ciúin, or The Quiet Girl, is another remarkablyIrish story in cinematographer Kate McCullough ISC’s increasingly diverse oeuvre.

Rural Ireland, 1981. Nine-year-old Cáit is lying motionlessly in a field, listening to the sounds of nature, cloaked by the tall grass from the harsh reality of her dysfunctional family. When she has to return to her house, we realise why she craves solitude.

Unloved by her parents, neglected by her siblings, ridiculed by her school peers, the vulnerable girl is desperately trying to find her way into the world. It all changes when Cáit is sent for the summer to her mother’s wealthier cousins Eibhlín and Seán. There, properly taken care of, and under the camera’s watchful eye, she begins to flourish and reveal her inner beauty.

Developed under the Cine4 scheme dedicated to promoting the Irish language, this low-budget adaptation of Claire Keegan’s short story, Foster, is as independent as it gets these days. And it benefited from the cinematic finesse of a native Irish cinematographer Kate McCullough whose work is celebrated around the world, including EnergaCAMERIMAGE Festival nods in feature debuts, documentary and TV series’ competitions.

“I had read Foster years ago. It’s a simple tale but with much depth to it,” says McCullough. “I liked its economy of language and astute observations of people. It was absolutely my cup of tea. When Colm emailed me, I couldn’t say no.”

McCullough had not met Bairéad before, and was nervous about doing justice to the story she cherished, but the director won her over with his script for An Cailín Ciúin.

The first time they talked was in-person, but then they were soon forced by the pandemic to do the prep via Zoom.

“Fortunately, after the first lockdown we were able to resume meetings, having lunch or whatever, and the summer was beautiful that year which allowed us to work outside.

It was a new way of working, maybe even more efficient than before. When we started filming, in September 2020, we were one of the first features to get going under Covid regulations in Ireland.”

One of the first decisions they made was to shoot the film in 1.37:1 aspect ratio.

“In a sense, the story of Cáit and how she discovers complexities of love and loss is a portrait piece. It seemed to us that the narrow, 1.37:1 ratio would suit the character’s growth. There’s power in not knowing what’s beyond the edge of the frame.

It’s somehow suggestive of Cáit’s naivety, a world lying outside the frame yet to be explored or even understood,” explains McCullough.

“I hadn’t shot that narrow before and wondered whether I was going to feel limited, but it was actually the other way around – I felt invigorated as I had to commit to the frame more than usual. I also talked with Colm about opening-up the frame as Cáit blooms, sort of like in Xavier Dolan’s Mommy, but in this case it felt gimmicky.”

28 MAY 2022 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

Another crucial decision was to limit the camera’s movement so as to focus the audience on Cáit‘s evolution from a bed-wetting, excruciatingly timid child, to a curious young girl capable of love and being loved.

“We were going for an observational approach and agreed to move the camera only if it felt really necessary,” says McCullough. “We’d rather focus on detailing her life on the new farm, allowing head room to emphasise that she still has to grow.

When the movement appears, it stems from the performances, and puts an emphasis on what happens in the still moments surrounding it.

Any motion of the camera is rooted in the

essence of a given scene, in its energy.”

With fixed, but carefully-composed 1,37:1 shots, ordinary activities, such as preparing a warm bath or catching raindrops, evolve into visual poetry that complement the story, giving An Cailín Ciúin a sort of sensory dimension.

“The character is subtle in a powerful way, so it was about allowing her to kind of breathe on screen, or showing what limits her from being free,” says McCullough. “With this ratio you end up with a more pronounced central focal point, so it was easier to frame objects and details.

You feel more confined in Cáit father’s car when he drives her to the farm. The silence of adults around a table feels more awkward because there’s less space to escape to.”

After establishing the cinematographic style with Bairéad, McCullough had to choose a combo of camera and lenses that felt right for the project. Despite working with ARRI cameras for most of her career, she decided on Sony Venice.

“I’d shot a documentary at night during the lockdown with the Sony Venice and I was blown away by the power of its sensor.

Here, we had a small budget and a number of scenes that needed working with low

light, including a night scene at the beach where Cáit has an honest conversation with Seán by the pale moonlight. I was certain Sony Venice was the right way to go.

I actually didn’t test any other camera.”

It was a bit more problematic with lenses, however. “I tested Zeiss CP.3 Primes and ARRI Master Primes and could only afford the former if we wanted to shoot Full Frame. I wanted to see what the difference was between S35 and the full frame sensor but it was immediately apparent to me that Full Frame was the way

It seemed to us that the narrow, 1.37:1 ratio would suit the character’s growth to go for this film. And so we went with the CP.3s. And I have to say, I didn’t regret it for a moment,” muses McCullough.

“When I put Tiffen’s Black Pro-Mist filter in, it took the edge off them and they gave a really nice look, with a beautiful, warm flair. The 35mm was our workhorse lens and I matched CP.3s with the Angénieux 22-60mm and 45-120mm zooms for a couple of in-camera zooms, and that was it.”

McCullough says that because of her documentary background she prefers simplicity on sets and was grateful for shooting the entirety of An Cailín Ciúin on location.

“It would’ve taken a lot of resources and money to make those houses believable on stage, and besides, many farmers still live on such farms just as they lived in 1980s. We worked in Meath County, an hour away from Dublin, and shot our two houses on three separate farms as our main location didn’t have the right livestock on it,” reminisces McCullough.

“It was sort of a time capsule for me. I grew up on a farm in the countryside, so a lot of it I recognised from my own experience.”

Working in scenic locations for 25 days in September and October 2020, she tried to minimise her lighting equipment.

“For day exteriors, I only used bounce and negative fill, maybe a lamp once or twice to match a shot we had sun for. In Ireland the weather changes every five minutes, we actually get four seasons in one day,” laughs McCullough. “I love shooting in early autumn, as you get access to dusk and dawn within the regular shooting day and the light is a bit softer and kind to the human skin.”

The only exception was the mentioned beach scene, although still she did not use many light sources. As she explains, “We rigged two small 6K spring ball lamps to use with Sony Venice. I wanted to make the characters as visible as possible without losing the natural beauty of the darkness that envelops them.”

Shooting on location also modified the way

McCullough envisaged lighting both farm interiors.

“The house Cáit comes from has deep walls, so naturally light doesn’t get into the rooms. I only used two 4K Pars, as I could not get more than one Par in one window. Though it was enough to adjust it to our needs and not lose the location’s character,” says McCullough.

“The second farm is more airy, lots of windows through which you can see the landscape and trees catching the wind. It gives you this transient feel. I had one 12K Fresnel, two 4Ks and two 1.8Ks, and a couple of Lite Panels. The rest was trying to control the available light with mirrors, etc. As difficult as it always is with the unpredictable Irish weather.”

“As a rule, I only do as much as I need to do to bring the image to life, both equipment-wise and crew-wise. I like a quiet set based on trust,” admits the cinematographer who worked with two LUTs – one for day and one for night – developed with colourist Garry Curran from Outer Limits.

“I didn’t want to betray the story or the characters.

This film is about the unsaid, the emotionally unspeakable. Little is spoken by these characters, so

when they do speak it’s when they no longer can hold a thought or emotion inside. The camera has to be always ready to register these subtleties on screen.

I think that’s the beauty of this film.”

An Cailín Ciúin is just that, one of those exceptional films during which you can laugh, and cry, and be angry, and get hopeful, and experience a range of emotions without ever feeling overwhelmed by what you watch. A true independent gem.

CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD MAY 2022 29

THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH•TOMMY MADDOX-UPSHAW ASC

STARMAN

Images: Aimee Spinks/Showtime.

Copyright 2021 Showtime Networks Inc. All rights reserved.

Maddox-Upshaw says that, for a good while now, the Sony Venice camera has been his weaponof-choice, as he prefers its colour separation,

By Ron Prince

T

he task of bringing earthly gravitas to a space oddity – using alternative, world-building looks to clearly signal narrative separations, intersections and beats across the story arc – was something that American DP, Tommy Maddox-Upshaw ASC, threw himself into wholeheartedly, when it came to considering the visual aesthetics for Paramount+’s The Man Who Fell To Earth series, created by Alex Kurtzman and Jenny Lumet.

Not to mention a little bit of cult history in the mix too.

“I had worked on succeeding seasons of big TV shows before, building on what others had created previously, but The Man Who Fell To Earth was my first real shot at world-building from scratch,” says Maddox-Upshaw, whose high-end TV credits include, Fox’s Empire S6, Netflix’s On My Block S2, and Snowfall S3/S4 for which he was honoured with an ASC Outstanding Achievement Award.

“With this show, I was given the time and the space to develop the different scenarios in the storytelling, with the aim of delivering something engagingly different.”

The ten-part The Man Who Fell To Earth series is a continuation of the story from the 1963 sci-fi novel

by Walter Tevis and Nicolas Roeg’s iconic 1976 film starring David Bowie, about an extra-terrestrial who lands on Earth seeking a way to save the people on his home planet, which is suffering from severe drought, only to find himself at the mercy of human vices and corruption.

The 2022 TV series takes up the action some 45 years later, as another alien (Chiwetel Ejiofor), who goes by the name of Faraday, crashes into the oilfields of New Mexico. He is on a mission to find the brilliant, but shunned, cold-fusion scientist, Justin Falls (Naomie Harris), the one woman on Earth who can help save his species, and possibly the human race too. Whilst Faraday struggles to adapt to his earthly surroundings, and Justin’s faith in humanity couldn’t be lower, the CIA and a family of eager entrepreneurs are in hot pursuit of the visitor from outer space.

Maddox-Upshaw reveals that he was engaged on the project after having been initially interviewed, and then subsequently passed-over, by Kurtzman to shoot Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (DPs Magdalena Górka/Glen Keenan). However, a few months later Kurzman reconnected with Maddox30 MAY 2022 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

Upshaw, with the request that he read the first three screenplays for the impending series.

“I read those scripts and, oh my gosh, the writing was phenomenal,” recounts the DP. “Alex and I met again, when I made a presentation and we had constructive, in-depth discussions about the project.

He then sent me the remaining scripts, which I ripped through.

“Things went quiet for a while, until Alex asked me to get ready to fly to the UK and Spain for the shoot. I began prep in October 2020, and Alex and I spoke about the shoot in detail every week via Zoom, due to the pandemic, over the course of five months. We met physically for the first time in London when we had boots-on-the-ground ready to start shooting in March 2021.”

As for the vision of the show, and worldbuilding in particular, Maddox-Upshaw says, “We talked about this ethereal being, Faraday, and his relationship with the Falls family, versus the people tailing him, the CIA and the Hatch family of tech entrepreneurs.

“We considered how we could depict and counterpoint a grounded intimacy on the one hand, and juxtapose that against the idea of institutions and others chasing this wanted person on the other – all while giving the audience visual clues to easily understand the crossover between different narratives in the often non-linear storytelling, and the emotions and empowerment in different scenes.”

In terms of the visual language, the surreal imagery of New Mexico landscapes in Roeg’s 1976 movie, shot by cinematographer Anthony Richmond BSC ASC, were a good, historical starting point.

“I have known Tony and his family for many years, and love what he did on that iconic movie,” says Maddox-Upshaw, “but I wanted to push what he had achieved even further in terms of shooting a drama in a sci-fi space, the extreme nature of the storyline and our central characters.”

Other references included Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland (2020, DP Joshua James Richards) for its use of Steadicam and handheld in grounding the narrative in New Mexico, plus No Country For Old

TOMMY MADDOX-UPSHAW ASC•THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH

Men (2007, DP Sir Roger Deakins CBE BSC ASC) to inspire the colour of the desert scenes. Additionally, The Game (1997, dir. David Fincher, DP Harris Savides ASC) and Michael Clayton (2007, dir. Tony Gilroy, DP Robert Elswit ASC) both proved insightful for their widescreen Anamorphic framing and use of different palettes to relay the narrative.

Setting out on his quest to define the worldbuilding looks for the show, Maddox-Upshaw worked with Panavision optical gurus Dan Sasaki and Guy McVicar on his lens choices. To convey the intimacy and rapport between Faraday and the Falls family, he selected large-format Varial spherical lenses, which offer close-focus capabilities, and had them adjusted to yield warmth in colour, plus texture via what the DP describes as “bleeding flares”. He also opted for a Laowa 24mm f/14 2X Macro Probe for extreme close-ups on eyes and ears to illustrate Faradays observation and adjustment to the world, as if he were an inquisitive child.

rendition of skin tones, and abilities to deliver colour integrity in over- and under-exposed areas of the image, as compared to alternative digital capture devices. The show was shot at 6K in 16-bit X-OCN XT (extended tonal range Original Camera Negative) to deliver high-quality imagery overall and especially for the visual effects work in the show, as each episode features around 300 VFX composite shots.

“Celebrating the broad diversity of brown, as well as white, skin tones was very important to me in this

production,” he says. “For example, Faraday, Justin and Justin’s father all have different complexions and shades of brown skin, and the Sony Venice does such a great job of representing that colour separation – at both ends of the exposure spectrum – whether it’s a dark or bright scene.”

Production on The Man Who Fell To Earth took place between March and November 2021.

Locations around London and nearby countryside doubled for the show’s Seattle and Langley, Virginia, settings, whilst a quarry outside the city stood-in for New Mexico. Interiors were shot in a large warehouse, since bulldozed, near Wembley, North London, with the season finale shoot incorporating The Royal Albert Hall. The New Mexico exteriors were shot in Almería, Spain.

Maddox-Upshaw framed for a widescreen 2.40:1 extraction, to bring a sense of the epic, make the most of the landscapes, and provide storytelling opportunities with single and multiple characters in the frame.

Most scenes involved two-cameras, with Andrei Austin operating

A-camera/Steadicam assisted by Rene Adefarasin on focus, and George Grieve on B-camera supported by Joanne Smith. Maddox-Upshaw oversaw the cinematography on the first four episodes, plus half of episode 10. The other DPs were Adam Gillham, who shot episodes 5, 6 and 9 and the other half of episode 10, with Balazs Bolygo BSC HSC shooting episodes 7 and 8. The gaffer was Wayne Shields.

“The different lenses, LUTs and ways of moving the camera, all combined to create the foundational building blocks of the visual story arc right across the show, which Adam and Balasz easily picked-up and absolutely rocked,” he remarks. “We went spherical, more close-up, warm and intimate for Faraday and the Falls, and shot Anamorphic and more clinical and cooler when we see Hatch and the CIA. “Of course, things got more complicated when the storylines entwined and the characters interacted in the same space. When there was a scene involving with both sets of characters, but the scene was empowered by the Hatch’s or the CIA, we shot Anamorphic using a LUT somewhere between the two set looks. When Faraday and Justin have the emotional upper-hand, we would capture them in spherical with a warmer-looking LUT.” The final DI was graded jointly by colourists Pankaj Bajpai and Sam Chynoweth in London.

Maddox-Upshaw participated remotely from his home in LA, using a calibrated iPad in a room fitted with black-out curtains. The work mainly revolved around finessing the colour of the different storylines, as well as integrating the final VFX shots, overseen by VFX supervisor Simon Carr.

“I loved the challenge that Alex set for this show,” remarks Maddox-Upshaw.

“He works fast, and I stayed close to him so that we could communicate clearly and respond quickly to make adjustments. He has a positive creative energy that made things fun, and we developed a great relationship that has endured way beyond the production.

We talk and text most weeks and share thoughts about movies that we have seen.”

Celebrating the broad diversity of brown, as well as white, skin tones was very important to me By way of contrast for scenes involving the CIA and the Hatch family, Maddox-Upshaw selected Panavision G-series Anamorphics, which were also slightly tweaked to deliver comparatively colder, sharper, more clinical and institutionalised-looking imagery.

The different looks from the two groups of lenses optics were compounded with a small set of LUTs, developed his regular colourist, Pankaj Bajpai at Technicolor (now Picture Shop, a Streamland Media company).

CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD MAY 2022 31

COPPELIA•TRISTAN OLIVER BSC

TRISTAN OLIVER BSC•COPPELIA

SHALL WE DANCE?

By Darek Kuźma

C

inematographer Tristan Oliver BSC made Coppelia, Steven de Beul, Ben Tesseur and Jeff Tudor’s fine fusion of live-action ballet and fairy-tale 2D/3D animation, shine in all its whimsical glory.

The sheer thematic and technological capaciousness of the filmic medium grants those who dare to think outside the box the freedom to experiment, thus projects such as Coppelia are brought to cinematic life. Inspired by choreographer Ted Brandsen’s Dutch National Ballet’s modern reimagining of Arthur Saint-Léon and Léo Delibes’s 19th century ballet of the same name, the familyfriendly film melds a charming love story and a playful morality tale, to deliver a graceful spectacle of balletic movement, non-verbal displays of emotions and sparkling visuals that does not need spoken dialogue to convey its themes in a relatable way.

When everyone in town falls under the spell of charismatic cosmetic surgeon, Doctor Coppelius, feisty Swan must save her sweetheart, Franz, before his heart is used to spark life into Coppelia, the robotwoman the Doctor has created.

Taking Coppelia’s singular form into consideration, and the fact that the directors did not have much experience in feature animation projects, let alone shooting ambitious live-action hybrids, the producers looked for a lensperson well-versed in both worlds. Tristan Oliver BSC, known for his meticulous stop-motion work on Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009) and Isle Of Dogs (2018), plus Aardman films such as Chicken Run 32 MAY 2022 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

(2000) Wallace & Gromit: The Curse Of The WereRabbit (2005), quickly warmed to the idea.

“I shoot a lot of animation, I shoot some live-action, but I hadn’t really tackled the dance thing before. And it’s always been a medium that I loved,” notes Oliver. “I felt that the challenge was sufficient to justify doing it.”

The challenge included capturing the movement of the cast made up of classical dancers from places like Sierra Leone, Brazil and The Netherlands, against greenscreen whilst working under a tricky time constraint.

“We had a big stills photographic stage in Amsterdam at our disposal, but the shoot had to be in July. That is when the Dutch National Ballet takes its holiday, and it was the only time the dancers were available. We worked for the whole month, only two days off, with one pickup day later on,” states Oliver. “We also used some of the material from a week-long test shoot we had in March, making that 32 shooting days in total.”

He admits the film’s budget was moderate for such a bold effort of mixing dancers with two-dimensional animated backdrops and a slew of CGI characters, thus he chose a combo of ARRI Alexa Mini and Angénieux zooms.

“I wanted the 24-290mm and the 15-40mm Angénieux Optimos, a combination I had used to good effect on Loving Vincent (2017), which was another fast and furious schedule, but they could only afford Optimo Styles.

Unfortunately, the spherical aberration was quite severe and the optics just didn’t match the project’s demands. After our first day I exchanged them for a set of Cooke S4s,” says Oliver. “It was all about finding a way to give the directors what they wanted. We started shooting 16:9 but they decided to go to 1.85:1.

Luckily, I was working with a little push-in so I could accommodate that change.”

Because the dancers moved so fast, and were capable of leaping huge distances into the air, it required an entirely different way of using the camera Coppelia is set in a pastel-coloured, fairy-tale town, where the heroine spends her days working in a fruit-juice café and dreaming about the handsome boy from a nearby bicycle repair shop. Yet during the shoot all of it had to be imagined.

“I knew the storyboards and had a bit of previz, but the everyday reality were X marks on the floor, standins in blue suits, a bunch of props, and some chromakey blue and green walls,” says Oliver. “We didn’t have any real backdrops and the geography of the town was ill-defined back then. When someone went through a doorway, I wasn’t always certain where the doorway was.”

Oliver claims that the biggest technical challenge was “the amount of bluescreen, greenscreen, and yellowscreen we had to use.

This was an all-enveloping environment with different colours enhancing different aspects of the project. Also, because the dancers were so athletic, moved so fast and were capable of leaping huge distances into the air, it required an entirely different way of using the camera.”

It was during the test shoot when they realised the planned 16 x 9m greenscreen was insufficient. “As soon as the dancers left the ground, we had nothing. So we

ended-up with a greenscreen that was 90-metres long and more than 20-metres in height.”

Along with the fact that they were working with non-professional actors who needed additional time to warm-up before each dance sequence, this led to a number of other issues.

“Because the greenscreen’s height was so significant, there was quite a lot of green contamination to the skin tones. I needed an awful lot of light to make the performers look aesthetically-pleasing, whilst maintaining flat light for the greenscreen.”

That is why the producers decided to shoot the only existing set – the heroine’s kitchen – against a yellowscreen. “It was supposed to be in different shades of yellow, so there wasn’t any other way to stop the green contaminating into the skin.”

A lot of less adept lensers could have had problems with camera movement in an environment like this, but Oliver had a number of tricks up his sleeve to make the directors’ ideas work.

way to get that look.” Apart from the Technocrane shots, Oliver operated the camera himself.

Lighting these scenes against the enormous greenscreen was a different matter. For instance, tracking shots of a bunch of youthful characters joyfully pirouetting their way through the bright town centre.

“They were dancing the length of the studio. I had two guys running along with a four-metre Ultra Bounce on a wheeled stand and another guy pushing a 5K on a stand to keep up with the fill. For day exteriors I also used a bunch of Space Lights as well as two ARRI T12s to key the daytime stuff,” notes Oliver. “It was quite a layered work. The trick was to light the greenscreen and, at the same time, shape everything else, to give it some texture and character.”

Lighting night scenes presented another level of challenge, particularly because at one point the characters are lured into a laboratory of the nefarious cosmetic surgeon who uses his technology to steal their human essence and power his robotic ballerina.

“The lab has this dark pink/purple feel to it. I had Asteras and RGB LED strips about three metres long with a diffuser on the front, and worked them close to the performers to give them that pink and purple glow,” Oliver explains. “For night-time exteriors I had a big China ball with a punchy bulb on a boom to replicate

played with colour a lot, and used a lot of very warm gels for the keys – amber, salmon, lavender gels to give the images more niceness and glow. Also, for softening the key back to make the sequences more family-friendly kind of surreal.”

All in all, Coppelia’s message of the importance of being yourself and believing that beauty is in the eye of the beholder shines through every shot of the film.

Though the story ends on a decisively optimistic note, Oliver’s adventure with Coppelia had a slightly less happy ending.

“We shot it pre-Covid, in 2019, and when the time had come for the DI, much to my disappointment the producers couldn’t afford the remote grading. I sent them some notes but that’s it, my hands were tied.”

“We had a Technocrane for big group sequences to get the camera in and out of the dancers’ space without interrupting their process, the rest was shot mostly off a dolly. An elegant family project like this needs a smooth style to make a greater impact. When you’re following dancers and going around them, it’s just much easier to have a dolly on a track and operate the old-fashioned

street lights, while Asteras, kept just out of the line of the camera, gave me extra fill and shape.”

If this was not layered enough, Coppelia includes a number of dreamlike fantasy sequences in which the heroine imagines herself living an idealised life with her flame.

“It was just a mixture of every light source I had. I also

Whilst he says he would have done it differently, more contrasty, Oliver is nonetheless happy with the experience.

“It was a pleasant challenge, and I like to collect those. Like Loving Vincent or Where Is Anne Frank (2021, dir. Ari Folman), I’ve been doing this long enough so I don’t need to take my career in any one direction. I’m looking for anything that’s interesting, really.”

