Cinematography World issue 010

THE ART AND CRAFT BEHIND THE CAMERA

ISSUE 010 JULY/AUGUST 2022

INSIDE THIS ISSUE HOYTE VAN HOYTEMA NSC FSF ASC•FELIX WIEDEMANN BSC•POLLY MORGAN BSC ASC•RUBEN IMPENS SBC•DOUGLAS KOCH CSC BRYAN MASON•MURREN TULLET•MANUEL DACOSS SBC•BRADEN HAGGERTY•ANDREA PIETRO MUNAFÒ•MANDY WALKER AM ACS ASC

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Rascals Publishing & Media Ltd! Red Lion Yard, Odd Down, Bath United Kingdom BA2 2PP Tel: +44 (0) 1428 746 375 Editor-in-Chief RON PRINCE ronny@cinematography.world Special Consultant ALAN LOWNE alan@cinematography.world Editorial Assistant KIRSTY HAZLEWOOD kirsty@cinematography.world Advertising Manager CLAIRE SAUNDERS claire@cinematography.world Social Media & Comms KAZ PEARMAN kaz@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. Birgit Heidsiek is an award-winning sustainability consultant, author, TEDx speaker and founder of the European Centre For Sustainability In The Media World (www.greenfilmshooting.net), which informs about eco-friendly film and media production.

Erika Addis ACS, national president, Australian Cinematographers Society

SHOWBUSINESS...

Build it and they will come. And they sure did, from every corner of the planet, as exhibitors, attendees and speakers gathered together in-person at the inaugural Euro Cine Expo, in Munich, to deliver a marvellous showcase of the latest technologies for visual storytelling via the moving image, plus an inspirational set of seminars, curated by Cinematography World.

Amongst the many highlights during the largely sunny two days, guest-of-honour Vittorio Storaro AIC ASC, joining live-from-Rome via Zoom, laced his session with pearls of wisdom about the art, technology and passion he has put into his outstanding body of works, whilst German DP Armin Franzen’s insight into shooting Das Boot in 8K proved a veritable masterclass of creative thought and deed. With all our hearts, we thank Vittorio and Armin, along with everyone else who contributed to making that programme a milestone success.

Ron Prince photo by Joe Short www.joeshort.com

Why Film?

My role is to ensure that new generations get access to opportunities… and a more inclusive industry

During the course of our work surrounding the Expo, we made new friends and also strengthened our bonds with many others, including Camerimage and the leading players of IMAGO’s Technical Committee (ITC). I am delighted to report that Cinematography World also became an official media partner with both Focus Puller At Work (FPAW) and the International Cinema Lighting Society (ICLS). We look forward to championing their work and many members through our pages and online too.

With positive feedback from exhibitors, the big news is that Euro Cine Expo will return in 2023, bigger and even better than the first landmark show, to become Europe’s premier and unmissable cinematography event.

Dates for next year’s Euro Cine Expo will be announced soon, by the indefatigable organisers at SCS Concepts. So, please stay tuned and we look forward to seeing you, and supporting the industry once again with even more of the cinematographic good stuff.

Official Media Partners

Christine Gebhard & Gerd Voigt–Müller are founders and managing editors of the German-speaking publication film-tv-video.de. They are industry veterans with a deep knowledge of the film, TV and cine market.

That’s the full story.

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

Film matters.

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.

Ron Prince Editor in Chief ronny@cinematography.world

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.

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: Actor Steven Yeun stars in Nope, written/directed by Jordan Peele. © 2022 UNIVERSAL STUDIOS. All Rights Reserved. © 2022 Kodak. Kodak, Ektachrome and the Kodak logo are trademarks.

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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.

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RECYCLE

Cinematography World is created using responsibly sourced materials

CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD JULY/AUGUST 2022 3

Meet the final puzzle piece.

ISSUE 010•CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

INSIDE

ISSUE 010 JULY/AUGUST 2022

6 8 16 20 26 28 32 34 36 38 40 42 46 50 54 56 60 62 70 74 76 78

VIEW FROM THE TOP•MUSTAPHA BARAT ABC, IMAGO PRESIDENT

26 MRS HARRIS GOES TO PARIS

PRODUCTION NEWS LETTER FROM AUSTRALIA•ERIKA ADDIS ACS WHO, WHAT, WHEN & WHERE FELIX WIEDEMANN BSC•MRS HARRIS GOES TO PARIS POLLY MORGAN BSC ASC•WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING BRYAN MASON•GOOD LUCK TO YOU, LEO GRANDE MURREN TULLETT•BRIAN AND CHARLES

32 GOOD LUCK TO YOU, LEO GRANDE

SMOOTH OPERATOR•GEOFFREY HALEY SOC STUDENT UNION• ANNAPURNA COLLEGE OF FILM & MEDIA ONE TO WATCH•ANDREA PIETRO MUNAFÒ HOYTE VAN HOYTEMA NSC FSF ASC•NOPE MANDY WALKER AM ACS ASC•ELVIS DOUGLAS KOCH CSC•CRIMES OF THE FUTURE MANUEL DACOSSE SBC•PETER VON KANT

42 NOPE

RUBEN IMPENS SBC•THE EIGHT MOUNTAINS INDUSTRY LENS• IS EUROPE THE NEW HOLLYWOOD? ROUND-UP•EURO CINE EXPO 2022 OPERATING UNDERWATER •BRADEN HAGGERTY ON TOUR •PIXIPIXEL GAFFER’S CAFÉ •MARTIN SMITH

46 ELVIS

SHOOTING GALLERY•EURO CINE EXPO EXTRAS 2022

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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

50 CRIMES OF THE FUTURE CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD JULY/AUGUST 2022 5

VIEW FROM THE TOP•MUSTAPHA BARAT ABC

CALL FOR CAMARADERIE Dear Fellow Cinematographers…

I

n May of this year, at the IMAGO Extraordinary General Assembly (IEGA), I was elected president of IMAGO. It is an honour both in itself, and also for being the first president from a Latin American society. This came after I was also recently elected president of the Brazilian Association Of Cinematography (ABC), which is also part of FELAFC, Federación Latinoamericana de Autores de Fotografía Cinematográfica.

As IMAGO’s new president, it is clear that my responsibilities and commitment are to all members societies in the federation and to cinematographers the world over.

I see this as an opportunity to continue in the steps of my predecessors to expand the membership; to bring back European societies that left; and to include more societies from Latin America, African and Asia, thus continuing our transition to a truly international federation.

As cinematography is our main activity, it is extremely important to be a federation where all members feel better-represented and welcomed, so they can share information, exchange ideas and experiences.

The objective is to make IMAGO a centre of communication and interaction for cinematography To this end, one of the first steps is to improve our communication, starting with the IMAGO website, making it easier for everyone to access and navigate, as well as using existing social media platforms and working on other possibilities available.

The objective is to make IMAGO a centre of communication and interaction in all matters related to cinematography, a point-of-reference where anyone can find the right and up-to-date information, as well as like-minded people. Which is not to say that magazines, such as Cinematography World, do not already play and accomplish a very important role towards that aim. They do!

Ours is a fantastic job, sometimes overlooked – at film festivals, for example – and, at IMAGO, we are in a unique position to promote changes in that respect.

Only by working together and increasing interest in our activity and in our community can we achieve this.

Like any voluntary organisation, IMAGO is only as efficient and effective as its members. In that respect it is very important to salute and pointout our important dedicated committees – covering Authorship, Diversity & Inclusion, Education, Elections, Master Classes, Technical and Working Conditions – who work hard for the rights of cinematographers and the advancement of cinematography.

To that end, I will collaborate with all of them, so that they can improve the scope of their work, carry out and advance each one in their respective activities. Which again is very important for us cinematographers, including our representation before government entities and other organisations.

The committees are always looking for people to get involved if you have a particular interest in their specific subjects. The IMAGO website carries full information on all the committees and their work, and if anyone feels motivated, please get in touch with the relevant chairs.

Another important point is for IMAGO to work towards implementing new statutes democratically, through wide consultation with all members, to allow for a necessary updating, more in tune with the changing reality and with the wishes and needs of its members, as well as to provide new ideas and renewal.

I am aware of all the responsibilities and challenges that lie ahead. What is motivating, is the knowledge of the difficulties that we all face in our activity and thinking that we can evolve, even if one step at a time, so that the next generations will be able find a more welcoming and fairer situation.

Obviously, I’m not in this mission alone – vice-presidents Adriana Bernal ADFC and Bojana Andric SAS, secretary general Alex Linden FSF, and the IMAGO Board, are all essential to the pursuit and achievement of these goals. I believe that with respect, democracy and transparency we will be able to advance in this enterprise.

It is important to remember we are all cinematographers before the positions we hold in our associations and at IMAGO. Therefore, I take the opportunity to thank the hard work of all the members, all the associates, who are divided between the film set and the necessary organisational and bureaucratic work of the federation.

I would also like to take this opportunity to thank Luciano Tovoli AIC, the founder of IMAGO who had the brilliant idea of bringing together

6 JULY/AUGUST 2022 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

It is essential that all of us invest in… understanding, friendship, inclusion and camaraderie

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

Akhilesh Patel | Camera

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.

cinematographers from all over the world back in 1992. If he hadn’t believed deeply, worked hard, nor been persistent, we wouldn’t have IMAGO representing us worldwide nowadays.

This year, on December 13th, we are happy to announce IMAGO will be celebrating its 30th anniversary, an incentive and determination to continue with our work.

And finally, it is important to mention that, as we are in a world where intolerance is in evidence, it is essential all of us invest in an atmosphere that is more conducive to understanding, friendship, inclusion and camaraderie.

Since, despite our diverse origins, we have in common a love and dedication to cinematography.

Having just assumed the presidency and starting the work, most changes have not yet taken place effectively but for those who want to access our Instagram and our website to have more information and participate more in our federation, you will be very welcome.

Needless to say, if you’re reading this from a country whose society is not yet a member of IMAGO, please get in touch so we can set your society’s application in motion. Thank you.

Yours sincerely…

Mustapha Barat ABC IMAGO President www.imago.org @imagocinematography

Harfun Li | Edit

Chad Orororo | Sound

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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 CAMERA & LIGHTING RENTAL

E

uro Cine Expo 2022 opened its doors on the 1st and 2nd July 2022, two years after the event was first announced, but which was delayed due to the unforeseen global pandemic. The Munich-based Expo welcomed exhibitors and visitors from around the world, delivering an international platform for the film, TV and cinematography industry.

Show organisers Rob and Claire Saunders, of SCS Exhibitions, chose a unique location for the show itself, The Zenith Hall, plus the adjacent Coal Bunker and Boiler Room for networking opportunities and a diverse seminar programme, curated by Cinematography World, which included guest-of-honour Vittorio Storaro AIC ASC joining live from Rome, as well as new product launches, and panels on diversity and green initiatives.

“The venues in Munich offer the opportunity to grow and develop Euro Cine Expo into

a much bigger and far stronger event and, following positive reactions from exhibitors, key associations and visitors, our plan is exactly that,” said Claire Saunders.

The team behind Euro Cine Expo has plans to host the event at the same time of year as the Munich Film Festival, and to develop and strengthen this timing to bring further synergy with Euro Cine Expo, which will benefit attendees and exhibitors.

“We have been overwhelmed by positive feedback, plus the offer of support and partnership from European associations. Euro Cine Expo will return in 2023 and we are already working on changes to the layout which we feel will improve the flow and experience for all attendees,” added Saunders.

“There are lots of ideas and plans for the next edition, which we will be sharing in the coming months. In the meantime, we thank everyone for making this first edition so wonderful. The feeling

Ron Prince pictured with German DP Armin Franzen

EURO CINE EXPO SET FOR 2023 RETURN

and buzz at Euro Cine Expo was fantastic and we look forward to seeing everyone again in 2023.”

PKE LIGHTING CVP APPOINTS SALES TEAM TO ACQUIRED BY SUPPORT NEW EUROPEAN FACILITY SUNBELT F RENTALS

F

ilm, television and photographic lighting rental specialist, PKE Lighting (PKE), has been acquired

by Sunbelt Rentals. The acquisition is aimed at strengthening Sunbelt Rentals’ proposition in the British film and television industry following its recent acquisition of Movietech.

Operating on a national level, PKE provides services to UK television shows and is well-positioned for growth in the UK. PKE and Movietech will work closely with sister company William F. White International (WFW), a film and television production rental specialist business, also Sunbelt Rentals company.

“It’s a great opportunity for us to be under the same umbrella as Movietech and WFW, which will allow us to continue to be successful well into the future,” stated PKE owner/director, Mike Pollard. “With Sunbelt’s support we will be able to invest in additional inventory and rental solutions that will expand our equipment offering and service for our clients.”

Commenting on the acquisition Andy Wright, Sunbelt Rentals UK CEO added: “These are exciting times as we expand our footprint in the UK. The combined knowledge and expertise of PKE, Movietech and William F. White International will be a true differentiator for our film and television clients.”

Established in 1991 and based in Irlam, Greater Manchester, UK, PKE provides the film and television industry an inventory encompassing lighting equipment, transport options and power generators across multiple locations around the UK.

ilm, TV and cine production solutions provider, CVP, has appointed Benoit Foucault and Niels Lubbers into senior sales roles, in Belgium and the Netherlands respectively, to coincide with the company’s continued investment and expansion into Europe with the opening of CVP Belgium.

Foucault brings over 20 years of media industry experience, most recently having spent the last ten years as sales and rental manager at TV Connections. He has a track record for establishing and developing sales, and arrives with a deep understanding of the media production market. Lubbers brings solid experience in film, TV and camera sales having built and grown CameraTools.nl for 14 years, before working with ColourTools.

“Growing our teams and CVP’s presence across Europe is a strategic priority,” said Jon Fry, managing director of CVP. “At a time of rapid growth, Benoit and Niels bring knowledge and experience of the whole supply chain – from content production, and supplier community through to content distributors. As we grow, our priority lies in continuing to bring our expertise

and personalised attention closer to our customers, to be nearer to the projects and provide quicker response times.”

CVP originally set-up operations in Belgium in 2021 and has invested significantly in new sales and warehouse infrastructure since. The Belgium facility comprises 650sq/m, stocking the latest and most popular production equipment. The facility enables the company to tackle the challenge of availability with its large local stock holding across both the UK and Belgium, and improves delivery times and access to knowledgeable technical sales and support advisors. Customers can also access more competitive prices for their kit from mainland Europe, as CVP Belgium offers free shipping on EU orders over €1,000 and duty and VAT free prices where applicable.