I shoot a lot of animation, and some live-action, but hadn’t really tackled the dance thing before

CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD MAY 2022 33

ROOM 7• ALI CIHAN YILMAZ

ALI CIHAN YILMAZ•ROOM 7

ACTS OF KINDNESS

By Darek Kuźma

D

irector Nihat Seven’s micro-budget Room 7 caused cinematographer Ali Cihan Yilmaz to harness much of the considerable experience he has amassed over two decades of shooting in his native Turkey.

To say that Mike, a 70-year-old homeless retiree, is bitter would be a gross understatement. During a meeting with the local council he is told that he may be given temporary housing, but will have to wait several years to get permanent accommodation.

After all, this is London. The thing is, Mike is a conservative Brit and the rundown hostel he is sent to is full of immigrants and refugees barely making ends meet themselves whilst waiting for the council’s decision. Thus, Mike is furious. But even though he would rather sleep on the streets, it is winter and he has to swallow his pride and move into a small room.

Room No.7.

As Mike gradually warms to the residents, chiefly Can and Su, Turkish refugees crammed in their room with a small girl and an infant, he gets a glimpse of the bureaucratic limbo in which the immigrants are forced to linger.

Though it uses elements associated with the

34 MAY 2022 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

grand tradition of British social realism, Room 7 specifically deals with the ordeals faced by Turkish immigrants, and was made by Turkish filmmakers living in the UK. “I met Nihat and others four years ago when I arrived in London with my wife. We started making shorts, but our goal was always to make a feature.

We wanted Room 7 to be something we’d be proud of,” says Yilmaz.

Yilmaz was more than equipped to handle such a passion project, having gradually climbed up the

I try to run friendly sets with a supportive vibe cinematography department ladder.

“I finished filmschool but learned everything on film sets. I started in 1996 as a loader, I worked on negative 16mm and 35mm film. Then, I became a

focus puller, a camera assistant, a camera operator, finally a DP. I’m proud of this progression,” explains Yilmaz. “This film was definitely a challenge, not just time-wise, but also because during prep we met with real immigrant families, listened to their stories, and saw the conditions in which they lived.”

Before Yilmaz and his director prepped and shot the film, during April/May 2021 in and around London’s Tottenham district, the DP says they had spent countless hours discussing its many aspects.

“Nihat wanted to make a movie that was as simple as possible, focused on storytelling. We watched a number of films together – not necessarily to copy some elements, rather to put ourselves in the right state of mind,” says Yilmaz who lists the filmic works of Ken Loach, Paolo Sorrentino and Andrey Zvyagintsev as main inspirations. These included I, Daniel Blake (2016, dir. Ken Loach, DP Robbie Ryan ISC BSC) in terms of storytelling, and Leviathan (2014, dir. Andrey Zvyagintsev, DP Mikhail Krichman) for its composition and use of colour.

Initially, Yilmaz considered shooting Room 7 with ARRI Alexa LF to give it some scope, but when the budget forced him to look for other options, he

realised that Sony Venice actually suited the project far better.

“The Sony Venice gives you so many opportunities to adapt to lighting conditions, colour temperatures, to shoot high key and low key. I matched it with a set of brilliant Cooke S4s, then sometimes diffused the brightness of practical lights with Hollywood Black Magic to break the sharpness S4s gave to the Venice.”

Apart from Angénieux EZ-1 and EZ-2 and Optimo Zooms, that Yilmaz used in June for pick-up shots of London exteriors, that was the extent of his camera equipment.

It was crucial to use Mike’s evolving perspective to portray Can and Su’s increasing anguish – especially that Can, an experienced construction engineer, has to work in a meat factory because no British employer wants to hire him – yet find in this bleak situation moments of happiness and camaraderie between people of different origins, cultural backgrounds and skin colours. Thus, the filmmakers knew Room 7 has to be shot on location.

“It had to have an aura of authenticity,” says Yilmaz. “For example, Can’s job interview was shot at the headquarters of the British Alevi Federation in Edmonton, while Mike’s hospital appointments were at the Medi-Park Clinic in Haringey’s Green Lanes.”

Regrettably, when it came to their main hostel location, the filmmakers had to compromise.

“Because of Covid, shooting in an actual hostel was out of the question. We shot footage of corridors and the manager’s office in a hostel for immigrants in Dalston, but ours had to be designed from scratch,” says Yilmaz.

The producers did not have the means to rent a stage and build a set, so they scouted Tottenham, in north London, for a building similar to a real hostel, and then leased it from the local council. “It was a tight schedule, 24 shooting days and around a month of prep, including adapting the building to our needs with help from the art department, but it was worth the effort.

“For day interiors, I tried to be as natural as possible with the lighting, mainly to get a realistic feel, although there just wasn’t room to put in large fixtures. For example, on the floor that has the shared kitchen, which becomes a

meeting place for our characters, I used a 4ft RGB Quasar Science Tube on the ceiling, and supported it with Aladdin Fabric and Fomex Rollight LEDs, as well as an Aputure Light Storm 300D MKII that served as a practical,” says Yilmaz. “I had a variety of light sources when shooting individual rooms, from a Tungsten package of 300w, 650w, 1Kw, 2Kw Fresnel and Dedolight 400D to LiteGear LiteMat 2

We put our hearts and souls into making this film as emotional and interesting as we could and ARRI SkyPanel S60, but I still tried to put as many practicals as possible.”

Having a limited space to control the realistic look, Yilmaz says he partly relied on sunlight. “People in the UK probably don’t notice it, but the sun is quite consistent here. In Turkey, its colour temperature and angles vary much more. I had to diffuse it a bit because we shot winter in April and May, but it was the right approach. There is more sunlight in the film’s second half, when the light and colours get slightly warmer, representing the passage of time and Mike’s changing attitude.”

Because the story is centred around Mike, Can and Su, we only get a brief look at the hostel’s other residents, but the narrowness of the corridors and the claustrophobic feel of the building is almost tangible.

The tightness of the location also meant Yilmaz could not use dollies or devise complicated camera movement, which meant he focused on shooting handheld and on a slider.

As for night exteriors, Yilmaz often had to light from the outside. “I shot at 2500 ISO, which Sony Venice handled just beautifully, using a package of Par lamps – such as ARRI M-Series M18 and M40s, ARRILUX PocketPars – as well as Chimeras.

Then, during post, I worked with my colourist, Bülent Tanoba, for two weeks to smooth out any rough edges.”

The DI process is usually about putting the final touches, but Tanoba was involved in Room 7 in quite a more collaborative way.

“Bülent owns a small studio, and we were able to grade on DaVinci Resolve in ACES without any time pressure. Even before prep, I had sent him a number of my visual references and asked for his input. Then, after some time passed, we established a look based on both of our ideas,” asserts Yilmaz.

“In post, we sat together for a couple of days, and then Bülent worked alone implementing what we discussed, before we met again for several days.

After that, we invited the director who made some little adjustments, but was happy with what we had achieved.”

It seems to be particularly relevant, in the case of a bittersweet drama whose message is about looking out for one another during times of increasing isolation, that Yilmaz brought an inclusive, consultative agenda to the shoot.

“Some DPs may disagree, but I try to run friendly sets with a supportive vibe,” he says. “Yes, we have to be organised and efficient, but I strongly believe in team effort and admitting that I don’t know everything. I’m constantly learning, I like to ask my crew what they think, or if they have better ideas.

We’re in it together, we deal with problems together and find solutions together.”

Even though Room 7 offers a very sombre experience, it is filled with small acts of kindness that make the story oddly uplifting. Such as in a scene when Mike intervenes, when he see the indifferent hostel manager trying to take advantage of Can and Su for the umpteenth time. Or when the family of Turkish refugees organise a birthday party for a grumpy old Brit who wanted to throw them out of his country.

Yilmaz concludes, “I’m proud of this film. Could it be better, and have more scope? Sure it could, but we shot it then and there, and we put our hearts and souls into making it as emotional and interesting as we could. I don’t know how the audiences will react to our film, but I definitely feel fulfilled.”

CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD MAY 2022 35

ROUND-UP•BSC EXPO 2022

BSC EXPO 2022•ROUND-UP

SHOWSTOPPERS. . .

Opposite: (top clockwise) CVP’s impressive LED virtual set; Cinelab’s Adrian Bull and OxScan film scanner; AC PeePod with part Wendy; Frances Russell BSC and DP Doug Milsome BSC ASC. This page: (descending) Cineo R15 lamp array; Movietech’s MasterBuilt 35mm; Illuminatrix panellists (l-r) Yana Rits, Ashley Barron ACS, Catherine Derry, Vanessa Whyte and Simona Susnea; Movietech’s Masterbuilt 35mm (again); and new Zeiss Supreme 15mm prime.

Reporting by John Keedwell GBCT, Dylan Bruce, Kirsty Hazlewood and Ron Prince.

I

t was great to be back at the BSC Expo after two years of the world standing still. Held at Battersea Evolutions, it was pleasantly busy, the organisation excellent, and the atmosphere more like a party. Wider aisles were a welcome change, making it easier to get around when things got crowded.

Some things had clearly changed in lighting, with LED lights almost everywhere, with very few, if any, large HMIs on the stands. It was suggested the showfloor looked like the Las Vegas Strip due to the sheer volume of lighting fixtures on display, all changing colour, and some even had water running over them! All in all, an entertaining couple of days.

CVP took up its regular, colossal stand, spanning the entire mezzanine level, and partnered with leading manufacturers to showcase the latest in production solutions, and also presented a brand new virtual production stage. Partner brands featured included: Angénieux, ARRI, Blackmagic Design, Canon, DJI, Cooke, Leitz, Red, Sony, Tribe7 and Zeiss. CVP worked with Disguise, Ncam, TrackMen, ARRI and

GhostFrame and Roe Visual to create an impressive live, real-life LED stage whereby visitors could watch themselves become immersed into completely virtual environments.

The ACO (Association Of Camera Operators) – formed to celebrate and promote the technical/ creative skills of the camera operator – was thronged with attendees, where camera operator Alexis Castagna reported a lot of interest from potential new joiners.

Members of The Mark Milsome Foundation – established in memory of camera operator Mark Milsome, who was killed whilst filming a car stunt – were in attendance to highlight the need to educate and promote health and safety practice, with its Online Safety Passport Course, which takes 90-minutes and costs £20.

Amongst all the many digital devices on display, the team at Kodak had plenty of interest from filmmakers wanting to shoot on analogue film, especially with 35mm originated productions like The Northman (DP Jarin Blaschke) and Conversations With Friends (DP Suzie Lavelle ISC BSC), not to mention commercials and music videos, revealing the continual currency of celluloid. And Cinelab – renowned champions of celluloid production – had taken the trouble to haul its head-turning OXScan 65mm scanner into the expo, which offers 12K output on a five-perf Todd AO-frame, and up to a whopping 28K per frame in IMAX. Turning to cameras, lenses, filters and other associated widgets… on the Panavision stand was the Panavision Millennium DXL2, a camera for now, and also for the future. Its 8K capabilities are based around the Red Monstro large-format sensor, delivering an impressive dynamic range with 16 stops of latitude, 35 Megapixels and 1,600 Native ISO, at up to 60fps.

The DXL2, plus Panavision large-format lenses,

offers an optimum system for creating image attributes such as a shallower depth-of-field, greater magnification and a wider field-of-view, to produce a softer, natural-looking image, more closely attuned to the way the eye sees.

Sony reported a very healthy footfall at its stand, where pride of place was given to the Sony Venice 2, another camera for now and the future. The new camera, now shipping, builds on the strength of the original Venice with new features including a more compact form-factor, 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 of 800/3200, and 8-stops of built-in ND filters, with 16-stops of latitude.

Leitz delivered something special, with the newly-announced Leitz Elsie prime lenses as well as the Leitz Zooms, Leitz Primes, and other premium cine lenses. The Leitz Elsie lenses are a brand new design, made just for cinematography, with character to spare and a high performance. Leitz also showed, Henri, the director’s viewfinder, which combines the Leica SL2 camera system with various lens mounts and ergonomic support.

Movietech Camera Rentals (acquired by Sunbelt Rentals since the expo), offers one of the

most comprehensive ranges of optics in the business, including unique lenses like the US-made MasterBuilt lenses, which offer a vintage character for large 36 MAY 2022 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

format cinematography with optical precision in a distinctive silver body. Gecko-Cam lenses, such as the 13 Vintage Ultra Primes that go from 14mm to 180mm, plus the Genesis G35, from 14mm T3.0 to a 135mmT2.0, give a modern vintage look with highend mechanics. Also on show were Hawk Anamorphic lenses. The Hawk 1.3x glass provides desirable Anamorphic qualities, such as barrel distortion, flares and elliptical bokeh combined with very high resolution. A rather special lens set are the Vantage One Sphericals, with a range of nine starting at 17.5mm up to 120mm, all with an aperture stop of T1.

Zeiss displayed its new 15mm T1.8 Supreme lens, the latest addition to the current range that now goes from 15mm to 200mm. Consistency across coverage, colour matching, colour rendering, aperture, focus and iris rings, size, weight and

ergonomics are all important design criteria, and all lenses in the family cover cinematic sensors from Super35 and smaller to full frame and beyond (FF+), making them well-suited for current and future camera systems. Most feature a fast T-stop of T1.5 with a few exceptions, the 15mm and 150mm both at T1.8, and the 200mm at T2.2. The compact, lightweight design and ultra-smooth focus mean users will enjoy fast, easy and comfortable handling, even in extreme temperatures and conditions.

Over at LEE Filters the new LEE Elements Variable ND Filter is now available in convenient 82mm screw-in form, allowing users to achieve six to nine stops of precise ND adjustment, without affecting the image colour, and bypassing the need

to carry separate ND options. These NDs combine fluid-smooth adjustment rings, with positive end-stops and clearly-defined stop markers to achieve exactly the desired amount of density adjustment and prevent cross-polarisation.

Amongst the selection of quality cameras and lighting at ARRI, what also caught the eye was Curt O. Schaller, product manager for ARRI camera stabiliser systems, demonstrating the improvements made to its formidable Trinity rig. The length of the vertical post has been reduced making it smaller and more manoeuvrable. Many parts and cables are standard from the camera department, such as 19mm bars and control cables, meaning a broken cable can be temporarily swapped with no issues.

It is easy to rig too, has 12G video, a wider receiver, plus a quick removable plate to put on a hand grip control. It has hot-swap batteries with the battery hanger accepting any power via the adaptor that senses 24V or 12V and the application takes what it needs. 360-degree rotation is possible for shots that you would have seen in the award-winning film 1917 (DP Sir Roger Deakins CBE BSC ASC).

At its eye-catching booth, Pixipixel, the London-based camera, grip and lighting rental company, showcased its new Mechanix range of bespoke accessories for cameras, engineered in-house.

Attendees were able to demo some of the new, custom-designed kit, including the Mechanix Lanyard Bracket, that fits seamlessly to the base of an ARRI HI-5 unit, and the Mechanix CineTape Mounting Mod, that allows for an easy attachment to a camera or other accessories.

As for moving cameras around, if you saw the 2022 Oscars ceremony, you may well have noticed several remote systems moving around the audience.

These were designed and delivered by Bristol-based company Motion Impossible. Its Agito offers multiple configurations to suit different filming needs. As a free-roaming remote dolly system, it can be used to create smooth camera movements up to two metres in height. Its moves are fast, accurate and repeatable, and can achieve the same movements as most other equipment on the market, including rickshaws, jibs, dollies, sliders and tracking vehicles.

Of particular note, Agito Magtrax, which we saw CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD MAY 2022 37

ROUND-UP•BSC EXPO 2022 Euro Cine Expo stand 208

Clockwise (from left): Chimera Dinkum system, Creamsource Vortex with Chimera Light Bank, and panel frame; Fiilex Q10; the Cirrolite stand; and Chimera Octa.

SNAPBAGS & SNAPGRIDS for Vortex8 & 4

in-action, follows a magnetic strip, which can be laid on the floor in minutes, or hidden underneath carpet, turf or a set, in any pattern, and goes way beyond what can be achieved with regular track. When used with remote radio control it offers a safe option for crews on action/stunt sequences. Ben Dair, chief product officer at Motion Impossible, reported the response to Magtrax as, “Crazy, with a lot of varied interest from different people from all parts of the craft – grips, gaffers and DPs, all seeking a greater level of creativity in their productions.”

As for lighting… there was an enormous amount of kit to take in. The relatively-new lighting firm, Aputure, showed a host of new LED products in its Amaran line.

Amongst these were the range of Amaran LED tubes, which come in lengths of 2ft and 4ft, aptly named the T2C and T4C. These seemed very popular at the show, and support RGBWW colour-tuning, as well as integration into Aputure’s Sidus Link wireless ecosystem.

Alongside the tubes, Aputure also announced four new flexible LED lights, in 2x1 and 2x2 sizes, supporting both RGBWW and bi-colour options. In the COB range, the Aputure 1200D is an exceptionally-powerful LED lamp, comparable to an M18 HMI when used with reflectors.

Alongside this were the relatively smaller versions, including the 600D and bi-colour 600X. Aputure started by catering towards online content creators, but their products can now also be found on higher-end Netflix productions and other HETV shows.

Chimera Lighting introduced three new accessories for the Creamsource Vortex 8; a small POP bank, a medium light bank and lantern. On the show floor 38 MAY 2022 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

was the medium light bank, which uses traditional frame and pole construction, providing broad and even light diffusion from included Full and Half Chimera cloth front screens. The New OctaPlus 4 was also on the Chimera stand. These new Octas use Chimera’s OctaPlus Speed Rings, and are available in low and high heat versions.

Chimera’s time-tested Panel Frames were also on display. Panel Frames are available in 7 sizes, with ten fabric panel styles to choose from and 18 window pattern designs that can be attached with a frame mounted holder for unique effects. Panel Frames break down to fit into a duffel bag and stay connected for superior portability with no lost parts or pieces.

Chimera also showcased its Dinkum Systems’ brand, which provides quick-and-easy mounting solutions with sturdy clamps, length-adjustable arms, additional mounting base options and accessories for quick and accurate placement of cameras, lens shades, microphones, monitors and lights on-set or in your home office.

Cineo Lighting has its Cineo ReFlex R15 on show, which delivers over 90,000 lumens of colour-accurate lighting, using less than 1,500W. With a variable CCT from 2700K to 6500K, it can perform like both a Tungsten and HMI source, without the deficiencies of either.

Spot-to-flood adjustment between 15 to 75 degrees is by electronic remote control. The head can be pointed up or down with no issues, and is liquid-cooled using an optically transparent dielectric fluid.

Cirro Lite (Europe) offered an impressive display of great lighting and grip gear. A new development in lighting stands came from Matthews Studio Equipment in the form of the Air Climber, apparently the world’s tallest lighting stand. It uses compressed air from any small compressor to raise a potential 95kg payload to 25ft/7.6m and it can rotate from the base without needing to lower the system.

Some manufacturers have been working with Cirro-Lite for many years, and key companies such as Kino Flo and Dedolight were well represented. Fiilex’s Q10 colour, 900W, 10-inch Fresnel LED, was a very new development, using Dense Matrix LED technology to de-

liver colour quality and optical versatility that are superior to previous generations of LED Fresnel. The Q10 Colour combines the extensive feature-set of top-level RGBW LED’s with the performance of a Tungsten Fresnel With a flood/spot range from 11-70-degrees, a 2,000K to 10,000K colour temperature range, and an IPX5 water-resistance rating, this fixture can be a very versatile lamp in any situation.

LCA Lights Camera Action! – a great onestop-shop for film/broadcast lighting, grip, power and filters – had an impressive array of the latest gear. Chief amongst these was the Creamsource Vortex 8, a very powerful 2x1 LED RGBW fixture with a CCT range from 2,200K to 15,000K that can be used as a punchy lamp or diffused/softened with a Dome or DoPchoice Snapbag. It has a rather unique waterproof IP rating of 65, meaning it is sealed against snow, rain and dust, and this feature was demonstrated with water being pumping over a fully-illuminated fixture in a tank. The Vortex 8 has a range of effects and colour gels built-in, such as flickering fire and emergency services lights, with infinite control over the speed and duration of the flicker.

It builds on the Vortex 4, which has all the same qualities, but in a 1x1 form.

Also eye-catching was the Creamsource SpaceX, a circular six-lamp fixture, providing a soft source for studio or location with a CCT range from 2,200K to 15,000K and weighing in at 18kg/40lbs. Different beam reflectors and lenses can be used to modify the output.

DoPchoice creates a huge range of light-modifying tools to give filmmakers maximum control of their lighting.

Over 70 manufacturers are covered for fixtures such as Creamsource Vortex, ARRI SkyPanels, Litepanels Gemini, Dedolight, Fiilex and Apurture. They company recently introduced two new Snapbags specially created for single tube Helios and Titan lights from Astera, making a long soft tube source of light into a single direction, controlled source of light with no uncontrolled spill.

LiteGear produces the Litemat Spectrum, with a white light that has a CCT between 2,000K to 11,000K and 360 pure accent colours that can have 100 shades

RABBIT ROUNDER

®

by DoPchoice

®

THE ALL ROUND SOLUTION FOR YOUR COB LIGHTING FIXTURES RABBIT ROUNDER for the latest COB fixtures

Supplying the film and broadcast industry with the latest innovations in lighting and accessories since 1999

LCA - Lights, Camera, Action Offices in UK | France | Germany www.LCAlights.com

ROUND-UP•BSC EXPO 2022

BSC EXPO 2022•ROUND-UP

Opposite: (top clockwise) K5600 Alpha LED; Velvet’s Kosmos light; Cinelex SkyBridge Pro; Revolt Power from Octica; more K5600 Alpha LEDs. This page: (top clockwise) Panalux/Panavision stand; Lightbridge CRLS mirror system on display; new Panalux Allegra light.

of saturation.

The large Litemat Auroris is a full-colour overhead light source powered by LiteGear’s Spectrum technology and combines high-quality colour rendition and precision control with accurate white light in one package. Built with 24 large format panels, suspended and designated as individual pixels, this creates a pixel-mappable source that can cover a 100sq/ft area with one complete fixture.

Designed to be lightweight and easy to rig, the Auroris is one of the slimmest, lightest and potentially most versatile softlights, either as an overhead or as a programmable light source for travelling shots.

Astera showed its popular Titan and Helios full-colour LED tubes. The Titan is an RGB, Mint and Amber chipset LED tube, of 40-inches in length, in a kit of eight, standalone battery/mains powered units (with a battery runtime up to 20 hours) a 120° beam angle, with wireless DMX control from a mobile phone, and a high IP65 rating. The Helios is also an RGB, Mint and Amber chipset LED tube with a shorter length of 22-inches, and has and similar features to the Titan.

AC Entertainment Technologies is one of the largest single-source providers of professional equipment, celebrating over 50 years of trading. Brands on show included Chroma-Q, Manfrotto, Avenger, Luminex, ClayPaky, Quasar Science, Robe, Martin, Litepanels, Panasonic, Panasonic, Christie, Sennheiser, Shure, Yamaha, JBL, Denon, Doughty and many more.

Chroma-Q’s range include LED battens, space lights, house lights and Pars, with white light, variable white and colour mixing options. The Color range of products focus on smooth dimming and wide colour palettes, whilst the Studio range aims for perfect whites for

the camera. The Chroma-Q Brute Force is a full-colour, RGB-W, LED-alternative to the traditional Tungsten Quarter Wendy light that draws just 15A at 240V. Chroma-Q also has a full line-up of colour scrollers, effects lighting, accessories, and control & data distribution solutions.

K5600 Lighting concentrated on high-quality, bi-colour units and there was a lot of focus on the Joker LED and Alpha LED that use the same 600W on a 12mm diameter COB. The small chips in both lamps allow for maximum punch and light output. A new accessory on show was at prototype stage, namely the SpaceBeam 300/800. This system concentrates the beam of an Alpha LED 300 or an 800 HMI Alpha to a 3-degree angle, multiplying the output of the lamp up to four times.

This gives you a powerful 78,000lux at three meters with the 300W Alpha LED. All K5600 LED units have their own 300W ballast, but can also be run on a 1200W ballast where four 300W units can be run and controlled individually.

The HMI Alpha 6K and 4K were exhibited, both very popular sellers in the UK. Octica, in collaboration with Velvet Light released a new LED Fresnel called the Kosmos. With many panel-style, soft LED lights on the market, Velvet have created an affordable zoom LED Fresnel lamp. This creates a more environmentally-friendly option than Tungsten Fresnel units. This lamp is suited for larger studio productions, where you might have multiple Kosmos units on-set. This

400W power-draw lamp supports RGB colour options, as well as beam angle flexibility and wireless control.

The other popular product Octica showcased was the Cinelex Skypridge Pro. This is a newer version of the Skybridge, which converts Art-Net into DMX, and is aimed at desk operators on larger production who want to use PC control instead of hardware.

This focuses on a more digital approach, with the ability to use iPads.

This digitally-focused approach for lighting control means it’s easier and faster to update the hardware when necessary. An additional new item was the Revolt AC 5kW power solution, powered by batteries, offering a greener energy option on-set.

Over at the mighty Panalux stand were the latest Panalux Sonara fixtures, developed and designed in the UK, primarily for an extremely colour-accurate, broad and even spectrum of white light for film and TV purposes. The Sonara’s are especially aimed at producing really high-quality whites. The first Sonara introduced was the 4:4 1,500W LED, now complemented with the Sonara 3:2 500W unit.

A brand new 4:1 fixture was also unveiled to replace some fluorescent fitting in this size. This is important development as there is an impending ban on the sale of fluorescent bulbs in the UK. Ease of control of the fixture has been paramount, and colour output is achieved either by HSI, ALB, CCT, x,y or Gel modes. The gels can be accessed by name, number or arranged in colour order to find your favourite

gel very quickly.

In addition, several curves are included, linear, square, S-curve and Tungsten emulate, and output can be on boost or flat. Gamuts included are Rec.2020, Rec.709, and more. Control is by either a detachable local controller, DMX, ArtNet and CRMX. One unique feature is the ability to achieve much wider colour temperatures between 1,600K to 20,000K, and this output is common in all three Sonara heads.

There was also a sneak peek at the new Panalux Allegra range, a hard-backed evolution of the Flexlight LEDs. Available in different sizes and in either bi-colour (tuneable between 2,700K-6,500K), or the full colour (with a range between 1,600-20,000K) with a super-wide colour gamut allowing the large range of LEE filters gels.

Lighting suppliers, Prolight, showcased a vast array of new products. Particularly popular was the Aladdin LED Mosaic 4x4 600W RGBWW panel. The Mosaic Lites offer new panel sizes never seen before from Aladdin lights. There are endless mounting options for each Mosaic size, with a fitting frame, grid and soft box for each. The Mosaic light also includes fast, changeable LED compounds, meaning you can quickly replace small

LED parts on the panel without replacing the entire unit.

Furthermore, the Lightstar Airlite 1000W Kit was of high interest. This is a bi-colour self-inflating Airlite with Lumen radio. At 6ft, providing 360 degree even light, this is a high efficiency and energy saving balloon light that

also supports cable DMX or wireless DMX control.

Prolight also showcased a new battery option, the FXLion 300WH square V-mount battery. Currently this is the only 18A battery on the market. Its unique, mini size

VISIT OUR WEBSITE FOR OUR ENTIRE RANGE OF HIGH END CAMERA SUPPORT EQUIPMENT. GO TO →

M E E T U S AT

/gripfactorymunich

40 MAY 2022 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

results in best performance for small cameras, like Blackamgic, Red, ARRI Alexa Mini and Sony lines. It has four D-tap outputs and is exceptionally rugged, withstanding accidental drops from heights with ease. Alongside these items was the ever-popular CRLS Light Bridge mirror system, including the C100 and C-GO kits.

Rosco’s DMG Dash Pocket LED kit with CRMX launched in February 2021 to rave reviews, and were of great interest. Lighting technicians complimented the durability, colour quality, output and versatility of the handheld LED fixture, which features CRMX and W-DMX control with RDM via LumenRadio, enabling filmmakers to use a DMX console to control their DMG Dash fixtures along with the rest of their lighting rig.

Also on show was the DMG Maxi Mix LED, whose powerful output can be amplified by the new Triple Yoke.

The latest accessory for three assembled Maxi Mix lights has a 28mm spigot, which enables full 360º rotation. The Triple Yoke includes Link2 accessories and two short AC cables for daisy-chaining power. Featuring True Rosco Color, the Maxi Mix is the largest and brightest member of the Mix family, producing up to 7550 lux (@1M @5500K), with multiple control options.

Rotolight displayed its full-range of British-designed

@gfm_gripfactorymunich

g r i p f a c t o r y. c o m

I N M U N I C H F R O M 1 — 2 J U LY 2 0 2 2 .

/gripfactorymunich

© L U C A S F I L M LT D .

CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD MAY 2022 41

ROUND-UP•BSC EXPO 2022

VISIT US AT

VISIT US AT

JUNE 9-12 IN LA STAND 653

JULY 1-2 IN MUNICH STAND 212

Clockwise(from left): SumoLights being unpacked and on display; ProLight Direct’s colourful stand; Creamsource Vortex 8 in a water tank; Movietch Hawk Anamorphic; Matthews Air Riser; and Movietech’s MasterBuilt lenses.

and manufactured LED lights. Last autumn the company launched the AEOS 2 and NEO 3, which incorporate technology from Rotolight’s Titan X1 and X2 products, helping to make both products smaller and more portable with lower energy consumption.

With the assistance of Pixipixel, Rotolight’s Titan X1 and X2 were used on their first feature film last year, The Colour Room (DP Denson Baker ACS NZCS), with the lights used to illuminate the scenes with continuous light function and also using the in-built special effects to replicate the fire glow of the furnaces in the kiln scenes.

These lights are proving very popular for smaller independent productions, journalists and TV crews, with the AEOS 2 weighing 1.2kg.

Sumolight UK, designated subsidiary of the Sumolight HQ in Germany, exhibited several new lighting systems. The SumoSky interactive lighting system is an expandable LED wall with reduced rigging time compared

to other LED solutions. The system is highly-customisable, for both vertical and horizontal use. It supports pixel mapping, RBGWW, 16-bit colour and a smooth background for keying. It can be built up to a massive 100m wide and more that 15m high.

Alongside this was the SumoSpace +, the latest evolution in the LED Sumolight family. This is a compact system, creating the same output of a 6K space light in combination with the power consumption level of an LED light. The design has been conceived to re-imagine the concept of 42 MAY 2022 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

studio overhead and soft lights, with vast rigging options to utilise.

The high-output, hexagonal designed, SumoMax LED light was also popular at the show. It is a more powerful extension to the SumoSpace+ line, supporting full RGBWW colour tunings as well as a modular, hexagonal design for different lighting arrays.

Sumolight has had a lot of interest from large scale productions, including features such as The Matrix Resurrections, Midnight Sky and various Netflix shows. They are currently building a 2,000 square-foot studio area in Elstree.

Taking in Quantum, the new Quantum II 4x4 features fourth-generation LED technology, with a light output nearly twice that of the original Quantum. Beyond the white spectrum, Quantum II has full RGB capabilities, and can record/playback an infinite number of lighting effects. A full complement of remote control protocols are supported including wired DMX/RDM, LumenRadio, and networking protocols including sACN and ArtNet. Other items around the expo that proved interesting included brand new Panalux Portable Power i2 and i4 units, now available to rent from Panalux. The i4 was on the show stand.

With a capacity of 5kWh and a maximum load of 2kW, the i2 is suited to powering work lights, monitors, laptops, tablets and phones at the start of a location shoot when there is no generator power, for example. The i4 offers a capacity of 10kWh and a maximum load of 4kW to handle more power-hungry devices.

The Panalux Portable Power units i2 and i4 each feature a 32A inlet for charging or use as a UPS, along with 16A, 13A and USB outputs to allow a variety of devices to be connected without the need for adaptors or stage boxes. All inputs and outputs are RCD protected. Both units also incorporate an LCD display indicating power consumption and battery level, they are IP55-rated and are silent running.

This gives the ability to have electrical power on a location when there is none. The Panalux units can run a Panalux Sonara 3:2 for 13.5hrs, an LP Gemini 2x1 for 21hrs, or a portable office with computers and work lights could be run for many days, depending on the demands.

Bright Tangerine showed the Prodigy Air deflector for the first time. Pressurised air is blown over the front of the lens and keeps water away. This unit was recently used successfully on the recent The Batman. A great deal of other useful gear was also found, such as a cine tape bracket, follow focus units, matte boxes, camera cages EVF mounts, Titanium 19mm support rods, bridge plates for Red, ARRI and more. Based in Church Crookham, every product is designed and engineered to eliminate anything that could steal time from the creative process.

And finally… Set Simulator’s previz software for film pre-production really caught the eye. It shows the practicalities and limitations of a location before it is visited or a set before it is built. You can add characters, set designs, specific cameras, lenses, cranes, lighting fixtures, practicals, and even the script, and the software can replicate the camera view on a chosen camera/lens, at a certain aperture, with the lighting provided by the chosen lamps on the set. If the camera is on a crane or dolly, that can be added too, and scenes can be blocked before the set is constructed. Shot are visualised on a monitor, and changes can be made when needed, with a shot-list compiled.

The script can be imported and run alongside the action on-screen, giving timings and enabling plans before anyone steps foot on-set.

1200W

OUTPUT DAYLIGHT

13.010 LUX WIDE REFLECTOR 22.400 LUX MEDIUM REFLECTOR 83.100 LUX NARROW REFLECTOR @ 3M / 9.8FT

IP54

WEATHER-RESISTANT

APUTURE.COM

TOP GUN: MAVERICK•CLAUDIO MIRANDA CSC ASC

CLAUDIO MIRANDA CSC ASC•TOP GUN: MAVERICK

FLIGHT CLUB

Images: Top Gun: Maverick from Paramount Pictures, Skydance and Jerry Bruckheimer Films. © 2019 Paramount Pictures Corporation. All rights reserved.

By Iain Blair

I

t’s been 36 years since Top Gun, directed by the late great Tony Scott, shot by DP Jeffrey L. Kimball ASC, introduced audiences to Tom Cruise as US Navy pilot LT Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, Val Kilmer as LT Tom “Iceman” Kazansky, and Anthony Edwards as LTJG Nick “Goose” Bradshaw, Maverick’s Radar Intercept Officer, and best friend.

Now the iconic characters and heart-pounding aerial manoeuvres are back – with a few changes – in Top Gun: Maverick. Directed by Joseph Kosinski and shot by his go-to cinematographer Claudio Miranda CSC ASC, Oscar-winner for his work on Life Of Pi (2012, dir. Ang Lee), the Paramount release picks-up the story of Maverick who, after more than 30 years of service as one of the Navy’s top aviators, is still feeling the need for speed, pushing the envelope as a test pilot and dodging any advancement in rank that would ground him.

When he finds himself training a detachment of Top Gun graduates for a specialised mission, Maverick encounters Lt. Bradley Bradshaw (Miles Teller), the son of his late friend “Goose”. Facing an uncertain future and confronting the ghosts of his past, Maverick is drawn into a confrontation with his own deepest fears, culminating in a mission that demands the ultimate sacrifice from those who 44 MAY 2022 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

will be chosen to fly it.

Whilst the movie bristles with cutting-edge and hard-edged flying machines and technology, it also boasts a rich, golden patina and a subtle nostalgia that both evokes and complements the look and feel of the original film, thanks to the Miranda’s masterful cinematography. It also marks the fifth collaboration between the DP and director.

“Joseph and I began collaborating on Tron: Legacy (2010), we hit it off and just kept going,” says Miranda who also shot Oblivion (2013), Only The Brave (2017) and Spiderhead (2022) for Kosinski.

“So now we have this long history together, and we always try and do something different with each new film and go for a different aesthetic. We also try and get as much in-camera as possible, even when there are a lot of VFX.” When the idea of a sequel to Top Gun came up, Miranda says, “It was a whole new and interesting challenge for us, and the chance to do a next

generation version. And there was also a bit of a personal reason for doing it, as I used to be a gaffer for Tony Scott and did three movies with him.”

Sequels to beloved hits are notoriously risky ventures, and Miranda and Kosinski came wellprepared in terms of their vision.

“We did reference the original film, but we set out to give this more of a modern touch and look,” reports Miranda. “We gave it a golden touch with sunset grabs in the sky, and it’s a very warm movie – like the first one. Those were our influences, but we also set out to make it our own. The first one was shot on film, and we shot on digital, so we also wanted to give it a more filmic look.”

As part of his preparation Miranda also spoke with Jeffrey Kimball ASC, the DP on the first Top Gun. “We had a great talk and I got a sense of what Jeff had to deal with,” he says. “We talked about cameras, what to watch out for, what issues he had on-set, and how the whole collaboration with the

A lens that weighs 10-pounds will weigh over 70-pounds when you’re pulling 7Gs Navy worked. It was all great insight and Jeff was extremely helpful.

“And then I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how we could shoot as much as possible in-camera without all the VFX. That was the big challenge, as we were really interested in making this an aerial movie that would feel totally immersive and real for the audience.”

To this end, the filmmakers had access to two jets

that could accommodate the actors, and each jet was fitted with six cameras, “so we’d just rotate the actors and that set-up allowed them to actually fly instead of just using greenscreen,” Miranda reports.

That really helped the actors as they all felt the real sensations of banking hard and pulling the Gs, and it was definitely worth all the effort it took to make this in-camera.

“In the original film they couldn’t even get cameras inside the jets with the actors, and the aerial scenes were a bit non-descript in that you don’t really see who’s flying the jets. But in this, when you see Tom leave the carrier and get to the end of the runway where all the inertia throws you down, we captured all that and you really feel it. It’s a very visceral thing that you can’t really get using greenscreens.”

This immersive approach also helped dictate the basic camera and lens package.

“We just couldn’t have had all the cameras in

the air shooting this on celluloid,” states Miranda.

“To get the coverage we wanted – cameras on the jet’s nose, the tail, wings, everywhere – it had to be digital. This way, we could send six cameras up there – two looking forward and four looking back. The original movie struggled to get even one up there.

Yes, you could use the smallest camera available – maybe an Eyemo 35mm, but it’s only a 400-foot CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD MAY 2022 45

TOP GUN: MAVERICK•CLAUDIO MIRANDA CSC ASC

CLAUDIO MIRANDA CSC ASC•TOP GUN: MAVERICK

load. And using Go Pros was considered, but we wanted something more filmic.

Initially we’d been talking about shooting it Anamorphic, but when I spoke with Jeff Kimball he pointed out that those lenses are so big, and a lens that weighs 10 pounds will weigh over 70 pounds when you’re pulling 7G’s. So it became a weight issue as well, and that’s one of the reasons we went spherical, along with being able to use close-focus.

But to even get them inside the jets we had such narrow tolerances for the pilots, as we couldn’t invade into their ejection paths. No lens could stick out beyond the glare shield and instrument panel.”

The team also had access to other jets that were used for different exterior camera mounts that varied depending on what the action sequence required, including mounts on the tail, the wing, and underneath the rear fuselage “which we could point forwards or backwards,” says Miranda. “I also was able to have early talks with the Navy about what we needed, and I did some mock-ups on an L-39 CineJet which I presented to the Navy, and we finally got approval.”

Ultimately the filmmakers went with the original Sony Venice, and Miranda used a wide range of lenses. For the main unit the package included: Sigma Primes (6K FF) in 14, 20, 24, 28, 35, 40, 50, 85, 105 and 135mm lengths; Fuji Premier Zooms (4K S35) – 18-85mm, 24-180mm and 75-300mm; Zeiss Master Primes (6K FF) including 50, 75, 100 and 150mm; Zeiss Cinema Zooms (6K FF) – 1530mm, 28-80mm and 70-200mm; a Fuji Premista Zoom (6K FF) 28-100mm; a Cinemagic Revolution Snorkel Lens System (4K S35); IBE PLx2 extenders; Zeiss Master Diopters; Schneider Diopters. For exterior and interior mount lenses Miranda used Voightlander E-Mount (6K FF) 10, 12 and 15mm,

46 MAY 2022 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

ScreenX version of the film. Basically, when we shot we protected the 1.90:1 and framed mostly for the 2.40:1 aspect ratio.”

The DP says he worked very closely with Kevin LaRosa, the aerial coordinator and lead camera pilot.

“The camera platforms would be an L-39 with the F1 Rush, and we had helicopters, drones and teams on mountains with the standard sticks and long lenses capturing ground-to-air,” he explains. “Then we had air-to-air, on the deck, in the ship, so there were a lot of different ways we got the footage.”

Lighting the film’s aerial scenes was another big challenge for Miranda and his crew.

“When I did some mock-ups I knew the terrain they’d be flying over, so I planned morning and evening looks so we could keep the actors as backlit as possible,” he reports. “So we had to coordinate what runs would be best at what time of day, as we had morning and then evening runs with the

and Zeiss Loxia E-Mount (6K FF) 21, 25, 35, 50mm.

For the aerial unit’s L-39 CineJet – “used for a lot of the dogfight stuff” reports Miranda – and a Phenom Camera Jet – “used for longer sequences, especially over the ocean” – the DP used Fuji Cabrio (4K S35) 20-120mm and 85-300mm zooms. For helicopter coverage he used Fuji Cabrio (4K S35) 25-300mm. And for the ground-to-air coverage he went with Fuji Premier Zooms (4K S35) – 24-180mm and 75-400mm; Canon (4K S35 and 6KFF) – 150600mmm; Canon (4K S35 and 6KFF) – 1000mm; IBE PLx2 extenders. Aerial mounts all used Shotover camera gimbals.

“The Venice was very new at the time we started

shooting in May 2018, and I had some issues with it not fitting in the Shotover F1 Rush that goes in the L-39 for air-to-air filming,” reports Miranda. “I needed it to be smaller, and Sony came up with the Rialto extension system. We got super-early prototypes, but as it turned out, we just tended to use the normal Venice in the FI Rush and with smaller zooms. However, the Rialtos came in very handy in the jets, where we had three of them and three normal Venice cameras jammed in.”

Although the film was shot IMAX it didn’t use any IMAX cameras. “The IMAX ratio is 1.90:1 for IMAX release, and then for standard release it’s 2.40:1 for normal theatres,” Miranda notes. “There’s also a

actors, and the idea was to always keep the sun behind them. I’d also check the weather and plan exposures, estimate the stop, check the frame and run the scenes with the actors before they took off. And then we’d just let it rip, because the cameras were all

The aerial stuff was technically some of the most challenging work I’ve ever done fixed, and the actors were in charge of them – they had a button and they rolled and cut them.”

was thinking of. So I did have some references at the beginning that were part of my own workflow.”

Principal photography was spread out over 150 days and multiple locations, mainly at naval bases in California.

“We also shot in London for ten days, and had some pick-ups in LA,” he says. “There was always a lot going on, and sometimes while the pilots and actors were in the sky doing their thing we’d go off and shoot a ‘normal scene’ on the ground with three more cameras,” he reports. “Sometimes we’d have 12 cameras in the air, and a couple more on mountains, and one day we had over 25 cameras running, including the ones on helicopters and ships – all Sony Venice to keep things consistent.”

Knowing this, it’s hardly surprisingly when Miranda refers to the shoot as “a huge logistical puzzle that we had to keep solving.”

Shooting at sea presented another big puzzle.

Miranda says he has never been “a big LUT type of DP,” and this job was no different. “I made one slightly modified LUT and just let it run for the whole show,” he notes. “I feel the camera is like a film stock and I just capture what I need, knowing I’ll be there in the DI to tweak it. But I did talk about it early-on with our colourist, Stefan Sonnenfeld at Company3 in Los Angeles, and I did take some footage in, played with some looks and showed people what I

CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD MAY 2022 47

TOP GUN: MAVERICK•CLAUDIO MIRANDA CSC ASC TM TM

A NEW DIMENSION OF LIGHTING HAS ARRIVED C

M

Y

CM

MY

CY

CMY

K

“Early-on I was on an aircraft carrier and I was trying to get the light in the right place. I’d plan my day, but the boat was constantly switching – and not in my favour. Everyone knew we couldn’t tell the carrier where to go,” he recalls. “But then this Navy guy came up to me and said, ‘I’m sorry to hear you’re having a hard day, but you know we have 22 years of fuel, so we can go wherever the fuck you want.’ So I said, ‘Well, at 4pm it’d be great if we could have the sun 20 degrees off the bow,’ and he just said, ‘OK,’ and walked off. I didn’t take it too seriously, but sure enough, the next day around 4pm the boat began turning. Then they gave me a dedicated guy to help, and I was able to move the carrier anywhere I wanted. That was huge, as I was told that even Tony Scott couldn’t get them to turn the boat. I was almost in tears.”

Miranda worked closely with his DIT, Rohan Chitrakar, “although I pretty much knew all the exposures and camera settings,” he states. “We had it all very carefully planned out, so it was just making sure it all ran smoothly and that we had enough batteries for the flights as we couldn’t tap into the plane power. There were set limits on what we could send up there, so battery weight and timing it all was crucial as well.”

The DI was spread out over a few weeks.

“Stefan likes to massage it and work on it first, and then it was just me, Joe and Stefan in the room because of Covid,” he notes. “Stefan was great and helped us figure-out a nice grain using the DaVinci Resolve that gave it more of a filmic look and a nice nostalgic feel.”

48 MAY 2022 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

(Coincidentally, Sonnenfeld did the colour grade on the recent 4K Blu-ray re-release of the original Top Gun.)

They gave me a dedicated guy to help, and I was able to move the aircraft carrier anywhere I wanted Summing up, Miranda says that, “Getting all the aerial stuff was technically some of the most challenging work I’ve ever done, and we couldn’t have done it without all the help and cooperation we got from the Navy. Just being able to launch Tom in a real jet off the carrier was so amazing and it’s so visceral. Audiences will know they’re really there, and I’m not sure you can fake that.”

Large-Area Lighting.

Ultra Slim and Lightweight.

Full-Spectrum Color.

Large-Format Pixels.

This is Auroris.

Auroris, the all-new full-color overhead light source from LiteGear, combines high-quality color rendition and precision control in one sleek, easy-to-use package.

Powered by LiteGear’s Spectrum technology, Auroris X can cover a 100-square-foot area with just one fixture. Designed to be light on weight and easy to rig, Auroris is one of the slimmest, most versatile soft lights, period. The game of large-area overhead lighting is forever changed.

Visit us at LiteGear.com/Auroris to discover how Auroris can simplify your production.