“CVP Belgium provides a practical solution to the needs and challenges of our EU customers, removing their barriers to efficient and costeffective productions. Our presence in Europe fulfils our mission to put our customers at the heart of our operations,” added Fry.

Support all the way

CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD TEAMS-UP WITH FOCUS PULLER AT WORK

C

inematography World has become an official media partner of Focus Puller At Work (FPAW), the international collective of focus pullers and other industry professionals, which provides a global resource for all-things about camera assisting.

With more than 2,500 members from over 60 different countries, FPAW connects people around the world, who work within the camera department, and provides a focal point to share information and learn from each other. The FPAW

8 JULY/AUGUST 2022 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

platform offers informative podcasts and a communitydriven forum; a community file-share server for manuals and other camera related documents; and a blog, where people working in the camera department, and partners, are invited to write about certain topics.

STEVE KNIGHT

VINCE WILD

MARK NICHOLLS

DAVE OLDROYD

Managing Director

Director of Cameras

Business Development - Cameras

Business Development - Lighting

07501 184 208

07464 444 552

07437 783 571

07973 423 925

pixipixeluk

020 7739 3626

office@pixipixel.com

pixipixel.com

PRODUCTION & POST NEWS

CAMERIMAGE 2022 GAINS MOMENTUM FOR 30TH CELEBRATION

T

he 30th edition of EnergaCamerimage, the international art of cinematography film festival, will take place from November 12-19 in Torun, Poland, and news is rolling-in thick and fast in advance of the jubilee event.

Cinematographer Stephen H. Burum ASC will be recognised with the 2022 Lifetime Achievement Award, and will collect the accolade in-person in Toruń, where festival visitors will have the opportunity to admire some of his films.

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).

The festival, will also honour visual arts pioneer Ulrike Ottinger with its Avant-Garde Achievements In Film Award. Ottinger is known for work that challenges audiences’ notions of visual arts, and has stayed active for five

decades across film, photography, theatre, opera and exhibition.

Ottinger made her film debut in 1973 with Laocoön & Sons, in which she laid out her aesthetic outlook. In her next movie, Madame X: An Absolute Ruler (1977), she challenged masculine tropes – gaining international success and helping to underpin the formation of the feminist movement. Joan Of Arc Of Mongolia (1989) was an emancipatory story of female identity, whilst anthropological themes dominated many of Ottinger’s documentary films, particularly the ones focused on Asia such as Taiga (1992), an eight-hour epic on the life of nomads living in that country.

Renowned Australian cinematographer, Vance Burberry, will be the recipient of the Award For Achievements In Music Videos. His long list of collaborators includes performers as Guns N’ Roses, Alice Cooper, Cher, Celine Dion, Pearl Jam, Avril Lavigne, Linkin Park, Enrique Iglesias, Britney Spears, Ozzy Osbourne, Busta Rhymes, Def Leppard, Gloria Estefan, The Weeknd and R.E.M, among many others.

Attendees will also get the chance to see designs for the new European Film Center CAMERIMAGE (EFCF) that is to be built in Torun. Camerimage also recently revealed the official poster for its 2022 edition, designed by Piotr Jabłoński.

EDIT

PIXIPIXEL BECOMES CARBON NEUTRAL

Now you can work from anywhere in the world with remote collaboration and Blackmagic Cloud!

The company transitioned to renewable energy in all facilities in 2019, which prevents approximately 30+ tCO2e from entering the atmosphere annually. The company recently upgraded all Flobanks in its lighting inventory to Bicolour LED fixtures as part of its sustainability plan and commitment to phase out all fluorescent tubes from its rental stock.

Pixipixel is also committed to reducing waste, with none of its waste going to landfill; staff have been trained in the basics of the climate crisis and

workshops have been held to listen to employees on their ideas on emission reduction actions with the assistance of Creative Zero.

“We have made great progress to run our business more sustainably and intend to go further with our carbon reduction plans to aid not only our business in being more efficient but contribute to our clients’ efforts to reduce carbon footprint on their productions,” said Steve Knight, managing director of Pixipixel.

MUSTAPHA BARAT ABC ELECTED IMAGO PRESIDENT

M

ustapha Barat ABC was recently elected as the president of IMAGO, the international federation of cinematographic societies.

In a statement released by the federation, Barat commented, “I would like to thank everyone for the trust bestowed in me. I was recently elected as the president of the Brazilian society of cinematographers (ABC), and am honoured to be the first president of IMAGO from a Latin American society.

I am aware of all the responsibilities and challenges that lie ahead and I see it as an opportunity to continue the steps taken by some of my predecessors to build new paths for

FAIRLIGHT

Introducing DaVinci Resolve 18!

P

ixipixel, the London based rental house, and an Albertapproved sustainable supplier, has received carbon neutral certification as part of its sustainability commitment, making it one of the first UK rental facilities offering camera, lighting and generators to achieve this milestone.

Pixipixel’s carbon neutral certification comes after independent assessment and verification of its greenhouse gas emissions for the last financial year, conducted in accordance with the standards set by the Department For Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA) and the Department For Business, Environment & Industrial Strategy (BEIS).

Most of company’s emissions – approximately 107 tonnes of carbon dioxideequivalent (tCO2e) – arise as a result of vehicle fuel consumption.

Pixipixel is expected to considerably reduce this figure by up to 90% in 2022 following its switch from diesel to HVO fuel in autumn 2021.

COLOR

IMAGO , as well as to shine a light on our work and plans for the future as they are relevant to cinematographers.

I see the expansion of IMAGO as essential, by bringing back the European societies that left as well as including Latin American, African and Asian societies. The aim is also to make IMAGO a centre of communication and interaction in all matters related to cinematography, by improving the IMAGO website, using social media platforms and an IMAGO mobile app.

Our technical, education, working conditions, authorship rights, diversity and inclusion committees all do great work, and the resumption of the

10 JULY/AUGUST 2022 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

masterclass committee is fundamental.

We are in a world where intolerance is in evidence, and I aim to create an atmosphere that is more conducive to understanding, friendship and camaraderie. I am open to ideas, want to work in the most transparent and democratic way, and pay tribute to Luciano Tovolli AIC ASC and the other founding members of IMAGO.”

DaVinci Resolve 18 features a whole new way of remote collaboration using cloud based workflows! You can host project libraries using Blackmagic Cloud and collaborate on the same timeline, in real time, with multiple users globally. The new Blackmagic Proxy generator automatically creates proxies linked to camera originals, for a faster editing workflow.

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Blackmagic Cloud is a new way of collaborating using cloud based workflows.

On the edit page subtitle support has been expanded to include TTML and XML

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timed texts and embedded MXF/IMF subtitles. A new 5x5 option in the multicam

share projects. Multiple people can work on the same timeline! When changes are

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PRODUCTION & POST NEWS

STEPHEN LIGHTHILL ASC RE-ELECTED AS ASC PRESIDENT

T

he American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) board of governors of recently elected the organisation’s 2022-2023 officers and Stephen Lighthill ASC was re-elected president for a third consecutive one-year term. He will serve alongside vice presidents Amy Vincent, John Simmons and Shelly Johnson; treasurer Steven Poster; secretary Gregg Heschong; and sergeantat-arms Chris Chomyn.

“As an organisation, we are focussed on education, continued improvements of safety practices, and further expanding our diversity and outreach efforts,” noted Lighthill. “The last year has presented many adversities for our community, and we are proud of how our members met these challenges while continuing to take storytelling to new places.”

PRODUCTION & POST NEWS

REMEMBERING RON COLLINS

R

on Collins passed away recently by natural causes aged 80, in Sri Lanka, his chosen home after a long and successful career as a cameraman and business leader in the UK film and TV industry.

Collins started as a newsreel cameraman at British Movietone News in 1961, where his talents were quickly recognised, and he rapidly rose through the ranks, specialising in long-lens coverage of sports and major events. One of the highlights was filming from the top of Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square.

When he left after eight years, to become freelance, he subsidised his income by joining with ace camera engineer George Hill to manufacture and sell lens conversions and accessories.

Meanwhile, his mother, Hettie, a talented seamstress, made changing bags and camera covers. Reflecting what they did, Collins called the company Optical & Textiles Ltd. Clients soon started to call the business ‘OpTex’ and a legend

was born.

Between 1969 and 2005, OpTex International grew to become a major reseller and supplier of production equipment to film and video companies, employing a staff of more that 70, and becoming a recognised innovator of camera, lenses and equipment, such as the Aurasoft light used on many Hollywood movies. OpTex was awarded a Prime Emmy Award for the development of the first image intensifier for TV ENG Cameras during the Gulf War. In the early 2000’s, OpTex suffered the fate of many similar companies and was taken into receivership. Collins took early retirement, moving to Sri Lanka with his wife Ashoka. There, his enthusiasm as a moviemaker didn’t wane and to the end he was making films of the island. He leaves behind his wife Ashoka, his daughters Nicole and Danielle, and many others who loved him dearly.

BSC SUMMER LUNCHEON 2022

T

he 2022 BSC Summer Luncheon proved to be yet another joyful event, as patrons, fellow cinematographers and industry colleagues were welcomed to the Beaumont Estate in Windsor.

The annual gathering has a unique atmosphere, bringing together colleagues and comrades – as well as husbands, wives and partners in a relaxed and informal setting. The weather was glorious as guests enjoyed a sparkling reception.

The host, president Christopher Ross, welcomed new BSC members into the society – Dale Elena McCready BSC NZCS, Rina Yang BSC, Annika Summerson BSC, Ben Wheeler BSC, David Procter BSC, Si Bell BSC, Tim Sidell BSC and Ruairi O’Brien BSC ISC. He also welcomed new Associate BSC members, namely Lucy Bristow Assoc BSC ACO, Chris Bain Assoc

BSC, Shaun Cobley Assoc BSC ACO and Tim Battersby Assoc BSC ACO. Among the various addresses, cinematographer Doug Milsome BSC ASC was in attendance and was presented with his late son’s, Mark Milsome Associate BSC, honorary

certificate. He gave a heartfelt and touching speech about safety and was deeply grateful for the continued support he has received from the society and industry colleagues. As always, Richard Blanshard was on hand to take photos of the event.

PRODUCTIONS SHOT-ON-FILM KODAK CELEBRATES 25 AT CANNES 2022

SHIFT 4 ACQUIRES THE NEW LEITZ PRIMES

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K rental company, Shift 4, has acquired the latest Leitz Prime lenses, and at press time was the only UK rental house to be stocking them. There are 12 focal lengths available, ranging from 18mm to 180mm.

Seamus McGarvey BSC ISC ASC used the Leitz Primes during the production of Cyrano (2021), the film for which he nominated at the BSC Awards for Best Cinematography in a Theatrical Feature. Balazs Bolygo BSC HSC used them on the Netflix series Anatomy Of A

Scandal (2022) and Tony Miller BSC shot the highly anticipated Mr. Malcolm’s List (2022).

Shift 4 has just released a comprehensive lens test article (with downloadable 6K RAW files), exploring the technical and stylish capabilities of the lenses. The article explores what a highly regarded group of cinematographers, focus pullers and camera operators who joined Shift 4 for lens tests in London & Manchester thought of these lenses.

DEDOLIGHT INTRODUCES NEO COLOR

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edo Weigert Film has introduced the colour addition to its Dedolight Neo precision lighting instruments with the new Dedolight Neo DLEDN7-C light head and DTN7C+ colour driver.

Built in collaboration with the colour team at Prolycht, the Dedolight NEO Color is a seamless integration between two of the lighting industry’s leading innovators. The Neo Color is an 80w adjustable colour focussing Dedolight, with a 6:1 variable beam angle courtesy of Dedolight optics, and is powered by a red, green, blue, amber, cyan and lime Hyperlight Color Engine developed by Dr. Anqing Liu of Prolycht.

With a white light range from 2,000K to 20,000K, and the ability to vary the gamut of a white point, the Neo Color offers accurate skin tone reproduction for variable CCTs. In addition users can make full use of colour wheels and prestored effects.

The system is controlled with a simple, intuitive menu via OLED display, DMX, Lumenradio CRMX or Bluetooth and the Magic Chromalink app.

12 JULY/AUGUST 2022 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

K

odak Motion Picture and Entertainment celebrated 25 productions that were shot on celluloid film at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.

Four on-film titles competed in the Un Certain Regard section, with 11 of the 23 titles selected for Directors’ Fortnight also captured on film. As testimony to the next generation of filmmakers’ commitment to analogue capture, four of the shot-on-film titles premiering at the festival this year were helmed by first time feature directors.

2022 has been a strong year for productions shot-on-film, with Oscar recognition Kodakoriginated titles including Don’t Look Up, Licorice Pizza, West Side Story, The Worst Person In The World, Spencer and 007 No Time To Die. More recently, the IMAX and 65mm film originated Nope, directed by Jordan Peele is a hotly-anticipated amongst cinemagoers.

“On behalf of the entire team at Kodak, we congratulate the motion picture artists whose exceptional work was selected to screen and compete at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival,” said Steve Bellamy, President of Kodak Motion Picture and Entertainment.

“Film capture continues to grow exponentially across the feature film, TV, music and commercial segments, as evidenced by the strong showing of onfilm titles across the Cannes festival this year.

“Kodak would like to extend a huge “thank you” to the artists who evangelise and fight for the

medium. There’s simply nothing as magical as the photochemical image and we are honoured to help these auteurs realise their artistic visions on film.

The films shot on Kodak film and as part of the Official Selection at the Cannes Film Festival 2022 between 17 – 28 May were: Official Selection – Un Certain Regard: Corsage – Marie Kreutzer (35mm) Godland – Hlynur Pálmason (35mm) Sick Of Myself – Kristoffer Borgli (35mm) Harka – Lotfy Nathan (35mm) first feature Out Of Competition: Mascarade – Nicolas Bedos (35mm) Premieres: Don Juan – Serge Bozon (35mm) Le Pupille (The Pupils) – Alice Rohrwacher (16mm/35mm) Cannes Court Métrage: Same Old – Lloyd Lee Choi (16mm) Cherries – Vytautas Katkus (16mm Ektachrome) Directors’ Fortnight – Feature Films: L’Envol (Scarlet) – Pietro Marcello (35mm) Les Années Super 8 (The Super 8 Years) – Annie Ernaux & David Ernaux-Briot (S8) first feature

L es Cinq Diables (The Five Devils) – Léa Mysius (35mm) Enys Men – Mark Jenkin (16mm) Falcon Lake – Charlotte Le Bon (16mm) first feature Funny Pages – Owen Kline (16mm) first feature God’s Creatures – Anna Rose Holmer & Saela Davis (35mm) Un Beau Matin (One Fine Morning) – Mia Hansen-Løve (35mm) Le Parfum Vert (The Green Perfume) – Nicolas Pariser (35mm) Directors’ Fortnight – ­ Short Films: Maria Schneider, 1983 – Elisabeth Subrin (16mm) Jitterbug – Ayo Akingbade (16mm) Critics Week - Feature Films: Aftersun – Charlotte Wells (35mm) When You Finish Saving The World – Jesse Eisenberg (16mm) Critics Week – Short Films Hideous – Yann Gonzalez (35mm) ACID - Feature Films Yamabuki – Juichiro Yamasaki (16mm) Magdala – Damien Manivel (16mm)

CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD JULY/AUGUST 2022 13

PRODUCTION & POST NEWS

COLORFRONT EXPRESS DAILIES 2022 SUPPORTS NEW ERA OF SET-TO-POST WORKFLOWS

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olorfront has released Colorfront Express Dailies 2022. Shipping now, Express Dailies 2022 runs on the new Mac Studio M1 Ultra workstation, and features support for the latest digital cinematography camera formats, such as ARRI Alexa 35 4.6K, with its ARRI Reveal colour science, ARRI Textures and 17-stops of dynamic range, plus Red V-Raptor 8K VV, Sony Venice 2 8.6K and Blackmagic Design 12K RAW. Significantly, Colorfront has upgraded the colour management capabilities of Express Dailies 2022 to embrace a new era of workflow operations, and deliver versatile option to help users streamline end-to-end, colour-accurate workflows.

Express Dailies 2022 delivers full support for ACES 1.3, the latest Academy Color Encoding System, including ACES Metadata File (AMF), which is designed for greater flexibility when implementing ACES viewing pipelines.

Bruno Munger, Colorfront’s director of business development notes: “ACES AMF takes set-topost workflow to another level by removing the guess-work of applying colour pipeline and colour decisions across multiple applications on multiple shots from different cameras. Having ACES AMF within Express Dailies 2022 gives users a supreme way to manage precise colour communication between on-set and dailies, through to editorial, VFX and post-production mastering, and extends the capabilities of Express Dailies 2022 to enable new and highly-efficient workflows.”

ARRI LAUNCHES NEXT GENERATION ALEXA 35 CAMERA

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RRI recently launched the ARRI Alexa 35, a 4K Super 35 camera that, the company says, is designed to elevate digital cinematography to new heights. ARRI’s first new sensor in 12 years builds on the evolution of the Alexa family, delivering 2.5 stops more dynamic range, better low-light performance, richer colours and filmic textures.

Alexa 35 measures at 17 stops of dynamic range (exposure latitude), offering 1.5 stops more in the highlights and one stop more in the shadows than previous Alexa cameras, while retaining the naturalistic film-like highlight roll-off. Sophisticated stray-light suppression in the camera and lens mounts ensures that the full contrast range and character of each lens are captured by the sensor to provide an optimal source for HDR (High Dynamic Range) projects.

Sensitivity settings range from EI 160 to EI 6400, and an optional Enhanced Sensitivity Mode can be applied to settings between EI 2560 and EI 6400.

ARRI’s discussions with filmmakers, and review of the image pipeline, have led to significant improvements in image quality and faster workflow.

Reveal Color Science is the collective name for a suite of new image-processing steps used by Alexa 35 internally, and also available through third-party postproduction tools for ARRIRAW processing.

Reveal Color Science includes an improved debayering algorithm for cleaner compositing, a new colour engine for more accurate colour reproduction, a new wide gamut colour space for faster grading, new LogC4 encoding to contain the increased dynamic range, and new LogC4 LUTs (Look Up Tables) for improved colour fidelity. It is backwards compatible, meaning that ARRIRAW footage captured by Alexa LF and Mini LF cameras can be

THE LIGHT BRIDGE ADDS NEW DIFF 0 TO CINE REFLECTOR KITS

T

In an on-going collaboration between Colorfront and Pomfort, a unique round-tripworkflow supporting Colorfront Engine has been implemented in Pomfort’s Livegrade Studio on-set colour grading system, to enable the exchange of clip-level ACES AMF metadata and colour descriptions in ACES viewing pipelines.

Additionally, Colorfront is developing a brandnew Colorfront Engine Plug-In for Blackmagic’s Davinci Resolve colour grading/non-linear editing system. The new plug-in supports ACES AMF workflow, as well as the application of Colorfront Engine parametric looks and transforms during post-production operations, ensuring perceptually matching simultaneous SDR/HDR deliverables.

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also processed.

ARRI Textures is a unique feature allowing cinematographers to fundamentally alter the way in which the camera records images, should they wish to. Up until now, Alexa cameras have been preprogrammed with a default texture that determines the amount and character of grain in the image, and the amount of contrast at different levels of detail, perceived by the viewer as sharpness. For the first time, Alexa 35 provides the option to choose from a menu of ARRI Textures, much like selecting a film stock.

With its Super 35 4:3 native 4K sensor, Alexa 35 can be used with a vast global inventory of modern and vintage, Anamorphic and spherical, Super 35 and large format lenses. Filmmakers wanting to shoot with ARRI cameras, whilst having to fulfil 4K mandates, now have a very broad lens choice.

he Light Bridge, makers of the Cine Reflect Lighting System (CRLS) has added to its line-up with the new Diff 0, now part of the company’s C-Drive+ and C-Move+ Kits.

Lightbridge’s reflectors utilise a precision aluminiumcoated, smoothly-polished, wrinkle-free surface that reflects up to 97% of the light hitting them, with 100% colour rendering. Now there are five cine reflectors in every size, each offering various levels of reflectivity, ranging from the minimum, Diff 0 to the maximum diffusion Diff 4.

The new Diff 0 offers all the handling and surface benefits of the other cine reflectors, but is formulated and engineered to a mirror surface. A ‘real mirror’ replacement, Diff 0 offers the benefits of being lighter weight and shatter-free, in addition to outputting greater reflectivity as there is no light

loss due to through-the-glass transmission. Designed to provide optimum control, CRLS tools act as key lights, capable of aiming diffused light with precision accuracy.

THE TERMINAL LIST

ERIKA ADDIS ACS•LETTER FROM AUSTRALIA

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WALKING THE TALK I

n her new role as the national president of the Australian Cinematographers Society (ACS), Erika Addis ACS aims to walk-the-talk on diversity and inclusion. (See her IF Magazine #192 January 2020 article below charting the work being done to bring about change in the camera workforce and screen industry).

“The ACS started-up in 1958 with the aim of advance the art of cinematography and support Australian cinematographers. The ACS has a unique collegiate structure, which means that the eight state and territory branches we now have are run by, and for, their local members, and put on events including everything from screenings to gear demonstrations to state and territory awards.

Membership is open to everyone, as long as a person applying to join can demonstrate their credentials and experience in cinematography. We also have camera assistants, colourists, gaffers and other colleagues who are members. The egalitarian structure of the ACS is unlike other major cine societies around the world, where entry is strictly by invitation-only. This openness is built into the ACS constitution, consciously chosen by the founding cinematographers.

At the awards level, the ACS recognises cinematography in many areas – not only the work on features and TV series, but also in news, current affairs, documentary, specialist wildlife work, second unit cinematography, and TV station breaks and promos. Again, this broad recognition is by design, acknowledging the artistry and skill in many areas that may be regarded as humble and less glamorous by the industry at large.

Over the last decade, with events such as the #MeToo campaign and #OscarsSoWhite clearly impacting the screen industry here and globally, there has been a change of atmosphere; a shift happening in the industry and in the ACS. In 2012, I was a founding member and chair of the ACS Women’s Advisory Panel (WAP), which we formed to ensure that women’s voices would be heard. That panel reported up to the ACS national executive and saw the participation of

women in the ACS clearly grow. The WAP then evolved to become the Diversity, Inclusion & Reconciliation Committee (DIRC) in 2021. The remit for the DIRC is to further-expand the focus of the ACS to reach out to minorities who have experienced exclusion or discrimination – including First Nations, people of colour, disabled, LGBTQI+ identifying and others.

It is an historic change to now have a female national president of the ACS and also female branch presidents; in NSW, Carolyn Constantine ACS and in ACT, Tamara Penniket. The ACS is walking-the-talk in what is still definitely a male-dominated area. The numbers of women accredited in the ACS also chart a clear change. In the first 55 years of the society, only six women achieved accreditation, and in the last seven years 12 have. And, in 2022, our very own Ari Wegner ACS became only the second woman to ever be nominated for an Oscar for cinematography in the 99 years of the Academy Awards, and the first woman to win the BSC Best Cinematography Features for her work on The Power Of The Dog.

The egalitarian structure of the ACS is unlike other major cine societies around the world The soon-to-be-released, ‘A Wider Lens: Australian Camera Workforce Development & Diversity’ is a world-first comprehensive report into a nation’s camera workforce. Commissioned by the ACS, the research is led by Deakin University’s Dr Amanda Coles. It is an analysis of the major factors which enable and/or constrain career pathways into cinematography.

The figures and analysis speak to widespread

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discrimination, with intersectionality between gender, race, class, age and sexual orientation, and industrywide damaging work practices. It’s clear that a film crew member who is both female and non-Caucasian, and perhaps older than average, experiences greater discrimination from the cumulative effect of the intersection of these factors.

The survey also highlights the demands that our industry places on the mental health of its workforce, with long hours and time away from family starting to be acknowledged. It’s worth remembering the closelyaverted IATSE strike in the US last year; perhaps a sign that the pandemic has given us the opportunity to reflect on our work culture, especially as the global industry has rebounded and we have never been busier.

We look forward the report’s imminent release and working with colleagues and partners across the industry to make change for the better happen so that our industry is healthier and more balanced.

In another major project, we are currently partnering with Screen Australia to deliver Credit Maker. This scheme is designed to facilitate female DPs getting their first series drama credit, whilst being mentored by an experienced supervising DP. The ACS is proud to be implementing this campaign that will make change happen, both for the individuals and the industry.

Overall, I see my role is to ensure new generations are getting access to opportunities, and we want them to come into a more inclusive industry, one that cares about people’s wellbeing, as well as artistic achievements. Making our industry more sustainable – so that people not only survive, but thrive – is key to this. With everything I’ve learnt since my early days as a clapper/loader on Storm Boy (1976, dirs. Henri Safran/Ian Goddard, DP Geoff Burton) filming on the Coorong with David Gulpilil and the pelicans, I know this will take determination and time, and I’m proud to be leading the ACS as it walks the talk.”

Erika Addis ACS ACS National President

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WHO, WHAT, WHEN & WHERE

PICTURE FRAMING

Our regular round up of who is shooting what and where LOOP TALENT: The agency welcomes cinematographer Ali Asad to its roster. Ali’s credits include the upcoming BBC1 series Marriage, starring Sean Bean and Nicola Walker, and the feature Mad To Be Normal starring David Tennant and Elisabeth Moss. Matt North is shooting the HETV series The Diplomat in Barcelona, starring Sophie Rundle. Two of Emma Dalesman’s recent projects hit the festival circuit, with Dreams Have No Titles receiving special mentions at Venice Benniale, and Ayo Akingbade’s feature Jitterbug screening in Directors Fortnight at Cannes. Nick Bennett shot M&S Fresh Market Update commercials with ITV Creative. Chris O’Driscoll has been shooting ads in Dubai and Turkey. Matt Gillan recently worked on promos for artists like Sarah Close. Bertrand Rocourt has been shooting a comedy series in Paris, plus TVCs with Academy. Martyna Knitter wrapped on a film in Sri Lanka, and is prepping an original TV series shooting in the summer. Jon Muschamp is in discussions for narrative projects.

Kyle Macfadzean is working on commercial projects in the UK and US. Tom Turley is working with Boardwalk Pictures. Aman K Sahota is attached to a feature. Paul Mackay has been working on spots in the UK and Europe.

Rik Burnell is prepping a Film4 project. Tom

Watts has been shooting commercials. Olly Wiggins has been shooting spots and highprofile music promos. James Anderson ACO is working on The F**k It Bucket for Left Bank Pictures on A-Camera/Steadicam. Michael Eshun-Mensah has joined Black Ops for BBC1 as B-camera/Steadicam. Gary Kent is working Steadicam on the feature Breaking Point. Jack Smith and Sebastien Joly ACO have been operating and doing Steadicam on commercials – Jack on projects for Vogue, Sebastien on a Nike campaign, plus a short called Essex Girls.

INDEPENDENT TALENT: Chas Bain has graded A Town Called Malice, directed by Jamie Donoghue. Caroline Bridges is filming on The Great S3, blocks 2 & 4. Jordan Buck is shooting with directors Melody Maker and David Mellor. Miguel Carmenes lit promos for Robin Knightz, S-X ft KSI, New Hope Club, and a spot for Valspar with director Charlie Coombes.

Chris Clarke shot in Venice at La Biennale with the Chanel team, introducing the inaugural Next Prize winning artists. Oliver Curtis BSC is on Debutante, directed by Susannah White. Anthony Dod Mantle DFF BSC ASC is on recce’s in South America for a special future project. Adam Etherington BSC is shooting Project IV block 2, based on the graphic novel Bodies by Simon Spencer, directed by Haolu Wang. Kit Fraser is shooting Kaos with Georgi Banks-Davies. Sam Goldie is in Dublin shooting the comedy drama, Sisters, with director Declan Lowney. Catherine Goldschmidt is on block 2 of The Ballad Of Renegade Nell with Amanda Brotchie. Stuart Howell is prepping A Small Light with Susanna Fogel. Suzie Lavelle BSC is lighting The End We Start From, based on Megan Hunter’s novel,

Images: (from top) Jallo Faber (centre), with director Owen Trevor (l) and 1st AD Sascha Marden (r) in Portugal on a booking.com ad; DP Matt North lensing on The Diplomat; DP Martyna Knitter on-location in Sri Lanka; DP Kyle Macfadzean working on a Nike spot; and Baz Irvine BSC ISC on the set of Invasion.

directed by Mahalia Belo. Seamus McGarvey BSC ASC is lensing Angelina Jolie’s Without Blood.