CONVERSATIONS WITH FRIENDS•SUZIE LAVELLE ISC BSC

SUZIE LAVELLE ISC BSC•CONVERSATIONS WITH FRIENDS

Images: Conversations With Friends.

Images courtesy of BBC/Element Pictures/Enda Bowe.

SOFTLY SENSUAL

Film is altogether a different tool for visual storytelling

By Ron Prince

T

ypically, it’s the task of the cinematographer and their director to treat sequels, prequels and origins stories to a visual change-of-gear, compared to shows that have gone successfully before. .

And, such was the challenge facing DP Suzie Lavelle ISC BSC and director Lenny Abrahamson when they decided to harness Kodak 2-perf 35mm film for BBC/Hulu’s sensual Conversations With Friends TV series, the companion to 2020’s lockdown sensation, Normal People, which they had worked on previously together. Normal People was the most streamed series of 2020 on BBC’s iPlayer, with over 60 million views over an eight-month period.

Set in Dublin, Eire, both Normal People and Conversations With Friends are based on the bestselling, coming-of-age novels by author Sally Rooney, who also helped to adapt them for the small screen, with Abrahamson directing and executive producing through Element Pictures for BBC/Hulu.

Whereas Normal People, which was shot digitally, took a tender take on the budding intimacies of a young couple against a backdrop of class and privilege,

50 MAY 2022 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

Conversations With Friends deals with the passionate and complicated entanglements between best friends, ex-lovers and a married couple. The 12 x 30-minute series follows Dublin University students Frances and Bobbi – best buddies and former paramours, who perform poetry together – and how their tight-knit dynamic is threatened by the new attachments they forge with an older married couple, journalist Melissa and actor Nick.

“Lenny and I felt it would have been wrong to make Conversations With Friends with the same look-and-feel as Normal People, and we had many conversations early-on about how we could change things up,” reveals Lavelle.

“Lenny wanted to retain the intimacy, naturalism and visual softness of the character-driven narrative in Normal People, but with this being a more mature four-hander, he was keen to shoot wider this time around, to have more depth and sense of the characters in place, to see more of Dublin, within the visual storytelling. We both also felt that a lot of digitally-originated TV and streaming shows were starting to look the same, and were wary about the camera set-up being too big and intrusive.”

As the scripts for Conversations With Friends were not available at the early stages of their discussions, Lavelle read Rooney’s book, and admits, “the more I read it, the more I felt this story must be shot on film. So we started to explore the idea of shooting on celluloid, albeit not super-glossy 35mm.”

Scouring the internet, Lavelle came across an article on Kodak’s popular Filmmaker Stories portal, about DP Jody Lee Lipes lensing HBO’s series I Know This Much Is True for director Derek Cianfrance, framing in 2:1 aspect ratio on 2-perf 35mm film, using just one film stock – KODAK VISION3 500T Color Negative Film 5219 – for the entire series.

“I watched that show and loved the reality and naturalism that shooting 2-perf 35mm for a 2:1 extraction using 500T brought to the storytelling,” says Lavelle. “It put the idea in our heads that it just might be possible to shoot a British TV series on film, and we felt that if Derek and Jody had that got that format through HBO, then we had a chance of getting the same approved by the BBC.”

Due to the then prevalence of Covid and need for safety protocols, Lavelle shot test footage in her own home, filming family and friends at safe distances, with support from Cinelab to process the film negative and scan the results to 4K. “Working with a small, low-impact camera package, using a lot of available light, very sympathetic to skin tones, 2-perf 35mm felt so right and effortless in terms of not feeling and noticing the camera or the light. We really felt we had found the format the show deserved and the producers agreed.”

Along with I Know This Much Is True, Lavelle also observed Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011, dir. Sean Durken, DP Jody Lee Lipes), shot on 35mm, for its filmic texture, framing of characters and blocking of group scenes, in different exterior and interiors environments, noting the quiet, measured rhythm of the cinematography.

After significant delays due to the pandemic, principal photography on Conversations With Friends got underway in March 2021, concluding in October 2021, due to numerous stop/start interruptions caused

by Covid. Lavelle shot episodes 1-5, plus 11 and 12, across a total of 75 shooting days with Abrahamson, and Canadian DP Bobby Shore CSC lensed episodes 6-10 with director by Leanne Welham over the course of 50 shooting days.

We wanted to respond to the performances, and to keep the image real and alive Production on the series took place at Loop Studios in Belfast, where sets for Frances’ apartment and Melissa and Nick’s marital home and garden, designed by Anna Rackard, were built on the stages. Belfast exteriors stoodin as much as possible for Dublin, although the team necessarily shot at locations around Dublin for eight days, before moving to the Croatian island of Hvar to film the holiday scenes.

For the shoot, Lavelle went with Arricam LT 35mm fitted with 400ft magazines, lensing through vintage Canon K35 lenses and an Angénieux 25-250mm zoom, provided by Acorn Film & Video in Belfast.

Lavelle and Shore both operated on what was mainly a single camera production, but did incorporate the Steadicam skills of Greg McGuiness during the Irish stint of production and Charlie Cowper in Croatia, plus the focus-pulling talents of Connor Hammond, who ensured sharp images despite the lack of marks.

“Although we did some work on dolly and tracks, the majority of the camerawork was a combination of handheld and Steadicam, as we wanted to respond to the performances, which might change between takes,

and to keep the image real and alive,” Lavell explains.

“This approach, and the small technology footprint that comes with filming on film, also meant we could work quickly and get thorough the daily page-count and setups efficiently. Typically our Irish episodes took 12 days each, and that reduced to ten days in Croatia.

“One of the features of shooting 2-perf, especially with longer focal lengths, is that we reduced that very narrow depth-of-field that you can see in Normal People, and could stand back slightly to plant our characters, especially Frances, in the different locations around Dublin. That said, the Covid protocols were much stricter there than they were in Northern Ireland, and our 1st AD became adept at positioning plants, props and extras so we didn’t get people wearing facemasks on our Dublin exteriors.”

Lavelle reveals that she considered using different film stocks for the series, but went with Kodak 500T 5219 for the entire production. Her preferred lighting approach involved using mainly Tungsten fixtures – Dinos, halfWendy’s, 10K and 20K Molebeams, plus Mini and Maxi-brutes – which, in combination with her vintage lens choices, encouraged warmth, softness and intimacy in the imagery. The production gaffer was Simon Magee, with lighting equipment provided by PKE. “I wanted to deliver a rich, low-contrast negative to post-production, and knew that the 500T loves colour – it’s so natural and lovely-looking on skin tones – even when you are flooding the image with illumination to keep it light and airy. I especially loved how the 500T picked-up on the golden stone, the pinky-reds of the vegetation, and blue-green of the sea, when we shot in Croatia. And it was absolutely bonkers how it held detail in massively overexposed areas of the image, such as the café scene we shot in Belfast.

“I studied cinematography at the National Film & TV School in London, where we shot on film and were drilled by our tutors, especially Brian Tufano BSC, about exposure. In a world where we have become accustomed to forever checking monitors on-set, it was wonderful to see the crew not having to worry about any of that, trusting their eyes instead and knowing that on film what you see is what you get.”

One of the significant achievements when shooting Normal People had been the help of intimacy coordinator Ita O’Brien in supporting the actors and the crew when it came to staging scenes involving sex and nudity.

And once again, O’Brien became part of the crew.

“As with any choreographed scene – such as a stunt or a dance – you need a specialist practitioner to help everybody talk about things properly and professionally, so that everyone – the actors and the crew – knows what is required and feels comfortable,” says Lavelle. “When everyone was on the same page, we filmed with a really respectful, closed set – just Lenny, me and my focus puller, the boom op and someone from costume/make-up.

We had the full backing of the producers, and were not pressed on time during those scenes and let the actors take the lead, and I think that resulted in a special onscreen chemistry for those moments.”

Film processing on the Irish stint of the production was done at Cinelab, with Hungarian Film Lab supporting the Croatian-based shoot. The final grade on Conversations With Friends was completed by colourist Garry Curran at Outer Limits in Dublin, where Lavelle says the work, “didn’t involve anything radical, as we had captured the essence of the show on film in-camera, so it was more about finessing the look in general.”

Lavelle concludes, “It was a considerable challenge to live up to the success of Normal People, whilst creating

something that had its own distinctive look and style, during a schedule that was constantly blighted by the pandemic in some form or other. Film is altogether a different tool for visual storytelling. It really kept us on our toes, but helped to make things fast and efficient too. It was a joyful experience and think the result looks amazing.”

CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD MAY 2022 51

DAS BOOT S3•ARMIN FRANZEN

ARMIN FRANZEN•DAS BOOT S3

SEA CHANGE

By Ron Prince

S

torywise, season three of the WWII U-boat drama, Das Boot, is typified, in it’s early episodes at least, by moral dilemmas the characters face towards armed conflict, with opposing sides of the war effort sharing somewhat rose-tinted hopes that the world will get back to normality soon. .

Cinematographically-speaking, the ten-part series will likely be remembered as an early adventure into endto-end, 8K production, post and distribution, with Sky, in partnership with Samsung, taking a sizeable leap into the UHD future.

Warfare on the oceans is as deadly as ever as

I became very comfortable shooting with the Red Monstro camera at 8K

52 MAY 2022 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

WWII rages. Set in the spring of 1943, when U-boats are being prepared-for-use at the German naval base in Kiel, the action follows the tense struggles of a young submarine crew as they get ready to engage in the Battle Of The Atlantic, much to the apprehensions of their families and loved ones. Out at sea, on a dangerous mission to the Southern Hemisphere, they find themselves hunted by an obsessive Royal Navy Commander employing ever-more sophisticated sonar technology and depth charges in a thrilling cat-and-mouse chase.

There’s intrigue on dry land too, in neutral Lisbon, where an SS commandant discovers a lethal plot, amongst exiles, spies and criminals, to steal a fortune in plundered wartime gold. This, and his recent dark experiences on the Eastern front, leads him to question his past actions and moral path.

Collaborating with showrunner Moritz Polter, episodes 1-5 of Das Boot S3 were shot under the auspices of German cinematographer Armin Franzen and director Hans Steinbichler, with British DP David Higgs BSC supervising episodes 6-10 for director Dennis Gansel.

Produced through Bavaria Fiction, principal

photography on the series took place over 104 shooting days between October 2020 and March 2021, starting at locations around Prague, and with the U-boat interiors being filmed at Barrandov Studios.

Scenes involving the U-boats and naval destroyers at sea were filmed at Malta Film Studios, with nearby interior/ exterior locations doubling for Lisbon.

“Although I had not worked on the series before, I was highly-aware of the show and watched the first and second seasons before signing-up. I was amazed and excited because I thought they represented masterpieces of storytelling,” says Franzen, an alumnus of the Filmakademie Baden Württemberg and Lodz Film School, in Poland, whose credits include Gladbeck (2018), Rammstein Deutschland (2019) and How To Sell Drugs Online (Fast) (2019).

“In this third season, the storyline changed quite dramatically, as the characters on both sides question the morality and the necessity for war more than ever. Many are emotionally-wounded, longing for a

world without conflict, and have the romanticised expectation that they will live and love again in the world they used to know. Of course, the audience know that war will change the world forever, and the irony of this premise really struck me.”

“Drama series do move-on and evolve visually between seasons. So I suggested to Moritz a subtle change to the look of the show – but without destroying its DNA – where we embrace the emotional intelligence of the characters and their idealised notions, read more into the faces, bringing more colour and warmth into the skin tones, and creating a more dynamic range of palettes – monochrome, saturated, colour-contrasted, cold and warm – right across the story arc to portray the romantic irony as well as the full-on horrors of war.”

Regarding the decision to shoot Das Boot S3 in 8K, after the first two had been produced in 4K, Franzen says, “I am a great believer that technology should never overrule the process of filmmaking. To be honest, at first I was praying that we would not have to shoot in 8K. With this being a period-drama, I was really concerned about the increased strength of the digital look in 8K, and how a possibly slower workflow would influence the way we would work, especially as the schedule meant we had to work fast.

“But, that said, shooting 8K gave me the chance to introduce large format photography into my original creative thinking, and to use that to design new dynamics regarding the spatial relations between the characters and their environments, such as the perception of the confines inside the submarine.”

At the time of production, Red was the only camera manufacturer offering 8K-capable cameras, and Franzen

Zeiss Supreme Primes are nicely consistent across the range in terms of aperture, size, weight and ergonomics undertook extensive tests to investigate how to mitigate the innate sharpness of the full-frame Red Monstro sensor, measuring 40.96mm x 21.60mm, with a resolution of 8192 x 4320 pixels.

“I like a certain level of grain in the image, so I conducted tests at different exposures – chiefly 1000ISO to 1600ISO – to see what might happen,” he says. “I was pleasantly surprised to find that there was a grain-like texture in the image at the higher ISO, which would certainly help give a more natural and organic feeling.”

But Franzen did not stop there.

He also considered many full-frame lens and filtration options to help take-off the digital edge, before settling on Zeiss Supreme Primes and Schneider-Kreuznach Radiant Soft diffusion. The camera package was provided by Vantage in Prague.

“Aesthetically, I preferred how the Supreme Primes rendered skin colour and overall colour separation, and how, in combination with the Radiant Soft filters, they delivered a soft and gentle radiance to the image, whilst maintaining contrast, as well as controlling the highlights with very little blooming effect.

Images: Das Boot S3 images © Jan Hromádko/ Bavaria Fiction Gmbh/Sky Deutschland GmbH

“Additionally, as the Zeiss Supreme Primes are nicely consistent across the range in terms of aperture, size, weight and ergonomics, it meant that frequent lens changes, often on two-cameras, would be much quicker and easier than had we gone with vintage optics, and that was really important with regards to meeting our schedule. As it turned out, during my five episodes, over 63 shooting days, we had just a few minutes of overtime in total.”

The development of LUTs also played a small part in the recipe to mollify the 8K sensor, but there with some caveats.

“You have to be very careful with the application of LUTs,” Franzen remarks. “If you don’t test them rigorously in different lighting conditions, and iron-out any wrinkles they might bring to colour and contrast, it can lead to bullshit and there’s no way back.

“We developed a small selection of show-LUTs, but ended-up just using one that very subtly supplemented the filmic quality already being achieved though the lens, filter and exposure choices.”

Beyond the camera, on-set lighting was another area that Franzen had under his control to soften the image.

Working with gaffer Martin Granilla, he deployed an array of ARRI SkyPanels, Astera Tubes, LiteGear LiteMats, plus Carpet Lights, in combination with DoPchoice and other light-shaping tools, to sculpt the illumination, and deliver images with richly-detailed blacks, subtle and dramatic contrasts on faces, plus eye-catching highlights.

“Despite my initial misgivings, I became very comfortable shooting with the Red Monstro camera at 8K, and was very happy with the cinematic look,” says Franzen.

During production the team monitored on-set in 2K, and had access to 4K professional displays, plus an 8K Samsung OLED TV screen, in the DIT truck, watching dailies via DaVinci Resolve, operated by DIT Jakub Hrabanek.

“Regarding the level of detail that comes with 8K resolution, and how we might see every little pore in the skin, or notice issues with makeup, costume and set design, I encouraged the different heads of department to pay regular visits to Jakub and to report any issues or concerns they had. But I never heard anything back that caused them to work differently than they would normally, or any alarm bells about things

appearing ‘digital’, which gave us all a great deal of confidence.”

Editing Das Boot S3 involved lower-resolution proxy files due to of the lack of equipment ready for 8K postproduction. However, the final grade was done at 8K, conducted by colourist Ondřej Štibing at UPP in Prague, with a Dolby Atmos audio soundscape.

“I expected the DI to be a slow process, but it was pretty much like a normal grading session. I don’t know what UPP did exactly to upgrade their backroom engineering and Baselight system to make the 8K workflow work, but the experience was fabulous,” Franzen recalls.

“In the grading suite we had a professional OLED 4K HDR colour-critical reference monitor side-by-side with a Samsung 8K HDR consumer screen for comparative purposes. There were some slight differences between the images on the different displays, but these were obscure.

“Although I had my doubts about shooting 8K, I was extremely happy with the end result. It was a great experience and it’s always good to learn something new.

We are still in the early days of 8K, and content offerings are very limited. But if you have ever viewed immersive cinematic 8K content, especially paired with phenomenal audio, it is quite an experience.”

CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD MAY 2022 53

MEN•ROB HARDY BSC ASC

TWISTS OF FATE

ROB HARDY BSC ASC•MEN Images: Photo credits – Kevin Baker.

Images courtesy of A24.

By Darek Kuźma

A

24’s Men sees cinematographer Rob Hardy BSC ASC and writer/ director Alex Garland at the top of their game, creating yet another idiosyncratic world of cinematic horrors and wonders.

A woman, Harper (Jessie Buckley), who witnesses her husband Geoffrey committing suicide, hires a house in the scenic Cotswolds to get away from the awful distress. Yet the trauma follows her around as she starts experiencing

Hardy chose the Sony Venice for the shoot as he knew the camera inside out.

“I used a Sony A7S a few times to get into car positions that we wouldn’t be able to shoot even in Rialto mode, but the rest was Sony Venice,” explains Hardy who shot with the camera almost exclusively on a Stabileye miniature stabilised head.

“Stabileye is adaptable and quick, and it has a sort of multiple personality aspect to it. You can use it almost like a Steadicam, or get a slightly handheld feel.

increasingly bizarre events and encountering men who seem to wear the same face. Or maybe it is the face that wears them? What awaits her is either catharsis or madness. That is to say, describing what Men is about in a reasonable way is a futile endeavour.

Not out of fear of spoiling anything, but because it is such a visceral experience that words simply do not carry the desired meaning.

“It’s by far the weirdest and most complex thing Alex and I have made together,” says the man who shot Ex Machina (2014), Annihilation (2018) and the series Devs (2020) for Garland.

“You could say Men takes the guise of a horror film with British folklore undertones, but that’s only scratching the surface.

There’s also black comedy and characters transitioning from one physical state to another.”

So it’s a surreal trip down the rabbit hole with ghost story, home invasion and body horror, then? “We also had a day of studio work with actors on trampolines.

But, yeah, call it whatever you want. It’ll be different for everyone.”

Men was shot over 40 days in April and May 2021 in the Cotswolds, UK, based on the script Garland wrote in five days during 2020 lockdown, though it later went through many iterations.

“The project was shaped by conversations, location scouting, weird photos and imageries Alex had collected to use as visual inspirations,” reveals Hardy.

“It was fluid up until we finished postproduction. During the grade, for example, we pushed the colour palette until it broke, just to be aware of our limits, so we could then step back a bit and create something that made visual sense within those limits.”

We discovered it for the lighthouse scenes in Annihiliation – it was a revelation that enabled us to fine-tune the frame whilst shooting.

“Logistically, on Men, we tried to do everything, both within the house and out in the open, as 360-degree as possible to immerse the audience in that world.

Sometimes we were almost shooting guerrilla style, monitors and everything in backpacks.”

And Hardy used every opportunity to highlight a sense of foreboding dread.

“When we move away from the house, we encounter many weird and fascinating things. Like, abandoned military buildings that have been collapsing in the middle of the forest. It’s only an episode, but we captured them in all of their crumbling glory.”

As for the lenses, he only considered one set. “Panavision H-series is a great glass with multiple personalities within one set. You can make choices as you go.

Depending on where you put the T-stop, there are certain things you can do. One of the lenses has insane circular flares, so when we introduce our priest character, he arrives in a ridiculously beautiful light circle,” he laughs.

Hardy says the H-series was also great for shooting in 1.85:1 aspect ratio. “I love the format, as it opens things up in a fun way that enables you to make slightly offkilter decisions without seeming too selfconscious.”

Harper’s gruesome journey was made even more sinister via the striking use of colours.

“We wanted a visual palette that is eye-popping and counters the environment she’s in. Like, the house she hires. You’ve seen it in dozens of films, but we painted

54 MAY 2022 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

Alex and I always try to create a world from scratch

the walls red, then lit it and graded in a way that it stopped being familiar,” muses Hardy. “I love horrors, Hammer movies and the many films that director John Carpenter and DP Dean Cundey ASC made together got me into this business, but the genre gets repetitive. We wanted Men to be beautiful and oppressive in a way that you simply don’t know where it is taking you.”

The seductive redness of the house interiors is counter-pointed with the forest’s luscious greenness. “Exploiting the verdant British countryside like that felt risky, but we made it bizarre, vibrant, alive,” states Hardy.

The sensation feels the most dangerously alluring when Harper goes for a walk and finds an old tunnel encircled by vivid greens. “We shot at a disused Victorian railway tunnel, about 45 minutes from the Cotswolds. When I first went there, it overwhelmed me with its cavernous ceiling and beautiful tiling that had an amazing way of reflecting light. I felt like being in a church, looking at epic frescos.”

The protagonist starts to play with

myself to use LEDs because when you’re working around an old building, there is a slight danger of heat.”

LED lights, like Creamsource Vortex8, also helped on night exteriors when the house’s security lights go on and off to reveal, and conceal, some disturbing images.

“It created this stroboscopic effect that I could achieve only with LED and Tungsten fittings. It was difficult though, as true blackness is hard to find even in the middle of the Cotswolds, especially that when shooting in May, when we had only about six hours per night to shoot what we needed,” admits Hardy. “Obviously there is no such thing as pure black in nature, so we had to push the black levels in the grade to make it work.”

Hardy says that the DI, done with his long-time collaborator Asa Shoul, was about maintaining visual consistency and playing with what was shot on-set.

“We were working in an environment that was transitioning from winter into spring. Because the story takes place over

sound, but then the echo comes back at her more layered and ominous than she expected, as something is “awakened” there.

“Alex and I always try to create a world from scratch, this time we were supplanting our imagined world onto existing places, making the ordinary get progressively extraordinary. It starts in a familiar territory, almost bland, but by the heavily-VFX’d end it’s so over-the-top that you feel it’s two different films. Taking the audience on that ride and making everything feel right was one of the biggest challenges.”

They had one more visually-impressive interior, hued with an amalgam of orange and amber.

“We shot the flashbacks of Harper’s husband’s suicide on the fourth floor of an apartment building in London, right

by Tower Bridge. It had big, floor-toceiling windows, but I didn’t want the mundane British sky. So I flooded it with this ridiculously oversaturated light that turned London’s greyness into something steely, yet elegant.”

Because of that effort, the shot of Jessie Buckley’s face in which we see a reflection of her husband falling to his death is one of the film’s most memorable moments. Hardy shot it using a Quarter Wendy light and an unusual gel combo, and if fact used anywhere between two and eight Wendys together, with the proper practicals, for most day scenes, sometimes adding CTB to make them cooler, along with 10K Fresnels to add hard spots.

“I’ve always been a big proponent of Tungsten light,” Hardy reveals. “The Wendy has been my go-to key source for a number of years as it pollutes very well with natural daylight, which we needed to augment here a bit. Still, I had to force

a few days and involves only two actors, we had to keep the colours in check, ensure that everything feels naturalistic to the point that it becomes uncomfortable.”

He adds that the only filter he used was Black Pro-Mist to counter the way Sony Venice reads the lenses. The rest was done in-camera.