Bani Mendy is enjoying the great reviews of Pru, which landed on BBC iPlayer, and is on recce’s for Galwad, a story set 30 years in the future destined for TV, digital and live events platforms in three Welsh locations, Blaenau Ffestiniog, Merthyr Tydfil and Swansea. Andreas Neo is shooting Motive, a feature directed by Anu Menon, developed with BFI. Stephan Pehrsson BSC has finished Red Book with Toby Haynes. James Rhodes is prepping the feature Femme, developed from the award-winning short of the same name, directed by Ng Choon Ping and Sam Freeman. George Richmond BSC is prepping Pain Hustlers with David Yates. Alan Stewart BSC is shooting Our Man From Jersey with Julian Farino. Carl Sundberg is prepping on Halo 2. Mark Waters is shooting All Creatures Great And Small: Xmas Special, produced by Richard Burrell. Erik Wilson BSC is shooting Michael Gracey’s Better Man. Maja Zamojda BSC is shooting My Lady Jane block 1, based on a book written by Brodi Ashton, Gemma Burgess, Cynthia Hand and Jodi Meadows.

WORLDWIDE PRODUCTION AGENCY: Ruairi O’Brien ISC BSC has begun principal photography pick-ups on The Power for Amazon in Vancouver. Catherine Derry continues shooting on The Great S3 for Starz. Jamie Cairney continues lighting Gossip Girl S2 for HBO. Mattias Nyberg, BSC is lensing the four-part series

Six Four with director Ben A. Williams via House Productions/ITV. Stefan Yap has wrapped on Sky Original’s feature Breaking Point, with directors Max Giwa and Dania Pasquini. Baz Irvine ISC BSC continues on Invasion block 2 for Apple TV+ with director Brad Anderson in South Africa. Ed Moore BSC is shooting Hijack for Apple TV+ with director Jim Field Smith. PJ Dillon ISC ASC and Richard 20 JULY/AUGUST 2022 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

WHO, WHAT, WHEN & WHERE Donnelly continue on Netflix’s Straight Shooter.

Tony Slater Ling BSC is lighting The Full Monty series for Disney+ with director Andrew Chaplin, shooting in Manchester and Sheffield. Arthur Mulhern is lensing BBC’s Better, with director Jonathan Brough for Sister Pictures. Anna Patarakina FSF has is shooting the feature The Tutor in Hamburg with director Alice Troughton, produced by Bleecker Street. Manoel Ferreira SASC continues principal photography on The ExWife for Paramount+, in Budapest with director Brian O’Malley. Joel Devlin is on Project IV for Netflix with director Marco Kreuzpaintner. Vanessa Whyte is filming on Ted Lasso S3 for AppleTV+ with director Matt Lipsey. Andy Hollis is working on Romantic Getaway for Sky Comedy with director Shaun Wilson. Kaname Onoyama has started principal photography in Jamaica on Get Millie Black for C4/HBO with director Annetta Lauffer.

Jamie D. Ramsay SASC is in prep on Strangers for BluePrint Pictures/Film4, with director Andrew Haigh. Jaime Ackroyd is shooting Consent for C4 with director Nadira Amrani. Joel Honeywell is prepping Grime Kids for BBC with director Abdou Cisse. Adam Singodia lit a promo for Diablo with Sony Music and directors Laurence Warder & Ricky Allen. Thomas Hole shot spots for Guinness with director Harry Cauty via Kode Media, plus spots for EA with Sugar Free and Adidas with Rogue and director Charlie Watts. Matthew Emvin Taylor shot for Merman on a Doritos ad with director Guy Manwaring, plus a Maltesers ad with Mindseye director Sebastian Theil. Benjamin Todd was in Madrid with directing duo Julien & Quentin at Pulse for a Madri Beer spot. Nathalie Pitters shot for director Jessie Ayles on an ad for Peloton via Whisper. Dan Holland shot spots for Global Chicken with FSCS and director Katie Bell, and Ryvita with director Paul Butterworth and Dark Energy. Jake Gabbay wrapped with RSA director Toby Dye on a Renault ad. Matthew Fox lit a spot in Barcelona for O2 with Rogue director Alex Boutell. Thomas Revington shot 2nd Unit on a spot via Academy with Sasha Rainbow. Carl Burke shot PensionBee’s ad with Bravespark and Dom O’Riordan, and worked with ITV and director Mike Baldwin on a Love Island ad.

WIZZO & CO: Nicola Daley ACS is shooting the latest season of The Handmaid’s Tale. Chas Appeti has graded Amazon Original’s Jungle, directed by Junior Okoli. Antonio Paladino is shooting the feature Dance First alongside director James Marsh.

Luke Bryant is on the final block of Disney’s The Full Monty, directed by Catherine Morshead.

Steven Ferguson is prepping block 1 of Fifteen Love alongside director Eva Riley. Charlie Goodger has wrapped Max Myers’ episodes of Silent Witness. Adam Gillham is prepping an embargoed feature. Ryan Kernaghan has wrapped on The Hunt for Raoul Moat, directed

by Gareth Bryn. Matthias Pilz shot the feature Excursion, directed by Una Gunjak. Aaron Reid is prepping the opening block of Netflix’s Supacell, directed by Rapman. Oli Russell is shooting block 1 of Disney’s The Ballad Of Renegade Nell, directed

by Ben Taylor. Nick Dance BSC is shooting Dr Who alongside director Tom Kinglsey. Molly Manning Walker has graded Charlotte Regan’s Scrapper. Jan Richter-Friis DFF is prepping Fear The Walking Dead S7. Tim Sidell is shooting Paramount’s Chemistry Of Death, directed by Richard Clark. Sverre Sordal FNF has graded Malou Reymann’s Defekt. Murren Tullett is prepping an embargoed feature. Susanne Salavati graded the final episodes of Flatshare. Christophe Nuyens SBC is prepping an embargoed drama.

WHO, WHAT, WHEN & WHERE Opposite: (from top) Andy Hollis and the crew on Romantic Getaway; A-cam/Steadicam operator Peter Robertson ACO (r) shooting Apartment 7A, with DP Arnau Valls-Colomer (l) and 1st AC Alan Hall; and A-cam/Steadicam operator Dan Nightingale on Russell T Davis’ Nolly; This page: Mary Farbrother shooting the sensational short To Have And To Hold; and David Mackie with director Chris Foggin on a recce.

Patrick Meller has wrapped on I Hate Suzie S2.

Ben Magahy shot days on The Hunt for Raoul Moat. Hamish Anderson is shooting the feature Black Dog, directed by George Jaques. Gary Shaw has graded the opening block of His Dark Materials S3. Fede Alfonzo shot with Noah Harris, Will Bex with Scott Lyon and Joe Douglas with Otis Dominique. Carmen Pellon Brussosa lit for Modesta Dziautaite, and Franklin Dow with Tim Brown. Theo Garland lensed with Jake Dypka and Arran Green with Charlotte Regan. Karl Oskarsson IKS framed with Sara Mirandi, and David Procter with Max Fisher.

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

Junior Agyeman ACO filmed on the pilot of Sky Studios’ Both Sides Now for DP Nick Martin.

Simon Baker ACO shot on The Crown S5, directed by Benjamin Carron, for Left Bank Pictures/ Netflix, and did dailies on Apple TV+’s Napoleon, directed by Ridley Scott, with DP Dariusz Wolski ASC. Michael Carstensen ACO worked on Red Gun, the prequel to Game Of Thrones, with DP Fabian Wagner BSC, before switching to The Witcher – ‘Everyone’s Enemy’, for Netflix, with DP Scott Winig, at Longcross Studios. Matt Fisher ACO is shooting in Donegal on In The Land Of Saints And Sinners, starring Liam Neeson and Ciaran Hinds, with DP Tom Stern ASC AFC and director Robert Lorenz. Rob Hart ACO is filming in Bristol on Rain Dogs with DPs Carlos Catalan and Wojciech Szepel, and directors Richard Laxton and Jenifer Perrott. Tony Jackson ACO is shooting dailies on the Apple TV+ series Wool with DP Hagen Bogdanski, directed by Morten Tyldum, starring Rebecca Ferguson, and on The Kitchen a Netflix.

Feature. Tony Kay ACO is on Steadicam and Trinity on Invasion – Kanji S2, an Apple TV+ fantasy series with DP Baz Irvine ISC BSC and director Brad Anderson, shooting in London. James Layton ACO is framing on Wool for DP Hagen Bogdanski.

Nic Milner ACO is filming on The Continental, directed by Albert Hughes, starring Mel Gibson,

22 JULY/AUGUST 2022 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

Peter Greene and Colin Woodell, for Lionsgate Television. Dan Nightingale ACO recently finished shooting in Bristol on Rain Dogs with DP Carlos Catalan, and is now in pre-production with DP Sam Care on Nolly, a Quay Street Productions/ ITV Studios mini-series starring Helena Bonham Carter, directed by Pater Hoar. Peter Robertson

Associate BSC ACO is shooting on Apartment 7A with DP Arnau Valls Colomer, for Paramount Pictures, directed by Natalie Erica James. Joe Russell ACO is prepping the Netflix series The Diplomat with DP Julian Court BSC. Sean Savage Associate BSC ACO SOC is filming on Netflix’s sci-fi blockbuster Straight Shooter, with DPs Jonathan Freeman ASC and PJ Dillon ISC ASC. Fabrizio Sciarra SOC Associate BSC GBCT ACO has finished on Wednesday, a live-action version of The Addams Family, directed by Tim Burton, and is shooting dailies on Anansi Boys, the Neil Gaiman TV mini-series for Amazon with DP’s Neville Kidd and John Lee. Peter Wignall is shooting on The Interpreter in Spain for director Guy Ritchie and DP Ed Wild BSC, starring Jake Gyllenhaal. Tom Wilkinson ACO shot additional photography on the TV series Brussels for DP Peter Levy and director Stephen Hopkins.

Of the agency’s DPs… Diego Rodriguez is the cinematographer on Save Our Squad for Twenty Twenty Television/Disney+, following David Beckham as he returns to the East London football pitches where he played as a child.

ECHO ARTISTS: Stuart Bentley BSC is shooting an episode of Black Mirror S6 with director John Crowley.

Nadim Carlsen DFF has wrapped on HBO/ Sony’s series The Last Of Us, directed by Ali Abassi.

Carlos Catalan shot episodes of Rain Dogs for HBO/BBC, with director Richard Laxton. Federico Cesca ASK is shooting the next season of Cowboy Films/Netflix’s Top Boy with director Myriam Raja.

Rachel Clark is prepping Lucy Cohen’s feature Knockers for BFI/BBC Film. Andrew Commis ACS has wrapped on Robert Connolly’s feature Force Of Nature for Made Up Stories and prepping

for Paramount+’s Halo S2. Nick Cooke is shooting Netflix’s One Day with director Molly Manners.

Ruben Woodin Dechamps is lighting Jerry Rothwell’s docu-series Whatnot for Apple TV+.

Edgar Dubrovskiy shot the Amazon/ITN documentary The Disappearance Of Patricia Hall, directed by Sam Hobkinson. David Gallego ADFC has wrapped the Netflix feature Rebel Ridge with director Jeremy Saulnier. Lachlan Milne NZCS ACS ASC is shooting Apple TV+ series Lady In The Lake, directed by Alma Har’el. Niels Thastum DFF has started on Jonas Alexander Arnby’s series Veronica. Maria von Hausswolff is shooting playwright Annie Baker’s debut feature, Janet Planet, with BBC Film. Sean Price Williams is directing/shooting his own feature. Nicolas Canniccioni, David Chizallet AFC, Bonnie Elliott ACS, Charlie Herranz, Jo Jo Lam, MacGregor, Anders Malmberg, Lorena Pagès, Michael Paleodimos, Will Pugh, Korsshan Schlauer, Noël Schoolderman, Bartosz Swiniarski, Chloë Thomson BSC; Evelin van Rei and Felix Wiedemann BSC have all been on commercials.

LUX ARTISTS: Darius Khondji AFC ASC is prepping for Bong Joon Ho’s new feature. Ben Fordesman is filming Love Lies Bleeding, directed by Rose Glass. Rina Yang is in prep for Flint, Michigan with director Rachel Morrison ASC. Nicolas Bolduc CSC has finished shooting Martin Bourboulon’s film Les Trois Mousquetaires. Justin Brown lensed a commercial with director Luca Guadagnino for Fendi. Jody Lee Lipes ASC is shooting Earth Mama with director Savanah Leaf. John Lynch ISC is filming Truelove, a new TV series by writers Charlie Covell and Iain Weatherby. Benjamin Kracun BSC is filming Coralie Fargaet’s film The Substance. Nicolai

Niermann shot a Montblanc ad with Jonas Lindstroem and a Zalando spot with Albert Moya.

Stuart Winecoff lit a Versace ad with Gordon Von Steiner. Ula Pontikos BSC is shooting the TV series Three Women. Anna Franquesa Solano is filming Expatriates with director Lulu Wang. Jess Hall BSC ASC lit a B&Q spot with Oscar Hudson.

Piers McGrail ISC is filming the series Damage, with directors Glenn Leyburn and Lisa Barros D’sa.

Tasha Back is shooting In Camera for Naqqash Khalid. Rob Hardy BSC ASC is lighting Civil War, with director Alex Garland. Jonathan Ricquebourg AFC is filming Pot-Au-Feu De Dodin Bouffant with director Tran Ahn Hung. Bradford Young ASC framed a BA commercial with Asif Kapadia. Daniel Landin BSC lensed a Cadbury’s spot with Steve Rogers. Julien Poupard AFC is shooting Second Tour, with director Albert Dupontel.

Pat Aldinger lit an NDA perfume TVC with Salomon Lightelm. Mattias Rudh FSF is shooting Borderland, with directors Charles and Thomas Guard. Nanu Segal BSC is filming Hoard, with director Luna Carmoon. Crystel Fournier AFC is lensing Drift, a feature directed by Anthony Chen.

Guillermo Garza framed a VW ad with AG Rojas. Michael McDonough BSC ASC is filming the Apple TV series The Last Thing He Told Me. Arnaud Potier AFC lensed a Socios.com spot with We Are From LA, and a Schweppes ad with Frederik Bond. Adam Newport Berra is shooting P Island, with director Zoë Kravitz. Maceo Bishop is shooting the TV series The Curse directed

by Nathan Fielder. Tom Townend lensed a Stella Artois TVC with Sam Pilling.

SARA PUTT ASSOCIATES: Emily Almond Barr is prepping The Lovers in Belfast for Drama Republic. Mary Farbrother has graded the short To Have And To Hold, the directorial debut for Jess Moore. Sean Francis lit African Queens for Nutopia in Morocco.

David Mackie is working with director Chris Foggin on the film Walk Out To Winter. Giulio Biccari is shooting on The Power in Canada.

George Amos has started on Warrior S3 as 2nd unit DP. Andrei Austin ACO has wrapped as A-camera/ Steadicam on the hotly-tipped Anansi Boys. Andrew Bainbridge ACO did dailies on Ted Lasso S3. Jon Beacham ACO continues on A Town Called Malice in Tenerife. Danny Bishop ACO did Steadicam dailies on the feature Matilda. Ed Clark ACO is A-camera/Steadicam on Red Book for Broke & Bones. James Frater ACO SOC is shooting in South Africa on the new series of Invasion. Ilana Garrard ACO was in Spain working on The Gold with DP Stuart Bentley. Zoe Goodwin-Stuart ACO continues as B-camera on the latest series of The Witcher for Netflix. James Leig ACO was in Cornwall operating on the latest Doc Martin series. Will Lyte ACO is back in the UK after filming Greatest Days in Athens, and is confirmed on Project IV. Vince McGahon ACO did dailies on Augustus and is prepping for the new series of Slow Horses.

Julian Morson ACO has wrapped on Kraven The Hunter. Aga Szeliga ACO is B-camera on the new series of Loki. Tom Walden ACO has started on The Ballad Of Renegade Nell. Rick Woollard ACO worked across several ads for Academy, Holmes Production and Arts & Sciences.

CASAROTTO RAMSAY & ASSOCIATES: Laura Bellingham lit an Issey Miyake campaign before prepping on Apple TV’s adaptation of Edith Wharton’s The Buccaneers.

Greg Duffield is prepping for the ITV series Maternal, directed by Amanda Blue. Matt Gray has wrapped on the latest series of Dr Who. Ed Hubert is shooting a Google campaign. Ebba

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WHO, WHAT, WHEN & WHERE

WHO, WHAT, WHEN & WHERE

Opposite: (clockwise) Shaka Agina considers a shot; Darran Tiernan (l) with actor Matthew Rhys on HBOs Perry Mason S2; Allison Anderson playing dodgeball with the camera; and Adric Watson filming a Jamie T music video.; This page: (from top) Deon Van Zyl in Mumbai shooting a Myntra campaign, with gaffer Bhushan Golatkar (r); Sophie Gohr on the movie Warbirds; Sam Meyer shooting a music video; DP Robbie Ryan ISC BSC (r) on Ken Loach’s The Old Oak, with 16 Films producer Rebecca O’Brian (next to him); and Ekkehart Pollack filming for Nissan.

Hult is working on an ad for H&M Autumn/Winter 2022. Kate McCullough ISC recently lensed a Guinness ad in Dublin with Molly Burdett at Spindle, who was named Best New Director at the British Arrows 2022. Tim Palmer is shooting The Blue, an original series for New Pictures, directed

by Hans Herbots. David Pimm is prepping on Fifteen Love for World Productions. Mark Wolf shot a Vodafone spot in Ireland with director James Rouse. Michael Wood is shooting Netflix’s Project Panda.

MY MANAGEMENT: The agency welcomes Shaka Agina to its roster. Shaka lensed a Nicole Chen fashion film, with director Justin Chen, and shot a short in Liverpool and Birmingham with director Aleah Scott. Sveta Aparina was in Berlin filming Zalando with Laura Vifer, then Tuborg with director Keith McCarthy in Prague. Ravenna Tran lensed on the shorts Call Your Mum, Sandra’s New Fringe and the

24 JULY/AUGUST 2022 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

LGBTQ narrative Puck. Minka Farthing-Kohl was in Philadelphia filming for Crypto with director Daps, Samsung with director Austin Peters, and lit a Michael Kors campaign in London with Matt Baron. Adric Watson lensed a music video for Joe Unknown with director Harry Barber at Dadbod Films, plus Jamie T’s music video with director Niall Trask. Allison Anderson shot a Calvin Klein TVC in New York, and lensed with director Charles Todd on Dell in Boston. Arnaud Carney has been filming in Cannes for L’Oreal with Storm Productions’ director Masha Kondakova, and lensed an AMI fashion shoot in Paris with Hugo Lopez.

Carlos Veron shot with London Ally director James Larese on an Eminem and Snoop Dog music video.

Chris Dodds shot a Chelsea FC and Trivago TVC for Black Shark Media with director James Kibby, and an on-going M&S campaign with Just so directors Zak Harney, Joseph Patrick and Tim Bunn.

Craig Dean Devine is in Vancouver shooting School Spirits for Paramount+ with director Max Winkler.

Daisy Zhou has returned to work after giving birth to a beautiful baby daughter, and worked on a Spotify spot with director Keenan MacWilliam, Vanity Fair in LA with director Carissa Gallo and Cricket Wireless with director Emily McDonald.

Darran Tiernan ISC continues filming HBO’s Perry Mason S2.

David Lanzenberg is shooting in LA with director Tate Taylor on Mrs American Pie, starring Laura Dern and Kristen Wiig. Deon van Zyl was in Johannesburg lensing for director Karien

Cherry on Brutal Fruit, and lit a music video for Biig Piig for Spindle with director Milo Blake.

Dominic Bartels lensed a TVC for Lumene via Spring Studios with director Matthias Pettersson, and an ad for Furniture Village with director Marcus Thomas. Issac Bauman is shooting on Loki S2 with directors Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead.

Todd Martin lensed for Clinique with director Sharif Hamza, and Four Seasons Hotels with Iconoclast director Akinola in New York, Miami and Madrid. Tómas Tómasson has been in Iceland filming a documentary. Todd Banhazl is lensing Winning Time: The Rise Of The Lakers Dynasty S3. Stuart Dryburgh ASC is filming

Amazon TV series Fallout with director Jonathan Nolan. Sam Meyer worked with director Tom Brown on William Hill and Curries ads. Robbie Ryan ISC BSC has wrapped on The Old Oak with director Ken Loach.

Ryan Hope is on tour with the band Gabriels. Pieter Vermeer lensed on Duracell with director Roman Coppola, and is prepping the feature Muzzle starring Aaron Eckhart, directed by John Stalberg Jr.. Petra Korner AAC has wrapped Shadow And Bone S2 for Netflix in Budapest.

Pete Konczal lensed on Summit with director Warren Fu, Hilton directed

by Stephen Fuller and shot two episodes on Apple TV+ show Servant with director Nimrod Antal. Paul O’Callaghan continues on a Sky documentary with director Garath Jonstone, and also lensed a Honda Type R ad with Sassy Films’ director Al Clark. Nicolaj Bruel DFF shot with Martin Werner for Sparkasse and Sammontana. Max Witting was in Saudi Arabia on the docu-feature Her Story with director Hannah Berry George, and lensed a music video for Dylan with Irresistible director Carla Dauden.

Lee Thomas did drone and aerials in Thailand for Meg 2, starring Jason Statham, directed by Ben Wheatley, for DP Haris Zambarloukos BSC GSC. Jon Chema has wrapped on the feature

The Present in LA with director Christian Ditter.

Jo Willems filmed for Francis Lawrence on the Hunger Games – The Ballard Of Songbirds And Snakes. Jallo Faber FSF was in Lisbon filming a Booking.com TVC for Rattling Stick with director Owen Trevor, and shot with Loveboat director Nan in France. Ian Forbes lensed on Angel’s Envy Bourbon with Nexus directors Jack Cunningham and Nicolas Menard, and did a PSA campaign in Glasgow with MTP director Martin Smith. Gaul Porat shot for New Balance in LA with directors Similar But Different, and for Meta in Mexico and NYC with director Marco Gentile. Filip Marek filmed for Oppo in Cape Town with director Jara Moravec, and Nivea Men in Barcelona.

Ekkehart Pollack lensed on Nissan with director Jan Wentz for Quad Productions, and lit a BMW ad with director Shane Griffin in Portugal.

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CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD JULY/AUGUST 2022 25

MRS HARRIS GOES TO PARIS•FELIX WIEDEMANN BSC

FELIX WIEDEMANN BSC•MRS HARRIS GOES TO PARIS

ALL DRESSED UP

By Darek Kuźma

decisions, including the one to use a combination of ARRI Alexa LF camera and Cooke Anamorphic/i 1.8x Full Frame SF lenses.

“We wanted to shoot on large format to get the resolution that would show the detail in the Dior dresses and fabrics, and use Anamorphic to subtly impose this sort of heightened fairytale quality on the story,” he explains. Add a few focal lengths to doubleup for multiple cameras we used, and it was just a perfect set to utilise the full size Alexa LF sensor.

“I have to say, my focus puller, Gergely Csepregi, did a wonderful job working with the shallow depth-of-field of this camera and lens combo. We also used glycerine diffusion filters. Gergely sprayed a water/ glycerine mix onto an optical flat filter at the strength we wanted for the scene. That was a diffusion which felt more organic and easily controllable.”

Although the Paris sequences look very, well, Parisian, they were actually shot onlocation around Budapest, including the city’s landmark Opera House, Andrássy Boulevard and Kincsem Park, as well as on sets constructed at the nearby Origo Studios.

“The architecture in Budapest is similar to Paris, so it was about finding the right places and using a bit of VFX in post production to enhance the illusion,” Wiedemann reveals.

Wiedemann started prepping in Budapest in August 2020 and wrapped the 40-day shooting period in December.

Additionally, the production spent one week filming on-location in London, and the second unit went to Paris for one day to obtain some shots of the city’s famous sites.

Mrs Harris experiences Paris with a wide-eyed delight and cinematic joie de vivre that slowly infects the overworked Dior staff and a widowed marquis who is

the real fashion shows in the House Of Dior at the time. We were to shoot with three cameras, one on a Technocrane for ‘musical’ push-ins, so the light had to work for wide shots and close-ups, and enhance the dresses,” he reveals.

“We had a row of 5K Chimeras on trusses along the length of two walls, creating one soft Tungsten light source. If we wanted it even softer, we hung sheets of muslin in front of the lamps. We could turn individual 5Ks off or dim them down to shape the light and the direction.”

Although the film is set in the 1950s, we still wanted it to feel modern “It was about finding the right tone that would give us colour separation between the dresses and the backgrounds,” reports Wiedemann.

The other set built on stage was a Dior workshop in a room with skylights overlooking the rooftops of Paris.

“Mrs Harris admires the craftsmanship of the Dior process, so Anthony wanted to flood it with light, like she is almost in the clouds. We created a light haze within the frame with 20 Spacelights above and Brutes and Dinos from below for the sky backdrop.

We also pushed 5K Chimeras and 20K Fresnels through the windows.”

Wiedemann created a similarly heavenly effect in a London scene in which Mrs Harris

D

P Felix Wiedemann BSC ensured 1950’s Paris sparkles in director Anthony Fabian’s film Mrs Harris Goes To Paris, creating a fairytale sheen for a story that’s still grounded on an ordinary woman who merely wants to be seen.

It has been over a decade since Mrs Ada Harris’s beloved husband, Eddie, perished in the maelstrom of World War II, yet she still clings to the hope that they will be reunited one day. When a chain of poignant events makes her realise the man is gone forever, Mrs Harris (Lesley Manville) – a London charwoman, who rather invisibly organises her wealthy patrons’ living spaces a few hours each week – decides to fly in the face of all precedent and get herself a fancy haute-couture Dior dress. Armed with her common sense and wit, along with her hard-earned savings and war-widow’s pension, the high-spirited housekeeper goes to Paris only to start a whimsical feel-good revolution.

Mrs Harris first came to existence in 1958’s novel by Paul Gallico and appeared on screen in a few TV productions, yet this is her first feature film.

When cinematographer Felix Wiedemann BSC first discussed the Focus Features’ project with his director in the summer of 2020, during the height of the pandemic, it became clear that Fabian wanted “a sort of realistic fairytale that uses some of the visual language of a musical to infuse Mrs Harris’s journey with a certain lightness, but without diminishing its depth.”

Thus, Jacques Demy’s vintage, romantic musical The Umbrellas Of Cherbourg (1964, dir. Jacques Demy, DP Jean Rabier) became the main reference point.

soft light.

For interiors Wiedemann and his longtime collaborator, gaffer Alex Edyvean, added Tungsten and Daylight Source 4s to the mix. “These spotlights allow you to create a beam of light to a very specific shape, with no light spill. I like to bounce them off fabrics and surfaces to enhance the light coming from existing practicals and light sources,” he explains.

“Exterior day scenes were lit with bounced reflectors and diffusion fabrics, exterior night scenes with double diffused 8x8 ‘Moonlight Soft Box’ with 9x2K Blondes inside and gelled for moonlight with ‘Half Shanklin Frost’ gel that was inspired by the romantic blue moonlight we had seen in The Umbrellas Of Cherbourg”.

Another challenge awaited with a London dog-racing sequence that was shot on a real Budapest track.

“We had a tracking vehicle that raced along with the dogs and the only CGI is the crowd replication,” he marvels. “It’s 1950’s London at night, we lit it mostly with lights attached to the existing roof structure above the seats. We rigged 15x’Yod lights’, which are double 1K Atlas, downlighting.

Within the shot we had practicals hanging for the length of the stand, with a 5K rigged for backlight at each end. The track was lit with 4 Head Mini Brutes to create the look of floodlights. We also had an M40 on a machine to light trees in deep background.”

Wiedemann is proud that he and his team achieved the look and colour in-camera, and that the DI, done with senior colourist Jateen Patel at Molinare, was mostly about enhancing Mrs Harris visual journey.

“We worked with details, like using power windows to accentuate parts of the frame and draw the eye to where we wanted the eye to be drawn. We wanted something that had sort of filmic contrast

Images: Artist Dávid Lukács, © 2021 Ada Films Ltd – Harris Squared Kft.

“We don’t have any singing or musical dancing in Mrs Harris Goes To Paris, yet you can feel it in the way the camera moves, flows and follows the characters, in how they are framed, or when Mrs Harris finds herself in a bit of a glowing light,” says Wiedemann.

“Together with Steadicam/B-camera operator Atilla Pfeffer, and key grip Atilla Szucs, we devised many ways to use dolly, crane, track and other tools to motivate the camera. For example, there’s a scene in which a crane comes from the outside, on to a dance floor inside, where an operator takes the camera on a gimbal handover and fluidly continues the shot.”