“Asa is invaluable. I always bring him in early. For me, grading is a process of discovery. You have to be prepared for anything and trust your instincts. I remember that with Ex Machina we finished two weeks of grading quite happy but, even though the producers loved it, something was missing. So we started again,” reminisces Hardy. “Here, the DI was about finding the right look and trying to balance the degree of bizarreness, so that the surreal elements would fit nicely together and make an impact without losing their energy.”

All in all, Men’s ensuing madness is well-earned. Hardy best sums it up when he says that it is a very peculiar story that should not be judged in relation to other films, yet it can serve as a reminder of the possibilities offered by the horror genre.

As for his relationship with Garland, they have been shooting their biggest film to date in Atlanta, A24’s Civil War. And they still have a blast together.

“Civil War is a vast undertaking, probably A24’s biggest project to date,” says Hardy. “I always saw filmmaking as a process in which you organise chaos. And when all of the elements come together, and it works, then it’s something quite extraordinary.”

CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD MAY 2022 55

THE INDUSTRY LENS•DAN SASAKI•PANAVISION

DAN SASAKI•PANAVISION•THE INDUSTRY LENS

OPTICAL ADVENTURES

By Michael Goldman

photographic inspiration or film that they relate to, and that gives me an idea of how to create optics to capture such an image.

“For instance, director Paul Thomas Anderson once showed me a reference shot that had tons of axial chromatic aberration in it. I understood the technical aspects of how to get there. And, because I have no preconceived notions of what these great filmmakers are asking for, or what I think is correct or wrong, I’m very pliable with things like that. I’ve learned there are multiple ways of coming-up with an answer for image artistry. This is especially important today, when we are seeing everything from small photo emulsions and digital sensors to all the

There are multiple ways of coming-up with an answer for image artistry

D

an Sasaki, Panavision’s senior VP of optical engineering & lens strategy, insists he didn’t actually believe it when he was informed he was to receive the ASC’s first-ever Curtis Clark Technical Achievement Award for major technological contributions to the discipline of cinematography. But when reality sunk in – the honour was presented at the 2022 Annual ASC Awards – he admits he first felt like “a deer in headlights”, before the joy of fond memories and waves of gratitude started to overwhelm him.

An ASC associate member, Sasaki is considered one of the industry’s leading optics experts – often referred to as a ‘lens guru’. Over the course of some 36 years, he has contributed to the visual look and style of hundreds of feature films and TV shows in collaboration with many world-leading filmmakers. Among his many accomplishments, he developed Panavision’s AWZ2 Anamorphic zoom lens, its T-series Anamorphic lens system, and re-developed the company’s Ultra Panatar lenses.

But most likely, according to Sasaki, none of this would have happened had he not grown up in “a Panavision household” under the tough but watchful eye of his dad, former Panavision VP of operations, Ralph Sasaki.

Almost constant conversations at the family dinner table were about Panavision, which eventually evolved into an opportunity for the youngster to pick up a little summer money working part-time at Panavision, thus launching him on the path he travels today.

MENTORS “It was Christmas 1986 and I was going to college at the time. My dad brought me into Panavision because they needed help,” recalls Sasaki. “I started-off painting lenses and filling-in engravings, and never regarded it as anything more than just a nice part-time job.

“But, eventually, I was offered to stay full-time, and began as a lens technician, doing service checks. I guess I didn’t mess-up too much, because they then allowed me to get into repairs, which turned into larger repairs.

After the company’s optical division was divided into manufacturing and service departments, I went into the service group, and that is where I became more of a lead in service and repairs.

“Gradually, I became more familiar with camera assistants and cinematographers and started forming relationships with them. That’s when I started learning more about the science of lenses and the practicality of optics – how cinematographers use them, what diffusion is, and so forth.”

From there, Sasaki essentially took iterative steps, while being mentored by key Panavision officials – including his father, plus the legendary Takuo Miyagishima, Panavision’s senior VP of engineering, a major influence on his career, together with George Kraemer, then Panavision’s VP of optics, and Hilmar Grasmuck, the company’s former VP of optical, among others.

“They all helped me learn about the non-linear aspects of optical design and finessing – what makes a lens look pretty versus a lens that is technically great on a lens chart, and what attributes to look for in future lens products,” he recalls.

“They took me under their wings and taught me about this industry. My dad was hard on me at times, because he wanted to be clear that nepotism wasn’t the reason for my accomplishments.

“They would always challenge me and ask me questions. Tak had a particularly interesting way of mentoring – he would never give me an answer. He would give me an open-ended question and leave me

to answer it. The guidance, trust and vision of all those people are the reason I have been able to get so far.”

INFLUENCES The influences on Sasaki didn’t end with his Panavision colleagues, however. As more opportunities came his way to work on major projects with major directors, DPs and first ACs “eventually started putting their trust in me, and would also start challenging me.”

“One of my biggest breaks was with DP Dante Spinotti AIC ASC on Heat (1995, dir. Michael Mann),” he recalls. “My dad and Tak told me that Dante really needed a high-speed set of Anamorphic lenses, and could I figure it out? I said ‘sure’ – I think they were testing me, because I was not formally trained as an optical designer. I was a physics major. I understood the principles, but the whole notion of optical design for a motion-picture lens that has a particular aesthetic is something you don’t really learn in school.

“I did a good job, and from there, slowly, they introduced me to other great DPs, such as László Kovács ASC HSC, who asked for a 60mm C-series lens, and John Schwartzman ASC who asked me to build a 20mm C-series lens on Pearl Harbor (2001, dir. Michael Bay).

Those were all gradual little steps for me to work closely with cinematographers, and build-up a kind of mentoring type relationship with them.”

Sasaki’s work caught the eye of former Panavision CEO, John Suh, who moved Sasaki up to a new role as VP of development. That gave him a front-row seat in the exciting arena of motion-picture optical innovation – a seat he still occupies today.

“What I try to do is take-in a vision of what these great directors and cinematographers think the image should look like, based on non-binary thoughts and discussions,” he says. “I will ask if there is any type of

way up to 15-perf IMAX film and monster sensors.”

To illustrate the kind of back/forth collaboration needed to help achieve a filmmaker’s desired aesthetic, Sasaki points to his work with Quentin Tarantino and DP Bob Richardson ASC on the 2015 movie The Hateful 8.

There, Sasaki helped filmmakers shoot in a super-wide 2:76:1 aspect ratio using a reconfigured vintage set of Ultra Panavision 70 lenses that had not been used since the 1960s.

“I never thought Bob would have us pull lenses off the shelf that were not originally designed to fit onto a modern reflex film camera,” he says. “We basically had to dismantle the lenses and make them reflex-capable and functional with a camera that wasn’t even thought of when those lenses were created. That was really challenging, but also a big personal highlight.

“Another real big challenge is whenever we do IMAX with director Chris Nolan and his DP Hoyte van Hoytema NSC FSF ASC. They always create highly-unusual shots for 15-perf IMAX. For shows like Dunkirk (2017) and Tenet (2020), we’ve had to make probe lenses that can be big-enough to cover the frame, while still having a decent T-stop and edge-to-edge performance. That’s really hard to do because as the diagonal grows, it doesn’t increase the difficulty twice – it’s by the fourth power, making it much more difficult.”

The industry’s constant evolutions and technical ebbs and flows also make Sasaki a valuable problemsolver. For the B&W film, The Artist (2011, dir. Michel Hazanavicius, DP Guillaume Schiffman AFC), the filmmakers wanted a vintage era style that matched the time frame in which the story takes place. By way of reference, they showed Sasaki old Charlie Chaplin footage and lots of B&W vignettes.

“They wanted to use old lenses from that era, and I said that we had some pre-1940’s MGM stock lenses that didn’t have coatings that might fit what they were looking for. But the problem was, for lenses back then, the lens design was very mathematical, very predictive.

They were designed prior to anti-reflection coating. You couldn’t design lenses with too many elements back then, because the reflections inside were so much that the light would never pass – you got too much glare.

“I knew, mathematically, that if I were able to make non-spherical elements, we could make a better image, and if we used a type glass that had a particular dispersion technology on it, it could be a better lens. And if we did that, then the vignetting and some of the softness could work like the filters cinematographers used back then.

“They tried shooting with vintage lenses, but came back saying the results looked too modern. What we discovered from this is we could actually use a modern lens to create a more vintage look, because we had more control. So, I try to these things into account, and let people know that if you want a

Images: various photos © 2018 George Joblove, and all courtesy of Panavision.

vintage look, it doesn’t automatically mean you go with vintage lenses.”

LOOKING FORWARD Sasaki believes the world of optics is at a significant crossroads, and is excited about changes looming on the horizon.

“Traditional optics are very much in vogue right now, but I’m seeing an intersection of really dominant industry technologies with incredibly powerful image-processing tools,” he explains. “Things like what Unreal Engine can do with their image software, and new camera refresh rates – these are going to change the industry. What we previously could only do with traditional optics, if we press that to merge with the previs/postvis world, where lenses become part of the process earlier, then lenses can get smaller and become more dynamic, working in a more symbiotic fashion with previs/postvis technologies. I see that intersection happening fast.

“Even volumetric technology – that’s something that was kind of a novelty a few years ago, but it is now grabbing traction. And with real-time image processing as cameras and software becomes faster, I see a possibility of lens technology bending toward that too.”

Sasaki sees this new era in a positive way. “There will still be room for traditional designs, because there are always purists who will prefer that,” he says. “But there is an opportunity for optics to form-factor into an intersection of new technologies on both the front and back-end of the image chain.”

• Fully accessorized kit with diffusers and eggcrate • 4-fixture Quad Kit available • Controlled via interface or myMIX® mobile app • Wireless DMX by LumenRadio with CRMX and W-DMX

Introducing DMG DASH™ Pocket LED Kit The latest member of the MIX® family. The handheld fixture features superior color rendering with the same 6-chip LED set as the MAXI, SL1 and MINI MIX.

dash.rosco.com 56 MAY 2022 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD MAY 2022 57

STUDENT UNION•FILMAKADEMIE BADEN-WÜRTTEMBERG

FILMAKADEMIE BADEN-WÜRTTEMBERG•STUDENT UNION

THE WORLD IS THEIR CLASSROOM

By Natasha Block Hicks

We are looking for creativity, individuality and the willingness to be a team player

T

he variety of international establishments offering a worldclass training in filmmaking could leave a potential cinematography student crippled by indecision. The Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg, established in 1991 in Ludwigsburg, Germany, has a neat solution to this dilemma. Study coordinator Roland Mönch, a DP with a background in documentary filmmaking who heads the cinematography programme, explains how organised exchanges with global partner institutions help connect students with their contemporaries abroad.

“The oldest international programme is the ‘Hollywood Workshop’ at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), which has been going around fifteen years,” says Mönch.

Also on offer is the ‘Bollywood Workshop’, where Filmakademie students visit the Film & Television Institute of India (FTII) in Pune, and the ‘Fiction Alexa Workshop’, where a team from the school, including two DPs, shoot a 15-minute short at La Fémis in Paris.

These arrangements are reciprocal, so even students staying on home soil will be exposed to the cultural diversity of foreign filmmakers. In addition, the well-established network of Filmakademie alumni, of which all students become members on enrolment, is

active throughout the international industry.

Filmakademie DPs making a particular impact at home and abroad include Frank Lamm, whose work 58 MAY 2022 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

can be seen on Season 3 of Netflix’ The Crown (2016-), Daniela Knapp BVK, the recipient of the Film Award in Gold at the German Film Awards for her cinematography on The Poll Diaries/Poll (2011, dir.

Chris Kraus) and Mathias Fleischer, two-times winner of the Bavarian Film Award for Best Cinematography for the features Das Lied In Mir (2011, dir.

Florian Cossen) and The Little Witch/ Die Kleine Hexe (2018, dir. Mike Schaerer).

A framework of scholarships supports qualifying students with personal and production costs for both international programmes and home study.

In line with German legislation, the Filmakademie does not impose fees on EU students undertaking their first degree, however EU students on an additional undergraduate qualification must contribute €650 Euros in fees per semester and non-EU students are liable for €1,500 Euros per semester.

Within a couple of years, all the modules at the Filmakademie will be taught bilingually, in German and English, and students will be expected to integrate a year abroad into their studies, strengthening the international position of the school.

“This is the goal,” comments Mönch. The Filmakademie has been working hard to build a network of partner institutions including Notre Dame University in Lebanon, the Universidad del Cine in Argentina and the Maisha Film Lab in Uganda.

To encompass all these opportunities, plus their busy schedule of hands-on learning on-campus, the cinematography programme at the Filmakademie – officially four years – can often take five years and awards its own unique diploma.

Prof. Thomas Schadt, managing director of the Filmakademie states: “Some years back the question arose of whether we should introduce BA and MA degrees. After a thorough analysis we came to the conclusion that, for us, the Bologna system does not really do justice to the creative processes which are at work in film and media education.”

Teaching at the Filmakademie is delivered almost entirely by visiting tutors. Icelandic DP Birgit Guðjónsdóttir IKS BVK, who was awarded an honorary Ger-

man Camera Prize (Deutscher Kamerapreis) in 2018 for her ‘outstanding career in filmmaking’, is teaching at the Filmakademie this year. Previous international tutors include Philippe Rousselot AFC ASC, known for Beautiful Creatures (2013, dir. Richard LaGravenese) and Phedon Papamichael ASC GSC who lit The Trial

Of The Chicago 7 (2020, dir. Aaron Sorkin), but the majority come from BVK (German Society of Cinematographers) membership.

Joining Guðjónsdóttir on the current roster are DPs Martin Gressmann BVK, winner of a 2016 German Film Critics Award for his documentary Das Gelände (2014), Jolanta Dylewska PSC, the recipient of numerous accolades for her lighting of In Darkness (2011, dir.

Agnieszka Holland) and Hans Fromm BVK, winner of

The Filmakademie is keen on creative equality… and training diverse talents who can enrich the film industry the 2008 German Film Critics Award (Best Cinematography) for Yella (2007, dir. Christian Petzold).

The Year 1 programme of ‘basic studies’ at the Filmakademie is shared across all departments. Students undertake eight-week modules each in scriptwriting,

directing and cinematography, culminating in the creation of a ten-minute collaborative film in a generic apartment set in the 300m² Jochen Kuhn Studio, which is the smaller of two sound stages hosted by the Filmakademie (the 400m² Albrecht Ade Studio being named after the Filmakademie´s founding director).

eras, including ARRI Alexa LF and Mini LF, Sony Venice, Black Magic and ARRI SR3 and 416 film cameras, that can be partnered with lens sets such as Zeiss Ultra Primes or Cooke S7i, plus a selection of industry-standard zooms. Students can choose from a large range of grip and stabilisation options, including Easyrig,

Both studios are equipped with control panels, lighting control and black, blue, and green screen.

The Filmakademie has around 400kW of lighting in its stores, including ARRI Tungsten, HMI, SkyPanel and Orbiter systems, plus Dedolight DLED and Lightstream Sets and KinoFlo and Carpetlight options.

The year concludes with a module in freestyle moviemaking.

“We call it ‘filmgestaltung’ which means shaping, forming film” says Mönch. “Students can do what they like. Some make short dramas but many make small animations.”

In Year 2, students break away into their specialisms. Cinematography students pass the winter semester filming a documentary, in given lighting conditions, and the summer semester shooting a drama of up to 30-minutes runtime with additional light. There is also a week-long workshop with directors and actors, in collaboration with the Filmakademie’s own dedicated casting department.

Lighting a set created by the production design students forms part of the curriculum in Year 3 for student DPs. “They shoot it with access to all the resources the Filmakademie has to offer,” explains Mönch, referring to the Filmakademie’s substantial inventory of 48 cam-

Sachtler Cine tripods, Cartoni Lambda Nodal Heads, Panther Classic dollies, tracks and jib arms from Grip Factory Munich.

A three-month interdisciplinary workshop with the Filmakademie’s Animation Institute is a highlight of Year 4.

“It’s called set extension,” explains Mönch. “The art department construct some physical elements and create a digital background. This used to be done with a greenscreen, but for the last two years we’ve been sponsored by LEDitgo in Mannheim, about 100km from here, who build LED walls.”

Students opting to pursue the Filmakademie’s unique diploma qualification may then spend up to a year on their final film project.

The Filmakademie is keen to promote student films, of which more than 250 are produced across all formats per year. As well as utilising the Filmakademie’s own 160-seat, full digital projection Caligari Cinema, and collaborating with German public television stations, the Filmakademie festival coordination team actively help students pursue film festival screenings and competitions.

In 2021, the short Tala’vision (2021, DP Philip Henze, dir. Murad Abu Eisheh), shot in Jordan, won Best Narrative Film at the

Student Academy Awards, the 7th Student Oscar for the Filmakademie, as well as the Silver Tadpole at Camerimage. In the same year the Bronze Tadpole was claimed by another Filmakademie short Cold Blow Lane (2021, DP Christopher Behrmann, dir. Luca Homolka). Student Marvin Schatz was the winner of the 2019 February Award at the European Cinematography Awards for his lighting of Proxima-B (2018, dir.

Stefan M. Bürkner).

The Filmakademie is committed to enrolling a student body that is representative of the general population and runs outreach campaigns that target underrepresented groups. This is underpinned by student workshops and conferences on gender and diversity in filmmaking. Part of their official policy states: “By promoting diversity, inclusion and equal opportunities, the Filmakademie is keen to make an active contribution to creative equality. We want to train diverse talents who can go on to enrich the film industry with different and multifaceted stories.”

Potential students can apply to the Filmakademie cinematography programme by the submission of a short film and written application. Around 130 hopefuls applied last year, of which 20 were invited for an interview. Applicants then have 72 hours to make a five-minute film to a brief set by the Filmakademie.

“We are looking for creativity, individuality and the willingness to be a team player,” states Mönch.

A panel of three judges oversees the admissions process and selects the final seven cinematography students.

Future filmmakers need not wait until adulthood to realise their passions. The Kinderfilmhaus – literally ‘Children’s Film House’ – is an interactive centre run by Filmakademie students, which gives youngsters from the age of six their first taste of moviemaking.

“Maybe one day a kid who has been there will come to the Filmakademie,” says Mönch, “it hasn’t happened yet, but watch this space.”

Applications for 2023 enrolment go online in Q4 2022 and close on 15/02/2023. www.filmakademie.de CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD MAY 2022 59

ONE TO WATCH•BRENDAN HARVEY

BRENDAN HARVEY•ONE TO WATCH

HUNGRY EYES Selected filmography (so far): shorts… Wasps, Sharks & Vending Machines (2020, dir. Kew Lin), In My Day (2021, dir. William Graves), Pigeon (2021, dir. Tulsi Behl) and You Are Absolutely Right (2022, dirs. Bousher & Gee).

When did you discover you wanted to be a cinematographer?

My dad is a documentary director and my mum a painter. Via them I’ve always had a connection with visual storytelling. I spent most of my youth in Italy. When I was 12, we were at a medieval fair in Tuscany and my dad was filming with a VHS camcorder. Being slightly dubious of his operating skills, I took the camera off his hands. By the end of the day, I pretty much decided I was going to make a career out of it… if for no other reason than to bring our home movies up to par.

Where did you train?

I completed a BA in Cinematography at Met Film School, Ealing, in 2013 and went on to climb the ranks of the camera department, spending around eight years assisting and fully stepping-up to DP in 2021. Whilst uni was great for contacts and expanding my film knowledge, in retrospect I could’ve probably chosen a shorter course, saved a lot of money and jumped straight into the industry as a trainee. Being on-set is the best filmschool, and a thing you need to learn fast is how to make a good cup of tea… that should be part of filmschool curriculum too.

What life/career lessons did you learn from your training?

Believe in yourself. Don’t try and mould yourself to your peers. Have fun. Do what you enjoy doing. Do more of it, and do it well. Delegate responsibility. Surround yourself with people who have your back. Be humble.

Backlight everything.

How did you get your first break?

Whilst still focus-pulling, I started shooting promos with musician mates, short films, spec commercials and smaller content work. Eventually it snowballed from there to the point that I actually started getting paid for shooting (God forbid!) and could, more-or-less, maintain my lifestyle.

What are you favourite films, and why?

Shame (2011, dir. Steve McQueen, DP Sean Bobbitt BSC) – the power and simplicity of how Steve and Sean craft shots is incredible. There is a long, profile, tracking-shot of Michael Fassbender running that is my favourite shot of any film.

Boy (2010, dir. Taika Waititi, DP Adam Clark) – I love Taika’s humour and sensitivity. From a purely storytelling point-of-view his films are brilliant. Boy is the perfect feel good, hung-over Sunday, pick-me-up film.

No Country For Old Men (2007, dir. Joel & Ethan Coen, DP Sir Roger Deakins CBE BSC ASC). The Coen Brothers and Deakins, to use a current acronym, are the absolute GOATs (Greatest Of All Time). I love all their collaborations, but gun-to-head, I’d pick this one.

What’s the best advice you were ever given?

Before I stepped-up, I used to focus pull for Aaron Reid (Britannia, Love Sarah, Stephen). I caught up with him a few months ago and he told me something that really stuck with me, “Regardless of everything else, cinematography at its essence is the ability to light a 60 MAY 2022 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

face. If you can do that well, you’re in a pretty good place.”

Where do you get your visual inspirations?

A lot from art. I drop into galleries when I can, and London is brilliant for that. Sitting in front of Rembrandts, Vermeers, Turners (to name a few), seeing how they’ve perfected the use of light and shade in their paintings, is incredibly inspiring. And photography. My photo-book collection is forever expanding, and I try to carry at least one point-and-shoot with me in case something catches my eye.

What have been your best/worst moments onset?

Best: was on a short called, You’re Absolutely Right, which I shot at the beginning of 2022 with the directing duo Bousher & Gee. They have a unique brand of dark humour, which I love. After reading the script, I knew I wanted to shoot it. Simple, one room, one actor story – very refreshing compared to far too many over-ambitious shorts, with ideas cripplingly-bigger than their budgets. Through the whole process I felt we were completely in-sync, and the final product reflects that. We settled on a visual tone before the shoot that reinforced the story, and we never questioned each other’s decisions during production.

Tell us your greatest extravagance?

Fine dining… I’m a bit of a foodie. Whilst you’ll find me penny-pinching on everyday items like cheap toilet paper and dishwasher tablets, I will happily go large on expensive meals.

It can be tough being a DP, how do you keep yourself match-fit?

My worst nightmare is being on-set and not feeling sharp. I do my best to prioritise exercise, sleep and eating healthily. It’s incredible how much easier it is to work and be creative when you’ve had eight hours of solid rest.

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

From a fanboy point-of-view, probably The Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Rings (dir. Peter Jackson, DP Andrew Lesnie ACS ASC).

Being on-set is the best filmschool

What’s the best thing about being a DP? Best: creating images that resonate with me. I can be pretty introverted and find that my work is one of the best ways I have of expressing myself.

Worst: that it’s pretty much guaranteed that whenever you book a holiday, a shoot will come along to ruin it.

Tell us your hidden talent/party trick?

Not that much of hidden talent, but after about 15 years of trying, I finally managed to figure out how to loud whistle a couple of years ago.

actually made a temporary business out of it.

In search of the perfect loaf, I was making and delivering eight or ten loaves of sourdough around Hackney every day. I had to call it quits eventually, as my girlfriend was ready to chuck me out because everything in our apartment was consistently covered in a light patina of flour… including the cat!

What are your aspirations for the future?