Movement was crucial to make the heroine’s

26 JULY/AUGUST 2022 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

unforgettable journey into the heart of the elite fashion world really count. See, what makes Mrs Harris stand out from the elegant models and deluxe Dior clientele is precisely her mobility – social, physical and mental. She lived her whole life meekly, working for others, and now she simply wants to be seen for who she is. The dress becomes a symbol of that, although some characters perceive it as an attempt to vulgarise the Dior brand.

“Although the film is set in the 1950s, we still wanted it to feel modern, like the fashion you can see on-screen,” says Wiedemann, “so we didn’t want to limit ourselves to a period look created with vintage lenses and filters associated with those times.”

This informed many of Wiedemann’s equipment

sympathetic to her cause.

“We wanted to differentiate these worlds in many subtle ways,” says Wiedemann.

“London scenes are mainly in browns, greens and ambers. Paris has a modern palette of clear blacks and crisp whites influencing all colours popping in-between in the costumes, props and the production design.”

One of the biggest challenges was recreating, on the studio stage at Origo, a Dior fashion show that Mrs Harris participates in, when she chooses the dress she would like to buy.

“I had lots of reference pictures from

falls in love with a couture dress of one of her patrons, setting the plot in motion.

“Again, it’s the visual language of a musical. When she sees it, it’s feels like the sunlight broke through the clouds, illuminating the dress. We had an 18K Fresnel on a machine fitted with a dimmer shutter called ‘Dark Vader’ by Licht Technik.

It allowed us to dim the light up remotely to the speed we liked.”

All-in-all, the studio sets were lit mostly with a mix of Tungsten Spacelights, Brutes and 12Ks/20Ks, and the locations with HMI 18K ARRISUNS through windows for sunlight and various other HMIs for bounced

and colour rendition akin to something that could’ve been shot on 35mm. Overall, it was a really great DI process and we did both SDR and HDR versions for the release.”

In the end, Mrs Harris Goes To Paris is a story of an ordinary woman learning – and teaching others – how to be seen without losing what one is about. A simple yet effective message that is still very valid.

And makes for a wonderful time at your local cinema.

CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD JULY/AUGUST 2022 27

WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING•POLLY MORGAN BSC ASC

POLLY MORGAN BSC ASC•WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING

NATURE GIRL

Images: Artist Michele K. Short, © 2022 CTMG, Inc. All Rights Reserved. All images are the property of Sony Pictures Entertainment.

By Ron Prince

L

ike a lot of other people, I read the novel during lockdown and it gripped me on a very personal level,” declares cinematographer Polly Morgan BSC ASC about American author Delia Owens’ bestselling 2018 mystery story Where The Crawdads Sing. “I got so exited when I heard it was being adapted into a film, and knew I just had to shoot it.”

The story follows different timelines that slowly intertwine over several decades. One depicts the life “ and adventures of a stoic but shy young girl, named Kya, as she grows-up isolated in the marshlands of North Carolina between 1952 and 1969. Others follow an investigation into the apparent murder of Chase Andrews, a local celebrity and Kya’s former love interest, in the fictional coastal town of Barkley Cove, where Kya becomes the prime suspect. She’s an easy target, having long been spurned and scorned by the locals as ‘The Marsh Girl’.

The novel became a runaway sensation, selling 12m copies, aided by lockdown ennui and the fact that it was a top pick in Reese Witherspoon’s popular Book Club selection.

The $24m, Sony Pictures movie was directed by Olivia Newman, from a novelto-screen adaptation from Lucy Alibar, with Witherspoon amongst the producers, and Daisy Edgar-Jones starring as Kya. Morgan’s work on the resulting film has

been widely-admired for the exquisite devotion and care in capturing the poetry of the locale – the brilliant sunsets, soaring herons, the snarl of marshland waterways – bringing the story, about a character who finds solace and companionship in nature, to life on the big screen.

“The original story really resonated with me,” confides says Morgan, an AFI alumna, whose recent credits include eight episodes of FX Networks series Legion (2018), Lucy In The Sky (2019), A Quiet Place II (2020) and the upcoming The Woman King (2022).

“I grew up in West Sussex in the UK, in a valley next to a river. It was the middle of nowhere, and the nearest house was miles away. I used to spend a lot of my time alone, catching tadpoles down by the riverbank, or walking through the woods. I think it really like fostered my imagination. Kya’s story is similar to my own adolescent experience, in that she’s a young woman with a special connection to nature. She’s also a young woman who goes through a lot of trauma and conquers it, fed and sustained through her different ordeals by the power of the wilderness.

“I wasn’t on the original list of contenders to shoot the film, but kept asking my agent to get me into the room for a meeting with the producers and the director. To my agent’s credit, she found Olivia’s email address, and I wrote a long missive just explaining who I was, why I loved the book so much, and why she must meet with me.

“And lo and behold, I then spent three

28 JULY/AUGUST 2022 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

hours on a Zoom call with Olivia and we found ourselves united in our mutual love for the book and the vision for the movie. I then had various meetings with the studio execs, to reassure them of my vision and capabilities to shoot nature, and, after what seemed like a very long period, they offered me the job.”

I wasn’t on the original list of contenders to shoot the film… but I knew I just had to shoot it Morgan says she made a visual pitch-deck, broken down into how colours would help to chart Kaya’s experience through time. “The film was always going to be soft, pretty and naturalistic, with pastel colours, and lots of majestic camera moves, inspired by the lyrical writing,” she notes.

Other visual references – featuring bountiful, soft, beautiful lighting and flares, that variously felt intimate, feminine and leant into the beauty of nature – included Days Of Heaven (1978, dir. Terrence Malick, DPs Néstor Almendros ASC & Haskell Wexler ASC),

Bright Star (2007, dir. Jane Campion, DP Greig Fraser ACS ASC) and Ain’t Them Bodies Saints (2013, dir.

David Lowery, DP Bradford Young ASC).

Principal photography took place over 45 days from March 30 to June 28, 2021, in New Orleans and Houma, Louisiana, in the same sweltering locations that DP Sean Bobbitt BSC had shot 12 Years A Slave (2013, dir. Steve McQueen). Morgan says Bobbitt shared inside-knowledge with her about shooting in the tropical climate, and recommended the same local key grip, Nick Leon, he had worked with.

The interiors of the jail cell and fish tackle store were shot on stages, at Second Line Stages, New Oreans, whilst the façade of the store was constructed overlooking a local bayou.

Wanting an expansive field-of-view to immerse the audience in Kya’s experience of the natural world, Morgan selected the ARRI Alexa Mini LF for the shoot,

and consulted with Dan Sasaki at Panavision, LA, as regards appropriate optics. Imbibing Morgan and Newman’s desires for a lyrical and romantic feeling in the image, Sasaki and his team created a prototype set of large-format spherical lenses – since named Varials – especially for the shoot, that yielded a soft, dream-like quality to the image with low contrast.

The Varials also came with the benefit, in combination with the camera, of making a lightweight package that could be used effectively on cranes, with a DJI Ronin or on a drone for sweeping camera moves. As a note of interest, the Varials were later used

by Tommy Maddox Upshaw ASC as part of his visual creation of The Man Who Fell To Earth TV series.

“Dan and the crew at Panavison did a great job in making sure the bokeh shapes, fall-off and edgedistortion of the Varial lenses had an Anamorphic feel,” says Morgan. “Each of the lenses in the set had their

own personality, and shooting large format brought tangible, dimensional depth to the image, especially as regards the portraiture. I stayed on the wider end of the spectrum, and frequently used the 28mm and 40mm. The 28mm had a dreamy quality and the 40mm worked wonderfully for close-ups with dramatic fall-off.”

During the camera testing period, Morgan worked with colourist Natasha Leonnet at Company 3 in LA, who also completed the final grade, to develop a LUT that would, “help to prettify the images still further. The contrast was very soft, and there were no really rich, deep blacks within the image.”

“Although the film is told in flashbacks across different eras – the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s – I didn’t feel it was the right choice to treat them differently to one another,” says Morgan, “and much better to let the costume, hair, make-up, props and set dressing do the time travelling.

CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD JULY/AUGUST 2022 29

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“That said, I did bring a slightly different feel to the courtroom sequences, in that they have a richer contrast, and Phedon Papamichael ACS GSC’s work on The Trial Of Chicago 7, was a gorgeous inspiration in that respect.”

Shooting large format brought tangible depth to the image, especially as regards the portraiture Whilst Morgan loves to operate, the logistics were such that she preferred to delegate the camera elsewhere, and she called-on the talents of none other

than Mitch Dubin SOC, with whom she had previously worked on Legion and Lucy In The Sky, assisted by 1st AC Bryan DeLorenzo on focus.

“Mitch is an absolute legend,” she remarks, “Thanks to him and Bryan, every frame is exquisite, and we owe so much of the film’s beauty to them.”

Along with key grip ‘extraordinaire’ Nick Leon, and dolly grip Gerald “G” Autin, Morgan’s crew also included Grayson Austin on B-camera/Steadicam.

After the production had wrapped, Jimi Whitaker ASC came in to shoot additional photography as Morgan was in South Africa working on The Woman King.

Morgan started production with gaffer Paul Olinde, but when he was taken-ill during the first and last week, Dan Riffel, her gaffer on A Quiet Place II, proved a worthy substitute. The lighting package was supplied by MBS in New Orleans.

“It’s so gorgeous to shoot in Louisiana and New Orleans, and it’s hard not to film something that looks

pretty,” says Morgan. “But we definitely had our work cut out with the weather. We scheduled production in order to miss the hurricane season, but it came early and we were constantly rained-out. On one occasion we had to shut down for three days because every single one of our sets was flooded, and all we could do was sit in our cars, watch the lightning and witness our locations become mud pits.

“Despite the downpours, we worked hard on the lighting and stuck to our original plan to keep things looking sunny and develop veiling flares from the backlight, and I think that comes through in the final film.”

As for the logistical challenges, Morgan says, “I’d never done anything like this film before, and what was exciting to me was how we were going pull off such things as the water work, amid the heat, all sort of bugs and lots of alligators.

“On-screen you see a young woman alone in her tiny wooden boat, but what you don’t see is the armada we needed to make these shots – two camera barges with cranes, a DIT support boat, a hair and make-up boat, a video village boat, a craft services vessel that would come over to deliver food and drinks. There was even a Porta-Potty boat for people to relieve themselves. It was unbearably-hot and sweltering on the water, and Nick Leon proved adept in building solid overheads on the different vessels to provide us with shade.”

The focus, during the final DI grade, was chiefly on making sure the original naturalistic visual intent was preserved through the multitude of HDR and SDR deliverables.

“My highlights on the HDR pass only sat at 150nits, which was perfect for coherence between the HDR

30 JULY/AUGUST 2022 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

and SDR passes,” says Morgan, “and Natasha did a great job in seeing that the look we envisioned at the start was carried all the way through.

“We would have loved to have filmed this movie on celluloid, but that wasn’t on the cards. During the DI, Olivia and

I fought tooth and nail with Sony, successfully so, to put a bit of film grain on the image in the DI, just to break up the clean-look of digital image and to make things more cinematic.

“Throughout the whole production, we kept in our minds some words from the original book… ‘Marsh is not swamp. Marsh is a space of light where grass grows in water and water flows into the sky,’… and I am very happy with how things turned out.”

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SEX, LIES & HOTELS

Images: Photos by Nick Wall.

By Darek Kuźma

I

n Good Luck To You, Leo Grande, directed by Sophie Hyde, cinematographer and editor Bryan Mason rose to the challenge of making a film about two people talking in a room pleasingly cinematic.

Her name is Nancy (Emma Thompson), a retired religious education teacher and throughout her life she had sex – unsatisfying, to say the least – with just one man: her now deceased husband.

His name is Leo (Daryl McCormack), he is a twogenerations younger Irish sex worker whose physical attributes – slim body, handsome face, piercing eyes – are only foreplay to his real talent: he becomes whoever, or whatever, the person he is hired by desires.

The beginning of the film is fairly obvious, Leo’s task is to seduce the anxious Nancy, soothe the guiltridden Catholic in her, show an insecure woman that despite what some people claim, sex can be – and should be – a pleasure-inducing exercise for the body and the mind. Yet by the end of the film’s running time nothing is simple.

This is because Good Luck To You, Leo Grande is not another uplifting dramedy about middle-aged fulfilment – although it has elements of that – but a psychologically-nuanced film about the lies we tell, the guises we create and the performances we master our whole lives to hide our true selves so as not to get hurt.

The sex aspect is there, and it is not treated perfunctorily, but it serves as a starting point to a far more stimulating and cerebral discussion. And because the film is divided into four consecutive meetings set over a month, and we only leave the hotel room for a couple of scenes, there is a lot of space for absorbing exchanges, bittersweet confessions and situational comedy relief.

Bryan Mason, who shot director Sophie Hyde’s two previous features 52 Tuesdays (2013) and Animals (2018), notes that making Nancy and Leo’s trysts cinematic was a challenge.

“We spent our prep devising how to frame, light and move the camera, so that each assignation

The cinematographer in me often plays a backseat to me the editor evolved the story, engaged the audience and mirrored what was happening for our characters,” recalls Mason.

“In general, the shots are mostly static during the first meeting as they get to know each other – Nancy is nervous and Leo is trying to figure out what she needs. The second meeting, as they get more comfortable with each other, there’s a little more camera movement, we employed a Steadicam and the occasional dolly move, and then in the third meeting, as their barriers come down more, we move into the handheld territory.”

As obvious as it sounds – just a tweak here and there for the sake of visual versatility – Mason argues that it was difficult to maintain the discipline, especially as Good Luck To You, Leo Grande was shot mostly chronologically over 18 shooting days in March and April 2021.

“The only thing we shot out of order was the opening where Leo prepares himself in a café before their first meeting as we had to wait until we could get into that location.

The least amount of pages we shot in a day was six and sometimes it was up to 10 or 11,” he states. “The first meeting is 33-minutes of screen time, and it took us five days to shoot.

I found it challenging to maintain the level of commitment to the concept of not really moving the camera whilst establishing the room in a way it feels fresh and exciting. In the end, I think we ended-up with a move or two in the first meeting.”

The film was shot in a studio in Norwich, a couple of hours drive from London, and Mason

worked with ARRI Rental to choose the camera and lens package for the film.

“We were looking for a way to be intimate with the characters, to feel like we’re part of their world. I shot some tests and took them back to Sophie, and there was something about the combination of ARRI Alexa 65 and ARRI Prime DNA lenses that felt like a good fit for this film,” he says.

“The size of ARRI 65’s sensor means that if you put, say, an 80mm lens on, its field-of-view is equivalent to about a 40mm lens in Super 35mm terms. It meant we could be close to the performers and still wide with no real distortion. And it gave us a really beautiful sense of the world of the room.”

As the characters grow comfortable with one another and begin to talk about a variety of things besides sexual fantasies or whether Leo will be able to drive Nancy to having her first orgasm, they become increasingly exposed while Mason’s attentive, nonvoyeuristic camera makes all the little breakthroughs between them feel truly earned.

However, a different kind of tension is building up.

“Interestingly, we all felt it. Shooting chronologically meant a big moment at the end of the film was the last thing we filmed. Often times on a set, as you’re getting towards the end the pressure relaxes, people wind down. In our case it was quite different, the tension was building up all the way to the very last shot.”

Somewhat helpful was the fact that Mason was also the film’s editor. “With Sophie we work together all the way from prep through shooting and post to delivery.

The good part is, you shoot thinking about what you’ll need in the edit. The bad part is sometimes you shoot a scene in a really specific way that seems perfect for the film and then you go into the edit suite and things change,” he laughs.

“It’s a constant internal dialogue, but I have to say the cinematographer in me often plays a backseat to me the editor. At the end of the day, you’re trying to make the best film possible, so whatever you went through on-set to get a shot, or however much you may like a particular shot, if it doesn’t serve the film, we won’t use it.

“For example, the opening of the film with Leo was designed as one long Steadicam shot and getting all the beats right on the day was tough. But as the edit came together we decided to intercut it with Nancy walking around nervously in the hotel. It just worked better for the story.”

Another challenge was lighting the hotel room in a way that followed the evolution of Nancy and Leo’s tricky relationship and also imperceptibly brought some necessary visual freshness to their subsequent meetings.

“Because Good Luck To You, Leo Grande is dialogue-heavy, the performers requested to run each shooting day as a block rather than break it up.

Consequently, we had to design our lighting and shots in a way that would hold for up to ten minutes,” reminisces Mason.

“Sophie and I were very much trying to keep the film feeling natural and real, but it was hard to anticipate how the blocking of each of the shooting days would evolve before then figuring out ways to keep the shots alive. It kept us on our toes, that’s for sure.”

Part of the solution laid in the production design.

“Sophie wanted to have the big hotel windows in as many of the shots as possible, so a lot of staging and blocking was about how to include them. We had a Rosco SoftDrop created for the film. On the front it had a daytime version of the view we wanted for the room and a night time version of the same view on the back. You can light it in various ways to get specific times of day,” he explains.

“We lit the SoftDrop with ARRI SkyPanels from the

front and had a series of smaller Tungsten tray lights along the back. Our lighting package was small, we used a combination of our 2x 5Ks, 2x ARRI M18s, 2x CreamSource Vortex8’s and a set of LightBridge C-100 Cine Reflectors coming in through the windows.”

“To extend the daylight into the room, we rigged a series of LiteGear LiteMats around the top of the set, often with unbleached muslin on them. We also made a big Softbox with 8 Astera Titan Tubes inside and employed a series of NYX bulbs within the set’s practicals to really give us control over the room’s lighting.”

Taking the short shooting period and long takes into account, the idea was to light the entire room to give the performers the space to express their characters without needing to light each shot from scratch.

“I’d say the first meeting between Nancy and Leo was the most challenging, as it starts in the afternoon and ends at night, and we shot it during the first five days of the schedule, but this challenge also helped our small

crew to develop the right dynamic.”

Mason shot the film with a show-LUT he developed in his native Australia with his long-term colourist Marty Pepper. He did the DI remotely, due to Covid, with Gareth Bishop at London-based Dirty Looks.

“We had five days to grade the film, so it was about balancing the look that we had shot for rather than reimagining. It was tricky, grading remotely with the time difference between South Australia and London, but hopefully the look of the film works and we manage to keep the audience immersed in the world of our characters,” he concludes.

In the end, Nancy’s real name is not Nancy and Leo Grande’s is not really Leo Grande. Those are ‘stage’ names, extensions of their endless performances, what lies on the surface. Every viewer willing to go deeper into who these two are, were, and would like to be, has to put some extra effort in what makes the characters tick.

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CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD JULY/AUGUST 2022 33

MURREN TULLETT•BRIAN AND CHARLES

BRIAN AND CHARLES•MURREN TULLETT

THE ODD COUPLE

By Ron Prince

F

riends come in all shapes and sizes. Lonely inventor Brian’s buddy turns out to be Charles Petrescu, a sentient AI robot he has cobbled together from junk – including a mannequin’s head, a kitted cardigan and a washing machine – strewn around the remote farm he inhabits in North Wales.

Brought to life during a lightning strike, Charles quickly grows in his learning about the world round him, and the unlikely pair develop an engaging camaraderie playing darts, boiling cabbages, riding bikes, enjoying pillow fights and watching travel shows on the telly together. But, when the village bully and his family abduct Charles, and threaten to destroy him, Brian and his kind-hearted neighbour Hazel decide to fight for Charles’ freedom.

That’s the premise behind director Jim Archer’s charming, disarming and bizarrely-British, fulllength debut feature, Brian And Charles, starring David Earl, backed by Film4 and BFI, and shot by cinematographer Murren Tullett, making just his second longform production.

Harnessing a fly-on-the-wall documentary style, via a predominantly handheld camera, Brian And Charles is an expansion of Archer’s eccentric short of the same name from 2017, which itself was based on a comedy stand-up routine and radio show.

With the screenplay by David Earl and Chris Hayward, who also star in the film, Brian And Charles was an audience favourite at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival, and received rave reviews for its depiction of loneliness and the replenishing power of friendship, wrapped in amusing whimsicality.

“During pre-production Jim and I considered films with countryside settings and significant use of observational camera – such as The Levelling (2016, DP Nanu Segal BSC), God’s Own Country (2017, DP Joshua James Richards) and Gwen (2018, DP

Adam Etherington BSC),” says Tullett, whose previous credits include the highly-praised Palace Of Fun (2016), his first longform feature, the short Calving (2021), plus four episodes of the TV series Down From London (2019), directed by Archer.

This production was about creating something measured and cinematic “I am great a fan of Jim’s work, and was really taken by the Brian And Charles short he had made earlier, with its handheld, documentary-style approach, use of long lingering shots and tocamera monologues, and we wanted to carry that over into this film.

“However, we distinctly wanted to avoid going down a ‘mockumentary’ route, using things like zooms and other techniques to punctuate jokes, which have become over-used and feel somewhat passé, especially in TV shows now. This production was more about creating something with a more measured, cinematic approach, a slow pace to unfold the charm of Brian and Charles’ growing friendship, yet with lots of bleak scenic elements to underpin the narrative about Brian’s loneliness and isolation.”

Production was originally due to commence in March 2020, but was postponed until the winter due to UK pandemic lockdown. After a six moth hiatus, the four-week shoot took place during November and December at locations around Snowdonia, including a working farm in Cwm Penmachno, the village of Llyn Gwynant and the

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local town Betws-y-Coed.

“From a visual perspective, the delay in shooting actually worked brilliantly for me and Jim in shaping the look and tone of the film,” says Tullet. “I think it would have been much more difficult to reflect the sense of Brian’s loneliness in the spring months, with flowers and buds appearing in March, April and May. The weather at the time of year we shot also played very much into my favour, as we had pretty constant cloud, which helped in protecting the consistency of the light.”

Initial tests for the production were conducted at Panavision, in London, where Tullett and Archer looked at different framing and lens options, including Anamorphic, in order to move away from a TV look. This was followed by technical scouts of the locations in Wales, to shoot further tests, including Charles’s head on a pole, to get a feeling for the farmhouse, the landscapes and the winter hues.

“After seeing our locations, we ditched the idea of shooting Anamorphic,” explains Tullett, “partly because having a large and unpredictable robot in such tiny interiors just wouldn’t have worked with the close focal distances we needed to achieve on the cast.

So we decided to shoot spherical, crop to 2.35:1 and do further tests with more modern glass options, including Panavision Primos, Zeiss Master Primes and Leitz Summicron-C cine lenses.”

Tullett’s eventual camera package, provided by Panavision, comprised of an ARRI Alexa Mini fitted with the Leitz Summicron-Cs. “Although they are T2 across the range, the Leitz

Images: images from Brian And Charles courtesy of Focus Features.

BTS photos by Will Davies and Murren Tullett.

Summicron-Cs are amazingly compact and lightweight which, in combination with the Alexa Mini, helped to support the handheld operating style. Also, I really didn’t want to end-up with something heavy on my shoulder for a month of shooting so many scenes with improvised dialogue and lengthy following singles.

“Furthermore, the Summicron-Cs come in a broad range of focal lengths, which helped in creating variety of framing choices, and they have minimal flare.

We were going to have to put big light sources through small windows to light the interiors of the traditional stone cottage, and the Leitz lenses really helped mitigate the effect of veiling flares in the image.”

During prep, Tullett worked with colourist Matthieu Toullet, then at MPC (now at Company3) in London, to devise a trio of monitoring LUTs that helped set the look and tone of the film through subtly desaturated looks on interior, exterior and night scenes.

Apart from a handful of artfully-crafted landscape aerials, filmed using drones by The Flying Picture Company, and rigs for driving scenes, Tullett duly operated the camera handheld for the vast majority of the production, assisted on focus by 1st AC Barney Coates. Tobin Jones operated B-camera during scenes involving multiple characters. The gaffer was Helio Ribeiro, and the lighting package was provided by Panalux.

“Originally, our lighting budget was very small, as there was an assumption by production that, as

we were shooting in a documentary format, we would not need more than a minimal resource,” Tullett remarks, “However, as we all know, if you want bring any sort of style and consistency to your work, you do need a decent lighting package, and I was able to negotiate that.

If you want any sort of style and consistency in your work, you need a decent lighting package “Lighting the cottage interiors was probably our biggest challenge, along with some of the bigger night scenes. There was hardly any space for lights inside, especially when Brian and Charles were together in a scene. So we lit through the windows, with the CRLS mirror and reflector system from The Light Bridge using Pars and ARRISUNs, and had a few small point sources, like K5600 Joker Bugs and Dedolights, to provide fill-light and other accents in the room. The CRLS system works really well, although you can encounter stability issues when shooting in 40mph winds!

“The night scenes were also difficult, and there was a lot of discussion about the car chase scene, when Brian and Charles are on the back of a truck careering down a country road. That was originally scripted as a day scene, but seemed more powerful and dramatic at night.

“However, there was no ambient light at all, so we had to fix-up a couple of 18Ks on a cherry picker way down the road. Unfortunately, that was one of the nights where it decided to rain really

hard. It was wet and painful for me being strapped with the camera into the back of the truck for 12 hours, and it was really hard to hide our sources as they lit up the rain, but the final result looks effective.”

The final DI grade took just four days, aided in no small part by Toullet’s original LUTs, his skills in tonally balancing shots, diminishing any troublesome bright spots on the interiors, and overall sympathetic eye in further focussing the audience’s emotional attention to the visual storytelling.

As one might imagine, making a comedy proved to be a happy experience for the cast and crew.

“It was a bit of a blessing for me, on my first feature of any size, that we had short shooting days,” says Tullet. “I would typically leave the hotel at eight in the morning and be back by five.

“Because of the pandemic, we were in our own little bubble in a remote place, and we all hung-out together in the evenings at weekends. As for the shoot, Jim is great to work with, as is David Earl, and there was a lot of giggling during and inbetween takes. I absolutely loved the experience, are really do hope the quirky British humour of Brian And Charles travels around the world.”

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SMOOTH OPERATOR•GEOFFREY HALEY SOC

GEOFFREY HALEY SOC•SMOOTH OPERATOR

STORY, EMOTION, PERFORMANCE

By Natasha Block Hicks

I

n a parallel universe, Geoffrey Haley SOC spends his days immersed in his other dream job. He is a senior figure in a collaborative team, aiding a central director to orchestrate a written script for the benefit of an enraptured audience. It’s a creative, skilled role, requiring physical and mental stamina. The tool of his trade? A cellist’s bow!

“As a child, I had two things I loved: film and music,” relates Haley from his home in LA. “I was of that generation that was given an 8mm camera as a kid. I was also a cellist from the age of five.”

Growing up, Haley ran these two passions in parallel, until he came to leave high-school.

“I had to make a decision as to whether or not I was going to pursue music professionally,” he recalls, “but that would have meant relying on something that I truly loved to make money. So, I decided to go to the film route.”

Haley studied psychophysiology at university on the west coast specifically so that he could spend his summers in LA pursuing movie work. His musical background scored him some early boom operating credits, which transitioned to video playback, but his goal was fixed on the camera.

“Camera is one of the closest departments to the story,” he rationalises.

Impatient to get stuck-in, Haley invested in a Steadicam rig which helped put him in front of some of the key employers of the day, however, it was behind the lens of a handheld video camera that he was to make his first tangible mark on Hollywood.

“I had this weird job of shooting all the video elements on a movie called American Beauty (1999, dir. Sam Mendes, DP Conrad L. Hall ASC),” says Haley intriguingly.

“The scriptwriter, Alan Ball, described this sublime image of a bag floating and dancing like a ballerina and I was sent off to create the visual. I was only shooting something for the actors to react to, the final product was intended to be CGI.” There is a podcast episode by Steadicam operator Brad Grimmet, Walking Backwards, where

Haley describes at length how this iconic piece of filmmaking came about, but the upshot is that ‘the bag’ got Haley noticed.

“Suddenly my name was on some lists,” reveals Haley, “commercial directors would be saying, “I want the person that shot ‘that bag’.”

Ball’s attention had also been triggered and he invited the young camera operator on to his new HBO series Six Feet Under (2001-2005) where Haley remained for the full five-season run.

Camera is one of the closest departments to the story “Six Feet Under was my film school,” states Haley, “I learned everything I know about breaking down a scene, blocking and working with the director and actors from that show. It was a masterclass every day.”

Whilst on Six Feet Under, Haley put his burgeoning knowledge into practise by writing and directing The Parlor (2001), which picked-up a Short Filmmaking Award Honourable Mention at Sundance 2002 and gained him a Hollywood writer/director agent. He followed-up with a feature screenplay, which was bought by one of the major studios, but a hard lesson in the by-laws of Hollywood quickly followed.