Workwise, the goal is narrative – features, HETV. Life-wise, eventually I want to live on a beach, have a family, a dog and be able to achieve a work/life balance that allows a certain amount of calm.

What advice do you have for other people who want to become cinematographers?

Don’t force yourself to have a style, trust in your taste and find the people who have a similar one.

For you, what are the burning issues in the world of cinematography, filmmaking and cinema?

The biggest issue remains under-representation.

Whilst being widely addressed, more needs to be done to allow everyone access to the industry and achieve a more balanced pool of crew members.

What is your URL/website address? www.brendanharvey.co.uk

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

Probably a baker. During lockdown I became one of those sourdough enthusiasts, and

Worst: after I had just graduated filmschool, I managed to blag my way on to the set of Star Wars: The Force Awakens (Episode VII) (dir. JJ Abrams, DP Dan Mindel BSC ASC) as a witness camera operator for a few days. Approximately eight of us were floating around set with little Sony cameras, trying to shoot lock-off shots of the scenes from as many angles as possible for the VFX unit to create 3D models. Then the main cameras started rolling, Harrison Ford, Lupita Nyong’o, John Boyega, all standing right in front of me. Having found a safe spot behind a column, I set my shot. As the cameras rolled I decided that I might as well make myself comfortable, and sat down next to the tripod.

Immediately, just off-set, someone in a loud American accent shouted - ‘Cut, cut, cut … there’s someone in shot!’ It was JJ Abrams who proceeded to walk onto set, look directly at me and say half-jokingly ‘Do you even work here!?’.

What is your most treasured cinematographic possession?

My SmallHD 703 monitor. After a year or so of using different monitors and getting increasingly frustrated by them being way-off the image I was actually capturing, I spent a day calibrating it and getting it to the point where I have much more faith in what I’m looking at – colour, contrast ratio-wise – and know the adjustments to make for different environments.

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

One of the first promos I shot was for a Romanian metal singer. We unloaded into what, from the outside, looked like a tame-looking warehouse in Walthamstow, but inside was a fully-equipped S&M playhouse complete with cages, racks, spiked thrones, lots of leather and uncomfortably sticky floors. The thing that made it feel a little too real were all the alcohol wipes nestled around!

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

Night exteriors are always the biggest challenges for me. I recently had to shoot a night exterior on an outdoor tennis court for a promo. While shooting inside

for most of the day and it being dry as a bone outside, Sod’s Law would have it that it started chucking it down as soon as we moved to the exteriors. We ended-up ditching almost our entire lighting plan as we were lacking waterproof heads and did not have enough hands or time to safely set pretty much any fixture.

It kind of worked out in the end, as I just backlit and silhouetted the scene with a whole bunch of ground level fireworks… which very possibly ended-up looking better than the lighting we had originally planned.

Away from work, what are your greatest passions?

Cycling, climbing, snowboarding… and food.

CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD MAY 2022 61

SMOOTH OPERATORS•CHRIS PLEVIN ACO ASSOCIATE BSC GBCT

ENTER . . .

CAMERA LEFT

Opposite: (descending) shooting on Game Of Thrones, Band Of Brothers and Mr Bean’s Holiday (2nd unit).

This page: (descending) pictured on Men In Black 3, Aladdin, And When Did You Last See Your Father? (photo © Giles Keyte), Auf Wiedersehn Pet in The Dominican Republic, and The Edge Of Love.

By Natasha Block Hicks

T

o visit beautifully-bleak landscapes in the course of one’s work is a privilege peppered with discomfort, relates Chris Plevin ACO Associate BSC GBCT, enjoying the momentary snugness of his home outside London.

“I love those incredible vistas and the fact that you can see so far,” he says reverentially.

Plevin’s career has taken him to the mountains of Norway and the iconic African Sahara. His latest role, as A-camera operator on The Northman (2022, dir.

Robert Eggers, DP Jarin Blaschke), introduced a new sort of ‘desolate’.

“The landscapes of Ireland and Iceland are both pretty moody,” he relates, “I love them, but you’ve got to have stoicism to film there. You may have to stand in the rain and wind for a long time, to be rewarded with a cold meal in a soggy bit of cardboard.”

The plight of the cast – in authentic Viking peasant rags, standing semi-barefoot in the same mud and wind as the bundled-up crew – kept things in perspective.

“We had snow, wind and rain, but there were only two days when the weather was so bad that we couldn’t shoot,” Plevin recalls, “and, of course, it looks fantastic with beautiful sets in wonderful scenery.

“The job of operator is essentially the same whatever the genre,” he continues, “but there can be such variation within it, in terms of your input. Robert and Jarin were very tight and extremely specific; many scenes were covered with a single shot. The blocking would be such that it would manipulate the actors into the right space

I never get bored going to work for the camera to capture a close-up, in a way that was meticulously choreographed. They were very precise about what they wanted to do, so my role became one of technical precision.”

Plevin studied Materials Engineering at Queen Mary College in London in the late sixties, so precision should be second nature to him. However, he confesses to finding the course distractingly dull. He then attended the West Surrey College Of Art in Farnham to study film.

“West Surrey introduced the idea that you could combine technology and artistry and get paid for it, which was brilliant,” recalls Plevin, “I’d found what I wanted to do.”

After graduating, Plevin was hired as a camera trainee at United Motion Pictures (London) Ltd, a small 62 MAY 2022 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

producer of corporate and motor sport documentaries.

Around this time, he became involved with the Trades Union Congress (TUC) and was called-up, alongside director Maxim Ford, to shoot a TUC film on their ‘Jobs For Youth’ campaign. Discovering a shared interest in left wing politics, Plevin and Ford expanded their slate to include the ‘Jobs For Youth’ concerts in Brixton, which became the documentary feature Live A Life (1982) and, with some funding from Channel 4, they founded the co-operative production company Parallax Pictures.

“We wanted to make some commercials for worthy causes like Greenpeace and the TUC campaigns,” relates Plevin, “but with glossy filming values. We thought if Ridley Scott could persuade people to buy Hovis, why couldn’t we use the same techniques for anti-nuclear?”

By the early nineties Plevin had drifted away from Parallax and was busy working as a freelance focus puller for DPs like Michael Coulter BSC on productions such as Four Weddings And A Funeral (1994, dir. Mike Newell). On his last project as an assistant, Mary Reilly (1996, dir. Stephen Frears), the DP, Philippe Rousselot ASC AFC, suggested to Plevin that it was time for him to take on a new challenge. He moved up to operating, working on commercials for a year until the first film work came in – a low-budget British comedy, Brassed Off (1996, dir. Mark Herman, DP Andy Collins).

“Brassed Off was a real film from the heart,” recalls Plevin enthusiastically, “everyone was behind it. Mark was focussed on the story and performance, so I was able to work intuitively with Andy, which was a great experience.”

Plevin clocked-up a few of these archetypal Britflicks during his first years of operating, such as Little Voice (1998) and Purely Belter (2000), both with Herman and Collins, and additional operating on

CHRIS PLEVIN ACO ASSOCIATE BSC GBCT•SMOOTH OPERATORS

Camera operator is a very privileged position, plus at the end of the day, you get to go home examples like Notting Hill (1999, dir. Roger Mitchell, DP Michael Coulter BSC).

“It is a shame that British, low-budget, narrative-driven films are much less common now,” Plevin laments, “as I really liked doing them.”

A number of second unit DP credits crop-up for Plevin during his early operating years, such as on Velvet Goldmine (1998, dir. Todd Haynes, DP Maryse Alberti AFC) and Mansfield Park (1999, dir. Patricia Rozema, DP Michael Coulter BSC).

“I probably should have pursued that road,” muses Plevin, “but I got married and had children, so there was an imperative to keep a roof over our head and not step into the unknown.

“Camera operator is still a very privileged position,” he continues, “plus at the end of the day, you get to go home. The DP is on call 24/7.”

Plevin’s first significant TV operating on Band Of Brothers (2001, DP Joel Ransom CSC) was, in his words, a “revelatory experience”. He was the second operator on his unit alongside Martin Hume ACO Associate BSC GBCT. “It was 90% handheld, with the lovely Moviecam SL film cameras,” recalls Plevin. “We did one shot that ran across the D-Day airfield in a Jeep. Martin sat handheld in the back, then he handed the camera over to me physically at the encampment and I continued the shot into the officers’ tent. That was before gimbals.”

Shooting episodes simultaneously, several units would team-up when more cameras were required for big sequences.

“It was so well organised,” remembers Plevin.

Christopher Newman, the 1st AD responsible for the scheduling on Band Of Brothers, went on to produce Game Of Thrones (2011-2019) on which Plevin operated from 2015 to 2017.

“The DPs, directors and actors on Game Of Thrones would fly in and out of where the ‘machine’, the core crew, was parked in each location,” reveals Plevin, “it was incredibly efficient. The producers recognised that, with the DPs changing, the operators were the guardians of the house style; we knew the rules. It gave the whole thing a seamless coherent look from start to finish.”

Cinematographer John Mathieson BSC, who Plevin first met on the music video scene when they were both assistants, has been instrumental in several significant moments of Plevin’s career. By chance, Mathieson’s camera crew on Kingdom Of Heaven (2005, dir. Ridley Scott) were staying in the same Moroccan hotel as the crew of The Grid (2004, dir. Mikael Salomon, DP

Seamus Deasy), on which Plevin was operating, and he managed to hop on to C-camera on the epic blockbuster – his first – when The Grid wrapped.

It was on another Scott/Mathieson picture, Robin Hood (2010), that Plevin, on D-camera, and the other operators, Peter Taylor, Martin Hume, Paul Edwards, plus Peter Cavaciuti, first conceived the idea for the Association Of Camera Operators (ACO), for which Plevin served as president from 2012 to 2014.

Mathieson also gave Plevin his first experience of shooting a 3D movie, on 47 Ronin (2013, dir. Carl Rinsch).

“That was a very difficult shoot, technically, because of the delay in the operators’ monitor and the inertia of

the enormously heavy Alexa 3D rig,” remarks Plevin. “You had to predict when the actors were going to move to achieve the correct framing.”

The first time Mathieson invited Plevin to take A-camera was on Guy Ritchie’s The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015), although it was Philippe Rousselot who had first bought Plevin to the British director’s attention some years earlier on Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows (2011).

Ritchie and Plevin’s working relationship has continued outside the umbrella of any one DP, with Plevin operating A-camera for Mathieson again on King Arthur: Legend

Of The Sword (2017) followed by Aladdin (2019) and Wrath Of Man (2021), both lit by DP Alan Stewart BSC. “Guy’s got a particular way of shooting,” reveals Plevin. “I was pretty proud of The Man From U.N.C.L.E because I felt we’d managed to create a really nice style.

We tried to steer it in the direction of those classic 1960’s spy movies in the way we used the zoom, and with John shooting some 16mm handheld it introduced different textures. There’s a sort of voyeuristic, surveillance-type look to some scenes.”

Project epic, or project small, the camaraderie of the crew remains one of Plevin’s favourite aspects of his job.

“You feel part of a group of people who are working as one,” he explains, “and you’re only as good as your crew will allow you to be. I never get bored going to work, so I’m very lucky in that respect.”

CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD MAY 2022 63

REVIEW•SONY VENICE 2

SONY VENICE 2•REVIEW

TRIED AND TESTED

Opposite: (top) XXXXX, (below) XXXXX/XXXX. This page: all photography by XXXXX. Images courtesy/copyright of XXXXXXXX.

By DP Matt Lewis

Images: BTS photos from Wildfront music video, lensed by DP Matt Lewis using Sony Venice 2, courtesy of Josh Holgate Photography.

W

ay back in March 2020, just prior to UK lockdown caused by the pandemic, I was lucky-enough to use the original Sony Venice on a feature film I shot called Boiling Point.

The premise of that film revolved around executing a single, continuous, handheld take over the course of 90-minutes, which came with some unique challenges. Specifically regarding which camera to choose, some of those challenges from my perspective included: could it record for 90-minutes at a resolution of 6K?; would it be sensitive enough that we could light with almost all practical lighting?; and, would it be possible to rest it on my shoulders for 90-minutes without it dislocating both my collarbones?

Through months of testing with Canning24, the Sony Venice was the only camera that answered all of those with a ‘Yes’. The Sony Venice enabled us to shoot at 6K/24fps for as long as we wanted by being the only camera we tested that didn’t cut when the other card slot was emptied mid-take.

Because the camera would hop back-and-forth from one card to the other mid-recording, allowing us to pull and exchange the full card, it immediately became the camera for the job. We used three 1TB cards in two card slots to shoot the film.

On Boiling Point, the original Sony Venice also offered its higher native ISO of 2500, which put us in good stead with the more stripped-back lighting plan we had. But, best of all, the camera could be split in half using the Rialto configuration, which allowed us to balance the weight of the camera when it was built onto an Easyrig. It was truly the only camera for the job.

Through the success of the film and the generosity of the folks at Sony, they very kindly

64 MAY 2022 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

offered for me to take a look at the new and improved Sony Venice 2. I used the opportunity to shoot a music video for a band called Wildfront, directed by Alex Fountain, that allowed us to take the camera to a number of very different interior and exterior environments, and to shoot at different times of day and night around Portsmouth and the local coastline.

The clarity and detail this camera provides, give you so much information to work with in post It was, admittedly, a lower-budget production than was probably fair for a camera designed for shooting top-tier feature films. However, I feel it taught me much more about using the camera than standing gawping at it in a studio, shooting against a lens chart covered in fairy lights would have done.

Hopefully all this gives me a fairly well-rounded opinion and a perspective that’ll be useful to fellow cinematographers and operators out there.

I’ll start with the two most eye-catching qualities of the new camera from my point-of-view: the sensor and the low light improvements. The Sony Venice 2 can shoot 8.6k 3:2 when using the full sensor. Now, 8.6k is a pretty massive resolution for most applications, and is certainly too much oomph for a lot of smaller productions,

but I think it’s also an incredible tool if you have the infrastructure to handle the file sizes.

In the music video we were only looking to output a 4K end-product, but we were able to use the extra frame size to do full rotations of the frame in the edit. What you end up with is something less organic than spinning the camera on the day, but, that being said, it’s a flexibility you could have only dreamt of a matter of years ago; and the final effect still looks very impressive.

In terms of the look from the sensor, the Sony Venice 2 looks as good as the original Venice 6K sensor with fantastic latitude and colour rendition.

It’s so identical to the 6K sensor that you can cut between the two cameras with, in theory, no tweaks in the workflow, which is a great option to have if you have two cameras on the go. I wasn’t able to test this, but it’s a great nugget of knowledge to have on future projects with this camera.

As expected, in the edit the images looked stunning. The clarity and detail that this camera provides, with its 16-stops of dynamic range, gives you so much information to work with in post, and the skin tones in a variety of challenging situations still look beautiful. That is something I recall noticing from the original Venice, and it is great to see it hasn’t changed with this bigger resolution sensor.

Next up, can this camera see better than my own eyes? This is something I was pondering as we sat at the new dual base ISO option of 3200, upped from 2500 ISO, with very little perceivable grain or noise. I don’t think I’ve ever noticed this phenomenon with another cinema camera before, and it really was an exciting feeling.

Looking at the footage in the edit there is definitely some extremely low-level grain in there that, if you’re a

I’d like to thank Jake Gerrard, who operated Steadicam, my gaffer Oli Brotherhood, as well as Hamish at Artefact Creative, who supplied lenses and other essential bits of equipment for the shoot. The final music video will be released this summer. clean freak, you may not appreciate. However, if you are like me, where you’ll likely be grubbying-up your frame with all sorts of diffusion anyway, then this subtle grain is very live-able, if not welcome.

Being able to flick from 800 to 3200 ISO really is the most powerful feature of this camera.

For example, it allowed me to light scenes by just shaping the existing street lighting without having to sit at T1.5, and praying some of the unplanned blocking would end-up sharp.

I could also work less intrusively in the darker scenes. The cast didn’t step onto a much brighter set than would be realistic for the story, which I’m hoping creates a better space to perform than having a sea of lamps burning dots into your vision.

Whatever way I look at it, having the option to bring the lights down and not stress as much about retaining detail in the shadows is a good thing.

A big thing for me, and how I like to operate, is having a camera that works just as well in my hands or on my shoulder as it does on a head or Steadicam. One thing I noticed with the original Venice is that its size and weight didn’t put it to the top of my list of ‘Cameras I’d Like To Have On My Shoulder’, especially when compared to other highend cameras of a similar vein.

This time round the camera body on the Sony Venice 2 was noticeably lighter when I pulled it out

of the flight case, and considerably shorter. This has been achieved by squeezing what used to be the AXS-R7 recorder into the main body of the camera, saving around 4.5cm in length.

That really doesn’t sound like a lot does it? But it does make all the difference when you start running around with this thing. It makes operating this camera off-the-shoulder a really enjoyable way to work. Paired with the Zeiss Supremes, and built with the usual transmitters and monitors, the rig we made up felt very balanced and much more nifty than its predecessor.

Sony has made a camera that will be most at home in high-end feature film and television Sony have retained their streamlined, separate on-board displays around the body of the camera, one for what the operator needs to access – ISO, shutter angle, NDs – and one for all the main menu functions for the camera assistant. The operator side monitor can be a tad fiddly to reach when the camera is on your shoulder if, like me, your right eye is weaker than your left.

While I was getting used to the layout of the buttons I had to tip the camera away slightly to see what I was doing. I should imagine that after another half-a-day of using these buttons I’d have

the layout memorised, so for me, that was not too much of an annoyance.

The incredible 8-stop ND wheel being easilyreachable to the operator is still such a win for this camera. If a cloud rolls along as you’re about to go for a take, you can make those last minute adjustments to avoid slowing the day down, which was a lifesaver for me on more than one occasion during our promo shoot. The only downside is that because the internal ND moves so quickly, no one will notice how reactive you’ve been in saving the take and you’ll have to give yourself a pat on the back instead.

Final thoughts? I naturally came towards this camera with an amount of adoration because of what the first Venice enabled me to achieve, but I’ve tried to give the Venice 2 an honest assessment.

I feel that Sony has made a camera that will be most at home in the high-end feature film and television world. Most importantly, I think they have, by-and-large, listened to users of the first Venice and made a smaller, more versatile camera that meets the resolution needs of the biggest productions.

It is, however, a camera I might second-guess bringing onto every job for that very same reason.

It requires more storage and a more advanced workflow than what might be available on certain budgets/timeframes.

For me, however, if the resources are available or the output requires, it’s a no-brainer. The Sony Venice 2 is a truly excellent camera from a company who’ve listened to their users and continue to rock the boat.

CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD MAY 2022 65

ALCARRÀS•DANIELA CAJÍAS AEC

DANIELA CAJÍAS AEC•ALCARRÀS

LIFE’S A PEACH

Images: Alcarràs images courtesy of Lluis Tudela

By Ron Prince

The human factor was very important

T

here’s trouble on the horizon in Alcarràs, the heart-rending, Spanish-Italian coproduction, directed by Carla Simón and shot by Bolivian DP Daniela Cajías AEC. Set in the tiny rural Catalonian town of the same name, where Simón’s own relatives have cultivated peaches for generations, the story revolves around an extended family facing eviction from their farm, after the owner of the estate dies and his lifetime heir decides to sell the land to an alternative energy company. This will see the native peach orchards supplanted by solar panels, and a century-old livelihood uprooted.

The €3,200,000 production, featuring an entire ensemble of non-professional actors, won the Golden Bear at the 72nd Berlinale, the first Catalan-language film to do so. It also collected five-star reviews for its authentic, masterful and moving contemplation on the fragility of family life versus the remorseless industrial development of agriculture, as well as praise for Cajías’ observational camera, capturing its many characters in the sunshine and shadows around the farm.

What did you feel about the script for Alcarràs?

It awoke a lot of sensations and thoughts in me, and for a few days I couldn’t sleep because a lot of ideas went through my head. On the practical side, I knew it would be a very big challenge to work on a film with so many characters and non-professional actors.

As for the narrative, which is the most interesting thing about this project, it was a big challenge in terms of portraying the continuous communications and exchanges between the characters and deciding what presence the camera would have in that.

On reading the script, I thought the camera was essentially a member of the family, perhaps someone who is no longer with them, but who watches with love.

66 MAY 2022 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

Tell us about your conversations with Carla about the look of the film?

Carla and I talked a lot about the cordiality and conviviality of family life, the ensemble cast, about metaphysics and general sensations, and the creative part flowed a lot from that.

The story, although it is fictional, is based around real events that happened to Carla’s family on the maternal

side. So the first real step was an introduction to the world of agriculture in that area of Catalonia. I went to Alcarràs to meet her relatives, who told me first-hand what they lived through and how hard life is in the countryside.

For Carla, the family is very important. I watched many hours of home videos she had recorded over the last 15 years, since that was part of what we wanted to convey, someone from within who records the family.

The most important thing was to find a tone of reality, of spontaneity, of capturing fragments of life. We wanted everything that happens in front of the camera to feel

casual – that the camera adapts to the actors, and the actors never adapt to the camera. The challenge was that it should not be noticed, that the film seemed more like a documentary.

Likewise with the lighting, we wanted it to feel natural, and not illuminated, although in reality the interiors had to be well-lit to create the mood and atmosphere we wanted to achieve for each scene.

Did you look at any visual references?

Along with visiting Carla’s family and looking at her home videos, we watched a lot of movies, Italian neorealism, the most important being El Àrbol De Los Clogs (The Tree Of Wooden Clogs) (1978), which was directed and shot by Hermano Olmi. We were also influenced

by Alice Rohrwacher’s films, such as Le Meraviglie (The Wonders) (2014) and Lazzaro Felice (Happy As Lazzaro) (2018) (both shot by DP Hélène Louvart AFC).

We made a very detailed document in Excel, where everything was carefully planned scene-by-scene. In

standing, some tall, little children, etc. – we felt 1.66:1 was the best way for them to fit comfortably into the shot, in addition to it being a great format for close-ups and landscapes.

Alcarràs, nothing was left to chance, everything was very, very well-thought-out beforehand.

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

Officially it was eight weeks, but in reality Carla and I started working on the film seven months before we started shooting. We shot everything on location around Alcarràs, in the Catalonian province of Lleida. We started on June 1 2021, so as to capture the seasonal peach harvest, but had a four-day break due to a case of Covid at the end of July. There was no studio work.

What cameras and lenses did you select and why?

For various reasons, we couldn’t do camera tests, which was crazy, and the camera arrived the day before we started shooting. We shot with the ARRI Alexa Mini – it’s the digital camera that I know and like the most, for its colour reproduction and latitude. We shot in ARRIRAW, with the camera rated between 400 and 800 ISO, depending on the day/night, interior/ exterior scene. The optics were Cooke Speed Panchros, because, having done no tests, I decided to use optics that I already knew.

For the shoot I created a basic, low-contrast LUT with my DIT, Daniel Arvizu, and did a little grading on-set, but waited until the final DI to adjust the colouring, where we saturated the imagery much more.

Why did you decide to frame the film in 1.66:1?

Being a film that has quite a few shots with several characters in the same frame, – some sitting, others

Who were your camera and lighting crew?

As Alcarràs was a Spanish/Italian co-production I had several Italians and Catalonians in the team.

My camera operator was Gon R. Nión, with Mauro Calanca working as focus puller, and David Arrés the key grip. Lluís Maymó was the gaffer, and Daniel Arvizu the DIT. I had not worked with any of them before, but despite not knowing one another we were a great, united and supportive team at all times, which made for a wonderful experience.

They knew how to adapt to the particularities of this shoot, working amongst the small children, teenagers, adults and old people who made up our cast, and often in very hot and harsh conditions. The human factor was very important, and I cannot be more proud and grateful to my team in being sensitive to that.

Did you operate the camera?

No, it’s the first time I’ve not operated the camera.

Being such a complex film, I preferred to concentrate on the lighting and stay focused on the narrative. As Carla and I had discussed early-on, the camera was always at the service of the characters, and we went handheld so that we could get very close to them when needed. The motivations for moving with or staying-on the characters always had to do with changing the point-of-view in the film.

Tell about your approach to the lighting?

My lighting package came from Kinolux in Barcelona. The premise of the film was always about realism and naturalism, and I worked a lot with naturallooking light, bouncing-off fabrics, mirrors or CRLS reflectors. If the scene or the location did not allow that, I worked with HMIs and LEDs. As we were shooting with non-professional actors, it was important not to intervene too much, and to not

have cables or lights on-set, so they felt as comfortable as possible. Also, to keep the energy they generated, I did not want to take many breaks and have to relight a scene when we changed camera positions.

Take us through a sequence you like best?

The dark/night scene at the beginning of the film starts with sudden camera movements on a moving car, and the light of a flashlight as they go looking for rabbits in the trees. Then we move inside the car and see the characters trying to kill rabbits with a shotgun as they have a conversation.

Realism was the most important thing. We needed a powerful hunting torch, but instead of buying one online or whatever, I asked the local foresters to lend us a flashlight they use, which we connected to the car battery for power. We used the car headlights and had a LED softbox on the roof to set an overall base level of lighting outside, and had LED tubes to illuminate the interior of the car. Always trying to make it look real, and I was very happy with the result.

Where did you do the final DI colour grade?

I did it in Rome, at Grande Mela, with colourist Angelo Francavilla. As we did in the production of the film, during the DI we were looking for realism, to portray the space of Alcarràs and for the image to transport us to that place. Angelo understood me perfectly and we worked very well together.

How did this film challenge or boost your skills as a cinematographer?

Alcarràs is without a doubt the most difficult film I’ve made so far. I feel like I’ve grown and learned a lot. I’m always thinking about actors, and the biggest challenge was with my cinematography ego. In favour of the narrative, on many occasions I had to give in and not have the perfect image. But I am very happy that it was like this, and I feel that have matured as a cinematographer.

CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD MAY 2022 67

THE ROAD DANCE•PETRA KORNER AAC

PETRA KORNER AAC•THE ROAD DANCE

COME RAIN OR SHINE

Shooting on the island was as tough as hell… but we all were like family

By Darek Kuźma

A

ustrian cinematographer Petra Korner AAC went into adventurous mode to shoot Richie Adams’s The Road Dance in the magical and potentially perilous Outer Hebrides.

If it was not for the pandemic that was ravaging Europe during 2020, Korner would probably not have been available to shoot The Road Dance. The indie drama, set during WWI, about a community of devout folk in Gearrannan village, and one dreamer’s struggle to break free from the imposition of social roles and norms, was right up Korner’s alley as the DP had been hoping for a breather from big-budget episodic dramas.

“Every project I’d been attached to was either pushed or fell apart due to lockdowns or actors pulling out, so the script came at a perfect time,” admits Korner, whose recent credits include Netflix’s The Letter For The King and Sky’s A Discovery Of Witches.

And it was the trials and tribulations of the fiercely-independent Kirsty, around whom the plot revolves, that captured Korner’s imagination.

“I have a rule for reading scripts – if I can sleep afterwards, it’s not for me. I stayed up all night having read the script for The Road Dance, doing visual brainstorming. The next morning I gave birth to over a hundred pages of ideas and inspirations.”

Among the visual references that shaped Korner’s thinking about the look of the film were the exquisite images, shot by DPs Néstor Almendros ASC and Haskell Wexler ASC, for Terrence Malick’s Days Of Heaven (1978), and Adriano Goldman ABC BSC ASC’s audacious visual interpretation of Jane Eyre (2011), for director Cary Joji Fukunaga.

Because Adams wanted to capture the toils of everyday life in the Outer Hebrides, the film was to be shot on-location on the Isle Of Lewis, where John McKay’s

68 MAY 2022 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

2002 novel of the same name was set.

“The production was planned as a three-week prep in the autumn, followed by six weeks of early-winter shoot,” shares Korner. “At first Richie was hesitant to hire me; he was worried about how I would handle the extreme conditions, but he quickly learned to trust me and now laughs about these worries in retrospect.

“We only had minimal crew and a small lighting and grip package, but it got me back to my roots – operating the camera and working on a more instinctive basis.

However, shooting on the island was as tough as hell on actors and crew, but we all were like family.”

Korner initially wanted to shoot large format, but budget limitations made her choose the tried and true ARRI Alexa Mini. Then the conundrum was about picking the lenses.

“The project cried for Anamorphic, and thankfully the producers supported our vision, but I couldn’t find everything I was looking for in one set,” she explains.

“So after pricing out a lot of options, I decided to complement our primary set of Cooke Anamorphic/i Prime Lenses, (from 25mm to 135mm in range), with a set of four Kowa Prominar lenses.

“These Japanese vintage Anamorphics have a lot of character, plus they’re cheap, lightweight, fast, and give a painterly quality to anything fire-related in the frame.

You couldn’t shoot the whole film with them, as they have so many artefacts and can only really go as wide as a 40mm, but combining them with the optically-pristine Cookes gave us a perfect range of tools.”

Korner shot most of the night interiors using the Kowas, as well as scenes depicting Kirsty’s state-of-mind. “I used the Kowas whenever the story called for something more visceral or expressionistic, like the beach scene where young Kirsty plays with her father, and learns the

value of dreaming.

“With the Cookes, I used very subtle diffusion – 1/8 Tiffen Hollywood Black Magic on the wider lenses and just a little heavier on the longer end – for a bit of highlight halation and to better match them to the Kowas. For night work, I sometimes used Tiffen LowCons instead, but also only between 1/8 and 1/2 maximum.”

Despite the lack of time, she cherished every moment of the prep. “All our main exterior locations were centred around Gearrannan Blackhouse Village, on the Isle Of Lewis, which is really an outdoor museum in a gorgeous bay on the north side of the island. We had full access to it and essentially spent the whole prep there, blocking scenes with Richie and our 1st AD, Morris Milne. A very hands-on prep.”

As the blackhouses were too small to accommodate cast and crew, the shoot also involved a few days of studio work on a local stage in Stornoway, where they shot three essential interiors, including the local doctor’s and Kirsty’s family’s houses.

“People heated their homes with peat fires which barely had any light output, mostly smoke and warmth,” she says. “I love playing with darkness and took inspiration from the gloomy mood inside these spaces, where daylight was struggling to infiltrate through tiny windows and skylights.

“So with the help of the SFX crew, I opted for flame bars on close-ups, which I always prefer over LEDs. On stage, I lit day interiors with Tungsten T12s, primarily bounced into unbleached muslin to match the overcast look of the Outer Hebrides. I often added a Source 4 Leko gelled with ½ CTB into the mix from inside.”

Korner’s LED package included ARRI S60 and S30 SkyPanels, Astera Helios and Titan Tubes, Litepanels Gemini and 1x1 Velvet Lights. “For flame-based night

interiors, it’s important for me to maintain colour separation. Orange gets sucked into the blacks, so it’s nice to infuse them with cooler tones. The Velvet Light became indispensable because of its white colour consistency on even the lowest dimmer percentiles.”

When it came to day exteriors, she had to be as minimalistic as possible. “We couldn’t put up large fixtures or frames because of the sheer force of the wind.

The winds were so strong, that your words would not travel, and it was if you were speaking into a void. I never experienced anything like that before. So we used comms to talk to one another, and I didn’t use any lighting, but rather went for negative fill, mostly just floppies, and shot a lot of day-for-night.

But the wind was not the only natural adversary. They were not able to fight-off the constant downpours either.

“We had some gorgeously sunny days during prep, but by the time we started shooting, the rain had become a force to be reckoned with too,” she admits. “It rained every single day. We were all drenched, no matter how many layers of waterproof clothing we wore. On the plus side, there were always some moment when the sun made an appearance, and everything was sparkling and looked magical, and obviously always tried to push the button then.”

This was when Korner’s organisational skills came in handy. “I’m a meticulous scheduler,” she remarks. “We had the luxury to be able to photoboard most of the film during prep, and I worked closely with the Richie and Miles to make sure we had AM and PM staging scenarios for every day-exterior scene. If we had to swap scenes around, we’d have the sun in the right place regardless. We still encountered some heart-breaking moments when we couldn’t get the light we’d hoped for, but they were quite rare given the circumstances.”

One such moment was the scene on the Western Front, to where young lads of Gearrannan are sent by way of universal conscription.

“For the battlefield scenes we were on a windy meadow where the Speed Rail was literally bending, that’s how much torque we had. By the time we got to the trenches scenes, it was already dusk, so I was asked whether I could quickly pull those off as night-for-day.

I bounced two ARRI SkyPanels up top, silhouetted the soldiers against smoke and only used one practical oil lamp below.

We shot it fast and simple, and actually, everyone loved the result.”

Though the film has its share of romance and visual beauty, at its heart lies a poignant tale of the ugliness inherent to human nature, which manifests the most not on the battlefield, but during the eponymous event, when the village elders organise a road dance to bid farewell to their conscripted boys. It was not a pleasant time for the crew either..

“Because of the availability of our ensemble cast, the scene was crammed into just two days, and we weren’t able to shoot dusk-for-night as we had hoped,” remembers Korner. “We had the biggest rainstorm ever and couldn’t reschedule. There was no dry spot on the set. We had rigged lights on stands and made them windproof, but even that got too dangerous. We had placed SFX gas-fire buckets, but these wouldn’t stay lit either. In the end, my gaffer, Gilles Boisacq, was literally holding Titan Tubes on fire mode, doing the dance with me as I was operating.”

This is a pivotal moment as an incident involving Kirsty changes the course of the story.

“Kirsty is a dreamer by nature, whereas everyone else just tries to survive the hardships of village life. So I tried to convey her state of mind and eagerness to see what’s behind the horizon through framing her against the sky as much as I could, and by the colour scheme,” says Korner. “Then she changes at the road dance, so the imagery changes to match what’s going on in her head.”

What happens next is something that viewers will have to discover for themselves. Needless to say, Korner is proud of the project and the adventure she lived through on The Road Dance set.

The only thing missing was a proper grade. “We worked with Company 3’s colourist Joseph Bicknell in New York. In prep, we did a remote session together to establish a few basic film-based LUTs, based on my camera tests. But when the DI time came, I was stuck in Austria, which had gone into another lockdown. Doing the grade remotely on an iPad was anything but ideal, but it’s something no one could do anything about.

What’s important is that the film is a marvel, and I hope many people will see it on the big screen where it belongs!”

CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD MAY 2022 69

THE INNOCENTS•STURLA BRANDTH GRØVLEN DFF

STURLA BRANDTH GRØVLEN DFF •THE INNOCENTS

PLAYGROUND SHOWDOWN

By Ron Prince

It was clear this story was to be told within a different frame of reality – from inside the bubble of childhood BTS photos by Aslak Lytthans and Tor Edvin Eliassen.

Movie stills courtesy of Signature Entertainment.

N

“

o cats were harmed or traumatised during the making of this film,” says DP Sturla Brandth Grøvlen DFF reassuringly, during our interview about his work on Norwegian director Eskil Vogt’s acclaimed, supernatural thriller, The Innocents, (De Uskyldige), which premiered at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival, in the Un Certain Regard section, before releasing in mid-May 2022.

The unnerving feature is set during a bright Nordic summer, where a group of children explore their mysterious, telekinetic and telepathic powers, when the adults aren’t around. The film’s primary point-of-view is that of nine-year-old Ida (Rakel Lenora Fløttum), who finds herself adrift after moving to an out-of-town, high-rise housing complex, with her parents and older sister Anna (Alva Brynsmo Ramstad), who has severe autism.

Whilst Anna appears to be psychically connected to Aisha (Mina Yasmin Bremseth Asheim), a young girl with vitiligo who can hear the thoughts of other people, in the playground, Ida makes cautious friends with Ben (Sam Ashraf), an isolated only-child just a little older than

70 MAY 2022 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

herself, who can fling rocks and explode tree trunks just by using his mind.

At first, Ida finds Ben’s paranormal abilities decidedly cool, but becomes less enamoured by his increasingly sadistic impulses towards neighbourhood cats and the torturous violence he inflicts upon other youngsters who live in the area. The four children interact in nice and naughty ways, until playtime takes a much darker turn.

Super Baltars offer a pleasing synergy with digital sensors “Even though The Innocents is presented as a horror, and needed to incorporate elements of sinister scariness, from a cinematographic point-of-view I read it more as an observation about how children experience and explore the world around themselves, how they learn and grow, how they shape their own sense morality and mortality,” says Grøvlen, a Norwegian DP, who lives and works in Denmark, and who shot The Innocents back-to-back after completing principal photography Thomas Vinterberg’s Another Round (2020).

“Eskil’s story was inspired by his own experiences of parenting, and it was clear from his script, that it was to be told within a different frame of reality – from inside the bubble of childhood that adults don’t have access to, where the kids play games in a fantasy world, and those games and fantasies are real to them.

“During our early discussions, Eskil said that said if a dragon landed in the back yard, the adults would be wondering what the hell was going on, yet the children would probably find it quite normal or cool. For them, telekinetic abilities are just fun and games.”

Of course, there are countless examples of movies about kids with supernatural powers that the filmmakers could have considered in terms of references, but Grøvlen says the visual inspiration to help get into the mindset for shooting The Innocents came from less

obvious sources.

“We were more inspired by the depiction of fantastical and paranormal events in Japanese Sundome manga comic books, and the super-powers of the characters in animated films like Akira (1988, dir.

Katsuhiro Otomo), than other movies.

“And, as we discussed our visual treatment for The Innocents, the German word ‘unheimlich’ – which means uncanny or weird – kept coming-up with regard to how we could play with the camera point-of-view to evoke appropriate sensations and tensions – such as combining wide panoramas and strong close-ups.”

The Innocents was shot over the course of nine weeks, during the summer of 2019, around the housing estate of Romsås, near Oslo, Norway, and its surrounding woodlands. Grøvlen says with the restrictions that apply to children’s working hours on-set, that scheduling became quite a puzzle.

Bearing in mind the need to immerse the audience in the world of the children – to shoot from their eyelines and to evoke the uncanny – Grøvlen went with an ARRI Alexa Mini, to assist manoeuvrabilty, shooting at 800ISO.

“I shoot a lot of handheld, although my style is more about having the camera at foot, knee and hip level, or even above my head, than on the shoulder,” Grøvlen explains. “I have invented a set-up with the Alexa Mini that works well for me, with the batteries on my belt to minimise weight, which allows me to be very agile and to move freely. This approach was very much part of depicting the world from the children’s viewpoints, although we also went with more formal and composed cinematography from the dolly and on sticks.”

As for the optics, Grøvlen selected vintage, Super Baltar spherical prime lenses, rehoused by P+S Technik, and a Canon K35 25-120mm zoom. The camera and lens package was supplied by Kamerarental in Oslo, which also has branches in Denmark and Sweden.

First introduced by Bausch & Lomb in the mid1960s, Super Baltar lenses were originally designed to be compatible with Mitchell BNCR cameras and are best known for their use on The Godfather (1972) and The Godfather: Part II (1974) (both shot by DP Gordon Willis ASC). Manufactured in the 1970s, the Canon K35 25-120mm zoom offers similar colour rendition, flare and fall-off characteristics to the Baltars, plus an inbuilt macro function that can bring focus to 2-inches at 25mm.

“Whilst the Super Baltars are well-suited to analogue film, their warm, soft look and unique flares offer a pleasing synergy with the sensors on digital cinema cameras,” says the DP. “We tested a quite a few different lenses, but Eskil responded most to the creamy softness of the image and the sometimes weird chromatic aberrations that the Super Baltars give. As the Super Baltars closest focus is about threefeet, we used diopters to magnify the image for our close-ups.

“The K35 zoom is a visual good match with the Baltars, and allowed me to bring different feelings of tension, otherworldliness and estrangement to the image by using slow zoom-ins and contra-zooms off the dolly. Additionally, the macro function enabled me to focus-in really closely, with shallow depth-of-field, on evocative childhood experiences – like the Velcro straps

trainers, a finger picking at a scab, or fingers bursting bubblewrap.

“The looks of these lenses, combined with different ways we moved the camera – slow push-ins, sudden look-ups, over-the shoulder reveals, and panoramic drone shots that were later flipped upside-down in post – were all ways of creating sensations of menace, horror and the supernatural.”

Rather than adopt lighting conventions from horror films, Grøvlen says the strategy went the other way, and was more about keeping the look contemporary and natural overall, with a sense of magical realism through lighting design.

“On our exteriors, we barely used any artificial lighting to illuminate our scenes. It was more about controlling the natural/available light, often with butterflies, and using negative fill to shape the look on faces. However, this was sometimes quite a challenge in terms of continuity, such as on the final ‘battle-of-thewills’ scene at the lake, which we shot over three days in variable weather conditions.

“As for the interiors, I wanted to work with reflected light, not just bouncing softlight into a room or other location using HMIs, but also creating light patterns on the walls, adding subtle highlights here and there to create a sense of magicality. I worked with my regular gaffer, Aslak Lytthans, who was very hands-on and creative in suggesting the use of mirrors, crystals and hard spots that we could use for these soft of effects which you can see throughout the film.”

Grøvlen attended the final grade on The Innocents, which took place at Copenhagen post-house Zentropa under the auspices of Swedish colourist Emil Eriksson.

“The fact that I had recently completed the DI on Another Round with Emil made things easier,” remarks the DP. “He proved what a talented and skilled colourist he is in ironing-out little inconsistencies, say with skin tones, and more problematic issues concerning the weather.

“I also have to say that, during the DI was the first time I saw the film with Pessi Levanto’s score and

sound design/mix by Gisle Tveito and Gustaf Berger.

I was blown away by how much the music and audio effects added to the haunting tension and atmospheric experience of the movie.”

Indeed, Tveito and Berger were awarded for their work at the 2021 European Film Awards.

Grøvlen concludes, “I am pretty critical of my work, and don’t particularly enjoy looking back at films I have shot, as I can always see something I would have done differently or better. But, The Innocents does rank pretty high as a personal favourite.

“I had a really good collaboration with Eskil and my crew, and those great connections and friendships made things easier during the shoot. I was able to bring more range and scope into my work, in terms of combining handheld with more deliberate positional shots, and I feel we succeeded in creating children’s experiences. I am very happy with the lighting too, and how we nailed the Nordic light for dramatic effect. I am very proud of the result and think it’s an amazing film.”

CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD MAY 2022 71

MOVIETECH•ON TOUR

ON TOUR•MOVIETECH

This page: group shot… (l-r) Phil Parker, CFO Sunbelt Rentals; Jay and Anil Devani (Anil is joint MD); Linda Blake, FD; John Venables; director of optics; John Buckley, chairman (with Sheila Buckley); Andy Cooper, marketing director; David Palmer, MD; Angela Turner, strategic programme director, Sunbelt Rentals Ltd; and Alec West senior prep technician.

ROCKING THE BOAT

By Ron Prince

D

espite the no doubt sensible, but rather officious, rigmarole of getting through security and on to the lot, a trip to Pinewood Studios is always exciting. And the frisson factor is even more acute today. I’m visiting Movietech, the veritable and muchcherished provider of professional imagecapture solutions and quality-engineered production equipment, which has, in just the last couple of days, been acquired by a very large US/UK industrial equipment rental company, and the ink is barely dry on the deal.

Nestled on a corner of the legendary Goldfinger Avenue, with the gargantuan 007 Stage in plain sight over yonder, the business is truly based in the beating heart of the UK filmmaking industry. Entering the premises, I receive a genial greeting from chairman, John Buckley, a well-known figure amongst local and in-coming filmmakers.

“Welcome to Movietech, how are you? Good journey? Would you like a cup of tea?” says Buckley cheerfully, motioning towards the kitchen, where a restorative cup of Rosie Lea, made by the man himself, is not long in coming.

I can’t help but notice a large box of colourful Krispy Kreme doughnuts on the kitchen table, and wonder if those particular confections have arrived by way of celebrating the company’s recent acquisition

by Sunbelt Rentals (an FTSE 100 Company) and the forthcoming merger of interests with William F. White International Inc (WFW), Canada’s coast-to-coast provider of motion picture equipment and studio properties, which Sunbelt acquired in 2019.

But no, today happens to be the 19th birthday of apprentice Zainab Mahmood, who has been learning

72 MAY 2022 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

the ropes for the last 18 months, and those enticing pastries are actually her gifts of appreciation for her colleagues to enjoy.

We are joined by an equally-chipper Andy Cooper, marketing director at the company, who is equally well-known amongst DPs and their camera teams. He believes it is the hallmarks of sound knowledge, sage advice and sterling service that have helped to distinguish Movietech from its rivals during more than three decades in the UK’s fiercely-

We have a golden opportunity to substantially grow the business and really rock the boat competitive camera and grip rental business – which have seen the firm successfully expand from its Pinewood Studios base to also support filmmakers in the west of the kingdom, out of Great Point Seren Stiwdios Wales in Cardiff.

And its these home-grown, carefully-nurtured attributes, plus a stellar line up of optics, cameras and associated filmmaking technologies, that Buckley says he is determined to continue with the investment that will soon flood into the company following its purchase – for an undisclosed sum – by Sunbelt.

“The investment into Movietech could not have

come at a better time,” says Buckley, who also notes that Movietech and WFW have enjoyed a longstanding relationship dating back to the 1990s.

“We were at a crossroads, where we needed to significantly expand our offices, our inventory and our team, and would have had to have asked the bank manger nicely, or muddled along in some other way.

“But now, with Sunbelt, plus the knowledge and enthusiasm from our colleagues at William F. White, we have a golden opportunity to substantially grow the business in all sorts of different, and complementary ways, that will really rock the boat and expose the Movietech name, our culture and way of doing things, to a much wider audience of filmmakers around the UK.” Along with countless music video and commercials, feature productions supported by Movietech over the years have included: The Fully Monty (1997, DP John de Borman BSC AFC), Made In Dagenham (2010, DP John de Borman BSC AFC), My Week With Marylin (2011, DP Ben Smithard BSC), Under The Skin (2013, DP Daniel Landin BSC), Ex Machina (2014, DP Rob Hardy BSC ASC), Murdered By My Father’ (2016, DP Felix Wiedemann BSC), Disney’s Beauty And The Beast (2017, DP Tobias A. Schliessler ASC), Peterloo (2018, DP Dick Pope BSC) and Censor (2021, DP Annika Summerson), to name just a few.

More recently, and in tune with the growth of the UK production industry, the company has also supported a wide variety of high-end/streamed productions including BBC’s His Dark Materials, HBO’s Industry, Sky Originals’ I Hate Suzie, Sky Studio’s A Discovery Of Witches and Disney+/ Lucasfilm’s Willow. Indeed, there’s a fresh-faced crew of camera assistants in today, busily testing and prepping a camera package destined to ship up-north

tomorrow for season one of Netflix’s Bodies.

Currently Movietech employs 28 people across its Pinewood Studios and Cardiff sites, and has a multimillion pound inventory of lenses, many of which are interestingly vintage, plus cameras, grip and associated accessories from manufacturers worldwide.

The existing Pinewood premises total 9,500sq/ ft, but Buckley is hoping to triple that footprint in the not too distant future, with the extra space being used for

its lens inventory is an Aladdin’s cave, encompassing both classic and contemporary, spherical and Anamorphic glass from world-leading manufacturers such as Cooke, Kowa, Hawk, Zeiss, Angénieux and Canon, along some you might not have discovered yet, such as Orion, Gecko-Cam and MasterBuilt, along with Macro and special purpose probes.

Complementing its panoply of lenses, the camera department, led by Andy Mossman, includes the very latest bodies from ARRI, Sony, Red and Canon, as well as 35mm and 16mm film cameras. I am informed that a good half dozen of the brand new Sony Venice 2’s have just been inspected and shipped to a streaming series.

Whilst one might have expected the new broom to sweep somewhat clean, consistency is key, and Movietech’s senior management team – of Buckley, Venables, financial director Linda Blake, plus joint MDs Anil Devani and David Palmer – have all been retained, to look after clients and ensure a smooth integration of the business with William F. White.

Overseeing the operations from Canada, is

Movietech is the first of what will be many forays into new markets

a dramatically-increased arsenal, along with testing rooms, workshops and administrative space. Whether that will be on the lot at Pinewood, or a convenient spot nearby, remains to be seen.

The team at Movietech continually monitors technology and industry trends to ensure its customers have access to one of the most comprehensive resources available. With on-going curation under the auspices of renowned director of optics, John Venables,

Trevor Huys, VP of camera and virtual production at WFW, whose industry background encompasses over 25 years of cinematic camera technical and rental experience, including ten years as a senior optical technician at Panavision. As he is based in Toronto, he has kindly emailed a note over specially for my visit, explaining a little further about plans moving forwards.

It reads, “Having worked with Movietech in the past, we know their leadership team, as well as their culture and how they operate with a high standard of technical knowledge and incredibly well-maintained inventory, that is very similar to ours.

“Our focus, as a Sunbelt Rentals’ company, is on international expansion and growth to meet the increasing demand for content worldwide, driven by streaming services such as Amazon Prime, Crave, Netflix, Disney+ and Apple+, which coincided with similar ambitions from Movietech’s side.

“With a shared purpose and set of values, our team and clients will only benefit from our combined reach and expertise. With this acquisition, Movietech now has the financial horsepower to achieve its goals from a new, state-of-the art facility, and we will be investing in more inventory and resources, including new-release cameras, lenses and support, to give cinematographers and filmmakers the tools they need to wow audiences across the world.

“Movietech is the first of what will be many forays into new markets. We look forward to opening the door to companies that complement all of our WFW lines of business, including lighting, grip, power, speciality equipment, studio and virtual production.”

Buckley says, “We are certain this represents a perfect opportunity for Movietech to really fly, by offering a scaled-up version of the respected boutique-style service we are known to provide.

People enjoy the experience of coming here, the knowledge and the banter.”

Now all this talk about empire building is all well and good, but it’s making me incredibly hungry.

So I grab one of those doughnuts that have been tantalising me, one with a dollop of jam in the middle, which seems to prompt Buckley into an additional thoughtwave.

“We’re always thinking about the future, particularly about training schemes and apprenticeships,” he says, as I make a complete mess of devouring the doughnut, and jam squirts all over the place.

“If there’s one thing I want to see us keep going, that would be encouraging more young people, like Zainab, who have a passion for this industry, to step through our doors, focus their skills and learn a valuable trade. You never know where that might take you in the years ahead. Now, would you like a napkin?”

CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD MAY 2022 73

DOPCHOICE•SPOTLIGHT

SPOTLIGHT•DOPCHOICE

ON THE GRID

By Michael Burns

I

f you’ve been on a film or TV set recently, you’re bound to have encountered softboxes and grids from DoPchoice. The company was founded in 2008 by managing director/owner Stefan Karle, a former cinematographer and graduate of Munich Film School, and under his auspices it has made light work of creating light-modifying accessories for almost every LED lighting fixture you can think of. They all use patented technologies that ensure quick set-up, sag-free operation and efficient lightshaping, and can take pretty much all the knocks a hard-working film crew can inflict.

When asked which recent films his products have been used on, Karle answers with a laugh, “Everything,” he says. “My big dream was to get to Hollywood as a cinematographer. Well, I can at least say my products made it!”

SHAPING THE LIGHT For Karle, contrast and shaping the light were key when he was working as a cinematographer.

“I liked having bigger overheads or just having bigger softboxes. We made our own boxes, with frames to control the light,” he explains. “I was always focused on contrast, to have the contrast giving visual direction to the viewer. If the lighting is flat, you don’t know where to focus.”

However, he took issue with the solutions that were already on the market.

“The existing products were a little bit of a pain in that if you folded them in the right way then that was fine, but if you folded them any other way, then all of a sudden you had a damaged product.

“This almost never happens with our product. We

74 MAY 2022 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

use very expensive fabrics and we’re really durable,” he continues. “They get a lot of stress – we all know how things are treated on-set, things have to be done quickly. We are not the cheapest product in the market, but people will pay for quality.”

The company’s fold-up Butterfly Grids are a good example of the DoPchoice philosophy.

Manufactured using a specially-developed robust fabric that keeps the grids stable, they stretch tightly in any position, even overhead, with no sagging,

You have to be very efficient on film sets. We can help with our gear and then fold flat to store. As well as a bungee cable fastening system, they have specially-developed brackets that make them very simple and quick to install as well as keeping the grid off the floor, whilst each corner has a white fastener instead of a black one, making it easier to find.

MANUFACTURING RELATIONSHIPS Seven years ago DoPchoice started to work closely with ARRI, forming a relationship that continues strongly to this day, but the number of additional companies and fixtures the company now supports is staggering, and Karle says he sees

almost two new products coming on to the market each week.

“It’s like a being in a hamster wheel for me,” he admits. “We have good relations with the manufacturers. They provide us with the latest information, with the latest drawings, so that we can be ready with our products when their product is launched.”

The most popular lines at the moment are the Snapbag with the Snapgrid, an easily mountable softbox solution for popular LED fixtures, such as the ARRI SkyPanel or Creamsource Vortex.

Karle says that with so much focus on developing the light itself, the manufacturers often go into production before they prioritise their need for an accessory. Then the call goes out to DoPchoice.

“A lot of traditional manufacturers don’t have our speed in development,” he says. “Products don’t run for ten years, like it was with HMI, now you get two to four years max, and then you get the next generation coming along. The problem comes if you develop something new and then the light is not a big success – it’s a tough business. But we’re in quite a nice situation as we are collaborating with most of the manufacturers. We are following the trend.

“We’re really responsive and we like new challenges,” Karle says. “For example, the gaffer Albrecht Silberberger came to us with his inflatable light, the Rodlight. He said: ‘I want a Snapgrid, but I don’t want to have the steel outside because it’s too heavy. I am making a 10-metre-long inflatable light that weighs next to nothing, so I don’t want your Snapgrid to weigh more than the light itself’.

“So, we started to investigate different materials such as carbon fibre, fibreglass and others, looking at

ways to solve this problem.”

Karle and his team worked closely with Silberberger. “Albrecht knows exactly how he would use this gear, and he knows exactly how the accessory should work. They’re using it in places like old buildings, where you might just have two hanging points and you can only put something like 5kg on each. So, it must be all lightweight.

“It’s nice when you have a counterpart on the other side of the R&D, somebody who, like Albrecht, is giving you feedback, and also sometimes giving you a hard time. It brings you up to the next level and that makes it a lot of fun,” continues Karle.

The finished product that came from the collaborative effort with Silberberger, the Snapgrid 50°, is now on the market in three sizes, with the largest weighing only 1.34kg.

HOME BASE Despite such a large product range, the core team in Munich is just nine people.

“One works from Barcelona, most of the others are working from home,” says Karle. “We have a warehouse, offices and our R&D across roughly 1,000sq/m, but the production is outsourced.

We have some people in Germany and others in Eastern Europe working on more than 100 sewing machines.”

DoPchoice has several partnerships, such as a licensing model for North America with TRP worldwide, but for all other countries it delivers directly from Munich.

“We don’t have a big marketing machine. Thanks to our collaborations with manufacturers, we try to have our products ready with a product launch

directly on their website, in their brochures and so on,” Karle adds. “During the pandemic, we invested a lot of money in our own studio. We installed a camera robot and a turntable connected to that.”

This set-up delivered the rotating 180° product shots that can now be found on the DoPchoice homepage.

“You get more of a feeling for the product and how it looks inside and out,” he says. “It takes one minute to set-up the light, we place our product

We are not the cheapest product in the market, but people will pay for quality on the turntable, shoot it and then ship it out to the manufacturer. So once they greenlight the accessory, all the marketing material is ready.”

SET FOCUS “It’s also important for us to keep relations open with the filmmakers, and to listen to what they need,” adds Karle. “We’re always looking at products from the perspective of how people use them on the set.”

Once such product is the Rabbit-Ears softbox fastening system, which replaces the cumbersome speed ring for mounting Snapbag softboxes on lighting fixtures. Available in four form-factors, a single

unit can be used to mount on many different LED lighting brands firmly in under three minutes.

“Even if we have a released product, if we get suggestions for tweaks from people in the field, we adapt and change it,” adds Karle. “The nice thing about the company is that whilst it has grown in a big way, we still try to be reactive.”

The new Rabbit-Rounder Universal has been developed in this fashion. Created for a COB LED light rather than panels, it makes it easier to set-up a DoPchoice Snapbag, Octa or Lantern to Aputure, Fiilex, Nanlux mounts or fixtures with a Bowens mount. The user just clicks out the arms, and sets it on the fixture, while releasing it takes a simple push of a button.

“We made it super-durable, it cannot break, it cannot be bent,” says Karle. “The lighting rentals people particularly like it because they see the advantages of that. It also means that you can use one softbox for many different lights – you just put in a new adapter.

“If you look how much equipment the film crew is carrying today, there’s incredibly more inventory compared to 10 or 15 years ago. But they have fewer people to set up the gear. They have fewer shooting days for the same amount of end-material that has to become content. So you have to be very efficient on film sets.

“We can help with our gear, to be quicker, to take advantage of short breaks; the crew can just put a Snapgrid into the soft box, and then everybody’s happy.”

CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD MAY 2022 75

GAFFERS CAFÉ•INTERNATIONAL CINEMA LIGHTING SOCIETY

INTERNATIONAL CINEMA LIGHTING SOCIETY•GAFFERS CAFÉ

LET THERE BE LIGHT

Opposite: (top clockwise) ICLS board member, James McGuire; co-founder and gaffer Raffi Sanchez; co-founder and gaffer Martin Smith on Mission: Impossible - Fallout.

This page: co-founder and gaffer Mike Bauman; co-founder and gaffer Martin Smith on-set with DP Rob Hardy BSC ASC.

By David Wood

W

hile there wasn’t much to celebrate for the film and television industry during the global lockdown caused by the Covid pandemic, one positive was that it provided a launch pad for the International Cinema Lighting Society (ICLS).

Founded by leading gaffers Mike Bauman, Raffi Sanchez and Martin Smith in 2020 as a networking forum for people in the lighting industry, the ICLS really took off last year as gaffers around the world found the society’s regular Saturday Zoom meet-ups a great way to stay in touch.

As Bauman explains, the ICLS helped to satisfy the need for connection and communication during lockdown, which had in reality always existed.

Most of the gear we use now simply didn’t exist ten years ago “Gaffers tend to be busy people and don’t really have time to meet-up with one another unless it’s at a trade show,” he says. “What we discovered was that there was an amazing amount of knowledge out there, but no easy way to tap into it. So we decided to formalise the ICLS because we could really see the strength of the community.”

Raffi Sanchez adds, “The Saturday meetings in lockdown made us realise the power of sharing information – we were all learning a lot from one another about Covid at the time, and when we did go back to work we were all much better prepared than we would have been otherwise. It made me better at my job and I realised the power of a community where everybody is willing to share knowledge.”

“My first reaction was that we should open things up a bit,” recalls UK gaffer Martin Smith. “I thought that there’s a pool of top gaffers I know in Europe, and

further afield globally who would love to be part of this; to come along and blow off a bit of steam.”

“Initially it was all about, ‘How’s Covid where you are?’,” recalls Bauman. “But then we decided to develop it by getting some topics together, plus a few vendors expressed an interest in taking part.”

The plan hatched by Bauman, Sanchez and Smith was to create a ‘not-for-profit’ society, along the lines of the America Society Of Cinematographers or the British Society of Cinematographers, dedicated to the advancement of the craft of film lighting, which would

formal qualifications, but the ICLS plans to develop a more structured, accredited entry-route into the profession.

Promoting diversity, particularly getting more women into the world of gaffing, is another ambition, stresses Bauman. Bringing a wider range of discussions to the regular Saturday Zooms, which currently attract up to 50 members, has been something that console operator/ programmer, and ICLS board member, Erin Nelligan has brought to the party.

“Erin has really pushed a lot of the thinking,” declares Bauman, “from Covid protocols and how you best manage

Lighting vendors have been very responsive and helpful act as an information-sharing forum in crucial areas such as lighting technology.

Bauman illuminates, “This has become all the more critical as the amount of new technology and its complexity has increased rapidly. The simple fact is that in lighting the rate of change in technology has been explosive, much more so than other areas of film, such as grips and camera technology. Most of the gear we use now simply didn’t exist ten years ago.”

Another major aim of the ICLS was to help provide mentorship and more formal pathways for people to get into the business. To date the route into the world of film lighting has remained pretty informal, focused around the development of personal relationships rather than

a crew, to how to handle harassment on-set – things that not a lot of us were comfortable talking about. She’s helped widen the debate beyond a focus on lighting tech.”

Discord server In addition to ICLS’s Saturday meet-ups, one of the key attractions is the group’s thriving discord server, which acts as an effective global forum for film lighting issues.

“The discord server is the beating heart of the whole experience,” insists Bauman,” and is a focus for the creation of a lot of great dialogue. We have lots of people in different countries over a variety of time zones which can make it hard to link-up, but over the discord people can ask questions, solve problems and give really useful feedback on different lighting solutions.”

Martin Smith declares: “I learn something new every time I visit, it blows me away that there are so many people

with so much information that’s useful. Now it’s the first place I go for help. As a young gaffer it would have been great to have had access to information like this.”

Sanchez adds: “There are 80-90 different channels already on he discord server and it’s growing fast. Channels include ‘Today’s Office’ – where gaffers post photos of what they are working on that day – a Health Channel, a Lighting Safety Channel, plus, around the world, every continent has its own channel. The discord server also provides direct links to some of the major lighting vendors, so that we can communicate with them too regarding questions about kit. They have been very responsive and helpful.

It’s also proved to be a useful feedback channel from end-users.”

“Now everybody is so Zoom-savvy, manufacturers have been keen to come in and present,” says Bauman.

“In just one two-hour session we can deep dive into products in much more detail than you would get in a five-minute presentation at a trade show. Online you have access to 27 different countries, there is follow-up dialogue for weeks afterwards and if anybody couldn’t make the live presentation it’s available to watch at another time.”

The ICLS offers different tiers of sponsorship – the highest level affords vendors their own discord channel, while smaller companies marketing one product or app pay less.

Martin Smith adds: “Another beauty is that vendors get to come straight to the end-user with their prototypes and share information that nobody else is privy to. As a trusted group, that has some super-smart technicians, we can help out with early stage prototypes and help steer product development.”

In response to the demand for more information about lighting technology, the society ran its first virtual trade show in March 2022, with 100 gaffers logging-in to see presentations from a mix of eight vendors including: Creamsource, Rosco, DoPChoice, Light Bridge and Blackout Lighting Console. ICLS Ssponsors also include: Aputure, ARRI, Astera, Fiilex, FlickerFreeLED, LightBridge, Luminex, LiteGear, MBSi, Rupixels, SumoLight and VectorWorks, amongst others.

Over the next year, the plan is to develop the programme, widen the user-base and develop a website with a searchable content database, and the society has recruited its first staff member, ICLS associate director Bea Patten, to take this work forwards.

Our aim is to become a truly worldwide organisation “Bea really is the backbone of the organisation,” says Smith, who adds that there is only so much time that working gaffers can dedicate to the society as they juggle ICLS work with a full-time career and other commitments.

Another ambition is to run two versions of its regular weekly Saturday meet-up, one for its Western time zones and another for the East. “Our aim is to become a truly worldwide organisation,” says Smith.

Joining the ICLS The ICLS is in the process of getting not-for-profit status as a trade organisation. This is a big deal as it means the group’s income from membership fees and vendor sponsorship is not subject to taxation, provided the money is only used to support the interests of the membership.

The group is now directed by a five-strong board which, in addition to LA-based gaffers Mike Bauman and Raffi Sanchez and the UK’s Martin Smith, includes James McGuire from Ireland and Erin Nelligan from

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.

Whatever your production type, wherever you are, when it comes to lighting - we’ve got the lot.

MBS Equipment Company Lakeside Road, Colnbrook, Slough, Berkshire SL3 0EL +44 (0) 1753 987 888 mbseco.uk

76 MAY 2022 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

PMBS generic quarter.indd 1

Vancouver, Canada. It has a membership committee vetting new entrants, a finance committee and a vendor committee.

“Because of these structures, the ICLS is a lot more than a Facebook group or a bunch of people hanging out on Zoom drinking beers,” states Bauman.

The ICLS currently has 250 full members with the aim of getting to 300 by the end of the year. To qualify for membership, you have to have a bit of a track record; namely been a gaffer, rigging gaffer or desk op/console programmer for eight years with a string of credits to show for it.

The society is also seeking to be more inclusive, recently launching a new category of associate membership that is open to less experienced gaffers and related professions, such as post-house colourists or experts in projection.

“The aim is to help bring-in knowledge from other areas which are becoming more relevant to the lighting department. It’s important for us to reach into underserved communities because a wider range of skills are required as technology in lighting changes,” explains Bauman.

“The ICLS helps to share that knowledge. Recently we have had deep-dive presentations from people such as gaffer Jeff Webster and the team from The Mandalorian on recent advances in virtual studio production. We have hosted presentations from Creamsource about the Vortex lighting system, and also Steve Yedlin ASC’s famous colour science presentation.”

For more information, please visit www.iclsociety.com.

STUDIO LOCATION FEATURES COMMERCIALS DRAMA TELEVISION EQUIPMENT GENERATORS TRANSPORT SUPPORT INNOVATION SAFETY SUSTAINABILITY 12/01/2022 11:18

CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD MAY 2022 77

R ine c ro

n Y! io TR OW trat EN N gis EE ER /re FR IST .com EG expo

eu

SHOOTING GALLERY•EURO CINE EXPO 2022

COME TOGETHER

MUNICH • 1 - 2 JULY • 2022 1 - 2 JULI • 2022 • MÜNCHEN

By Kirsty Hazlewood

A

t the beginning of 2020, SCS, the exhibition company behind the annual BSC Expo, was approached by a group of manufacturers and suppliers to create a fresh, new and exciting event for the film and TV production industry, to be based in Munich, Germany. After deliberation, discussion and much planning, Euro Cine Expo was subsequently launched to fulfil this need.

Unfortunately, the original plans for a summer 2020 event were disrupted by the pandemic.

However, in 2022, the original concept is now being realised and Euro Cine Expo will open the doors of its inaugural event on 1st and 2nd July.

The team behind Euro Cine Expo, headed up by Rob and Claire Saunders, who bring many years of combined experience to the show, are looking to usherin a festival feel. The two-day expo will not only feature a comprehensive exhibition showcasing the latest filmmaking technologies, but will also be combined with a programme of seminars and panel discussions with leading cinematographers and manufacturers, alongside a variety of networking events.

The backdrop for Euro Cine Expo is the Zenith at MotorWorld. The venue plays host to three unique spaces (The Zenith, The Kesselhaus and The Kohlebunker) for the exhibition, seminars and networking, plus the newly-opened and renovated Motorworld, which combines a luxury on-site hotel, seven restaurants/bars, plus the Motorworld

experience. These make for an ideal environment for creatives to come together this summer.

The timing for Euro Cine Expo coincides with the Munich Film Festival, Germany’s largest summer film festival, which screens some 200 films annually and is host to countless filmmakers from all over the world.

On-site at Euro Cine Expo the team will host events both indoors and outdoors to hopefully take advantage of the summer weather. With plenty of on-

Euro Cine Expo will provide a fresh and vibrant environment, with a festival-type feel site parking as well, and multiple food outlets including street food, SCS hopes attendees and exhibitors will enjoy the experience into the evening and long after the show has closed.

“The concept of Euro Cine Expo has been a long time in the making, and we are delighted and overwhelmed by the support the industry is giving,” said Rob Saunders. “What started out as a local event is now becoming a summer gathering for the wider European

cinematography and film production community, and we are looking forward very much to hosting colleagues from across Europe and further afield.

“We know the last two years have been tough for everyone, especially in this industry, and the opportunities to engage at in-person events have been greatly missed. We are therefore thrilled to offer visitors and exhibitors from across Europe, and beyond, the opportunity to gather together, showcase the latest technologies and connect once again to share valuable insights.

“Euro Cine Expo will provide a fresh and vibrant environment, with a festival-type feel, where professionals in the moving image sector can share ideas, learn about market developments, solve problems, and meet with colleagues.”

Euro Cine Expo is working with a variety of media outlets across Europe, with Cinematography World being the primary media partner. The team behind Cinematography World is curating a thoughtprovoking and informative seminar programme that will bring the cinematography community together to discuss topics affecting the industry and promote industry capability and safety.

“We’re aiming to curate an inspirational seminar programme at Euro Cine Expo for everyone that works in cinematography and behind the camera,” said Ron Prince, editor-in-chief at Cinematography World editor. “This will encompass presentations from cinematographers, lighting and camera manufacturers, panel discussions, as well as Q&A sessions.”

“Included in this will be a special presentation in collaboration with Cinegirl, a leading independent female-focused cinematography publication, that will cover a range of different topics that promote diversity and inclusion across film sets.”

Entry to Euro Cine Expo is completely free to attend and you can register at www.eurocineexpo.com/ registration. We look forward to seeing you there!

C

M

Y

CM

MY

Europe's new event focusing on the technologies and craft of Cinematography Uniting the film industry across 2 days of exhibition & seminars

CY

Coinciding with the Munich Film Festival & delivering a world class seminar & workshop programme of events to run alongside the exhibition

CMY

K

eurocineexpo.com Located at The Zenith, part of Motorworld providing an amazing immersive and inspiring new venue for the Cinematography and Film industry.

Save the dates

1 - 2 July 2022

For more information contact us on +44 1428 609 382 or email info@eurocineexpo.com

Images: different views of the Zenith, Kesselhaus and Kohlebunker at MotorWorld in Munich, where Euro Cine Expo will be built.

78 MAY 2022 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

Cinematography World is proud to be the Official Media Partner of Euro Cine Expo