“I was attached to direct, but it was too big a budget for me to direct,” commiserates Haley, “and it

36 JULY/AUGUST 2022 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

languishes, unmade, to this day.

“I learned a very valuable lesson,” he continues, “I said, okay, the next thing I’m going to write will have a small-enough budget that they’ll let me direct it.”

Haley successfully penned and directed eccentric romantic comedy, The Last Word (2008, DP Kees Van Oostrum ASC), which premiered at Sundance 2008, where it was nominated for a Grand Jury Prize, before a successful theatrical release.

Many might have turned their back on operating at this juncture, not so Haley.

“I’ve really found a home with camera operating,” Haley confides. “When I started to direct, I was expecting that my background in operating would make me a better director. But the thing I am certain of now is that, having directed, I am a far better operator.”

Haley’s journey has become a quest to take what he loves about directing, and combine that with operating.

“I have this notion that there are three basic pillars of compelling cinema: story, emotion and performance,” Haley elaborates.

“Directors are on an island of one, because their sole job is to be the herald of those three things. I try to put myself on that island with the director and I never let any myopic ideas about my job, as a technical camera operator, obstruct the prime directive of story, emotion, performance.”

Haley has formed fruitful collaborations with DPs, such as Lawrence Sher ASC, for whom he has operated on numerous pictures from The Hangover (2009, dir. Todd Phillips) to Joker (2019, dir. Todd Phillips) – for which he won both the 2020 SOC Camera Operator Of The Year Award and the

2019 ACO Operators Award – and Stephen F Windon ASC ACS, with whom he has shot four Fast And Furious movies. However, his approach has meant his name is often put forward by directors, producers and even actors such as Dwayne Johnson, as their camera operator.

An early director collaboration was with David O. Russell, for whom Haley operated A-camera and Steadicam on The Fighter (2010, DP Hoyte Van Hoytema NSC FSF ASC) and American Hustle (2013, DP Linus Sandgren FSF ASC).

“On American Hustle, I was doing very improvisational work,” reveals Haley, “there wasn’t really much blocking discussed beforehand. It was the first time I was able to feel a moment and act on it as far as the operating was concerned.

“There were these amazing performances unfolding in front of the lens,” he continues, “and I could decide where I wanted to watch them from. Despite the exhaustion from back-to-back Steadicam, it gave me this super injection of energy and adrenaline.”

This laid the foundation for a subsequent role on Steve Jobs (2015, dir. Danny Boyle, DP Alwin H. Küchler BSC), a film that Haley reports took his operating to the “next level”.

“It was almost 100% Steadicam,” Haley describes, “and the script was 150-pages long, written by Aaron Sorkin, which meant fantastic dialogue although there was lots of it.”

Opposite: shooting Cherry using an AirScouter, photo by Paul Abell.

Boyle’s vision was to capture each scene in its This page: (l-r down) – runninng after Jason Statham’s stunt double on entirety as Steadicam ‘oners’, which could be cut F8, photo by Matt Kennedy; working on Star Trek – Beyond on a lowtogether in the edit if required. With some editing rider, and using Steadicam; with director Danny Boyle on Steve Jobs; experience himself, Haley was particularly conscious taking direction from Justin Lin on Star Trek – Beyond; and lensing Joker with huge telephoto zoom, photo by Niko Tavernise. of, not only the actor’s depleting energy as they repeatedly re-ran the dialogue-intensive scenes, but the eremitic editor saddled with splicing it all together.

“It was vital for me to be able to be in the right place the Russo’s are playing in.”

With his experience, particularly on action at the right time,” recalls Haley, “I was asking myself, as movies, Haley is well-positioned to offer guidance an editor, would I be cursing my name because of the to the next generation of camera operators. He is on way that I structured this piece of coverage? the education committee of the Society Of Camera Operators (SOC), for which he also serves on the board of governors, and has hosted both online and in-person masterclasses on topics as diverse as ‘Operating Action’ and ‘Collaboration With The Director’.

“There’s a specific skillset needed to work on technical and high-adrenaline-infused projects,” Haley emphasises, “and it’s not easy to learn on the job where the lives of stuntmen, for instance, may hang in the “It was physically and mentally taxing, but at the balance. I try my best to impart the knowledge I have.” end of the day, I thought it was incredibly rewarding.”

In the years since he chose to take the fork in the More recently, Haley has been collaborating with road signposted ‘film’, Haley’s enthusiasm for his job director/producer brothers Anthony and Joe Russo hasn’t waned. on high-end productions such as Cherry (2021, DP “The entire notion of surrounding myself with coNewton Thomas Sigel ASC) – for which he won the collaborators and spending the day concentrating on 2021 SOC Camera Operator of the Year Award – Avengers Endgame (2019, DP Trent Opaloch) and The story, emotion and performance, makes me excited about going to work,” he says brightly.

Gray Man (2022, DP Stephen F Windon ASC ACS) In this universe, there is only one small adjustment on which Haley also served as an executive producer. he would make.

“The Russo’s know what they want, but they also “The cello is too big to bring with me from set to understand that there are things they can allow to set,” Haley laments, “if I had my time again, I would happen by giving people the autonomy to contribute have learned the Piccolo flute!” to the creative process,” comments Haley. “That has been really fantastic for me considering the arena that

Having directed… I am a far better operator

CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD JULY/AUGUST 2022 37

STUDENT UNION•ANNAPURNA COLLEGE OF FILM & MEDIA

HEADING FOR THE SUMMIT

By Natasha Block Hicks

I

n 2021 for the first time, the Telugu-language cinema, or ‘Tollywood’, surpassed the Hindi-language ‘Bollywood’ to become the highest-grossing film industry in India.

Although these results were skewed by how the two sectors faired through the pandemic, Telugu cinema is fast-becoming a force to be reckoned with.

Mr Raman Iyer, associate professor and head of the cinematography department at the Annapurna College Of Film & Media (ACFM) in Hyderabad – the heart of the Telugu filmmaking industry – joins us to explain how the provision of formal education in film and media is critical in supporting a viable industry.

“When Sri. Akkineni Nageswara Rao, who was a Southern Indian film pioneer, looked at our industry,” relates Raman from his office via Zoom, “he was dismayed to find that, despite being a big industry, Telugu cinema didn’t receive a lot of recognition in terms of national awards.

“So Akkineni wanted to create an educational institution where filmmaking would be taught properly.”

As founder of Annapurna Studios, which has been producing Telugu films since 1976, Akkineni had the

perfect location for his new school. ACFM opened its doors in 2012 in the heart of the 22-acre studio plot.

All programmes at the college are dual specialisation, with direction taught alongside another industry discipline such as scriptwriting, editing or cinematography. Both three-year BA (Hons) Film & Media undergraduate degrees and two-year MA (Film & Media) postgraduate degrees are offered in each dual specialisation.

The BA degree is aimed at school-leavers, “those teenagers who are dreaming about making films,” as Raman says.

“We want to provide them with a proper route to reach the industry,” he continues, “with the emphasis that, to succeed, they need to fully-understand the technical and creative processes that go behind making a film.”

The first year of the BA programme serves as a foundation in filmmaking, with the history of cinema taught alongside a thorough grounding in the major disciplines and techniques of film production. The first two semesters culminate with a SET (Specialisation Entrance Test). Access to the student’s preferred specialisation depends on their overall attendance and marks in this test.

Year 2 invites a closer exploration of the students’ chosen majors, with the direction element branching-out to include advertising, digital marketing and acting fundamentals.

Year 3 allows a total immersion in the specialisation. For cinematography students, this includes getting hands-on with industry-standard camera kit, such as the RED One MX and the URSA Mini Pro 4.6K G2, as well as learning lighting techniques using the college’s extensive lighting inventory that encompasses Fresnel, HMI and LED panels, and exploring composition

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and post-production.

“We also have an equipment partner – Taher Cine Tekniq – that provides us with extra camera, lighting and grip equipment whenever needed for the student projects,” adds Raman.

The MA degree follows a similar pathway to the BA degree, but is condensed into four semesters with the specialisation introduced earlier in the programme. Applicants coming to the MA from backgrounds outside the creative arts are offered a bridge course – a combination of online learning and practical exercises – to get them up to speed with the fundamentals of filmmaking.

Students need to fully-understand the technical and creative processes of filmmaking

ANNAPURNA COLLEGE OF FILM & MEDIA•STUDENT UNION

We are seeking individuals with a passion to learn

shoots, Annapurna Studios’ air-conditioned sound stages, plus external sets on the studio plot, are also available for shooting student projects. The 88-seat Shiva Preview Theatre, with Dolby 7.1 Surround Sound, is used for project reviews, curriculum screenings, seminars and the Graduate Film Festival.

Pre-Covid, around 75% of teaching at the college was given by the faculty staff, with 25% provided by professionals visiting to host workshops and masterclasses. Hampered over the last two years by Covid restrictions, ACFM has managed, nonetheless, to organise a number of events with outside lecturers. These include a two-day workshop with renowned Telugu and Tamil DP Soundar Rajan, known for Maattrraan (2012), on lighting for digital in extreme low light conditions, and an intimate masterclass with Sudeep Chatterjee ISC, the distinguished cinematographer behind the multi-award-winning epic drama Bajirao Mastani (2015), for students on the cusp of shooting their graduate film. Niketh Bommi, who lit the Amazon Original movie Soorarai Pottru (2020) was also able to share his experiences as an upcoming DP in the Telugu and Tamil industries with students via an online platform.

Although relatively young as an establishment, ACFM is fast building a network of alumni. Each student is given access to the online alumni portal, where campus news, outside opportunities and contact details are shared with students past and present.

The college has formed close relationships with Annapurna Studio Productions Ltd (ASPL) and ‘aha’ – a Telugu and Tamil-language over-the-top (OTT) streaming service – to offer graduates entry-level placements and internships in the industry, including as trainees on feature films.

“For the students who have done well in their final year project,” adds Raman tantalisingly, “their material is considered to be made into OTT serials or films.” Links to student graduation films streaming on ‘aha’ can be found on the college website.

Using this support, Annapurna alumni are navigating pathways into the industry.

2013 BA student D. Sameer Kumar gained an industry placement as assistant DP to P.S. Vinod ISC on the Telugu action feature Dhruva (2016). From 2017 to 2021 he assisted P.S. Vinod on several more features and recently, on the sci-fi thriller Attack (2022, DP P.S. Vinod), moved up to camera operator.

Pemmasani Uma entered the MA programme in the same year as Sameer. In 2020 she was accepted as a member of the Telugu Cinematographers Association and in 2021 was assistant DP on the feature-musical Rang De (2021, DP P.C. Sreeram ISC).

Chuppi (2020), the graduation film lit by 2015 BA (Hons) student Devansh Mehta picked up a number of film festival awards, including an Honourable Jury Award at the 8th Mumbai Shorts International Film Festival.

Another achievement that set the campus buzzing was when graduate film Benchi (2020, dir. Chennamadhauni Shreyas, DP M. Saichandrahas) was shortlisted as a semi-finalist for the Student Oscars.

Applications for the college are open for six months every year. Candidates can either apply via an online platform or by registering their interest in person at the school. They must undertake an All India Entrance Examination, which, once completed, is followed by an interview with the faculty staff. The offer of a place, and access to financial support in terms of a scholarship, depends on the scores from these assessments.

For prospective students applying to the BA degree, demonstration of an existing body of creative work is not imperative, however, postgraduate applicants electing the MA course – which assumes candidates will already have some experience of employment or higher education – are expected to enter a showreel or artistic portfolio with their application.

“If somebody is going to select cinematography,” Raman illustrates, “we would like to see what that person has done in terms of visualising something. Maybe through photography, painting or applied arts.”

The college enrols twelve BA and ten MA students per intake.

“We are seeking individuals with a passion to learn,” says Raman, “who will observe and absorb even the most rudimentary morsels of knowledge that may contribute to their mastering the art of cinematography. The ability to think outside the box is important, as is patience and perseverance.”

India is, in its nature, a diverse country and this is reflected on campus.

“We have students coming from many different ethnic

milieus,” says Raman. “Many students cannot understand their classmates’ language when they arrive. In spite of that, it takes only a couple of months for them to be behave like a homogeneous entity.”

The uptake of cinematography by female students is increasing, plus in 2014 the Indian Supreme Court officially recognised a third gender in law.

“In all application forms,” states Raman, “there is an additional column and you can fill your gender choice

there. As a college we have no reservations about taking students who come from that category.”

In recognition of a rapidly evolving college, which is a micro-cosmic reflection of a rapidly evolving industry, ACFM has created a Think Tank from a selection of faculty representatives, industry professionals and exstudents, whose task it is to look to the future and help the college stay viable and relevant. The Think Tank’s current focus is on the construction of a brand-new campus and the rise of the computer-generated environment.

“We strongly believe that whatever might change in the field of virtual reality, the basic talent of a cinematographer is to tell a story,” says Raman.

“Even if cinema becomes entirely virtual, there will still be human beings behind it, and we will be training those people.”

Applications for the August 2023 intake open in January 2023. https://acfm.edu.in/

Students studying at ACFM benefit from the college’s own 6,000sq/ft sound stage with greenscreen cyclorama, plus two 720sq/ft lighting studios, sound studios and edit suites. When not booked by commercial CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD JULY/AUGUST 2022 39

ONE TO WATCH•ANDREA PIETRO MUNAFÒ

ANDREA PIETRO MUNAFÒ•ONE TO WATCH Images: BTS photos from Il Barbiere Complottista

by Angelo Palombini.

What’s the best advice you were ever given?

Just try… something will happen!

Where do you get your visual inspirations?

Everywhere! But mostly, of course, from photography, paintings, books, music, etc.. I have a folder on my PC where, when I discover new artists, I store their paintings, pictures and short bios. Sometimes I get inspiration just walking around my neighbourhood, or going somewhere new. So it’s really from anywhere.

Tell us your most hilarious faux pas?

I have made a lot of errors in my life, but none too precious or massive so far.

CARE TO DANCE?

Filmography (so far) DP: TV series… La Mala Banditi A Milano (2022, 2 x episodes). Shorts… Il Barbiere Complottista (A Conspiracy Man) (2022), Atto Di Dolore (2021), Barbablu (2021), La Bicicletta (2021), Notte Romana (Roman Nights) (2021), What Are The Odds? (2020). Documentary short... Une Autre Chance (2016).

Where did you train?

I mainly studied at Centro Sperimentale Di Cinematografia in Rome. I really enjoyed my time there, and living in one of the best cities in the world. Before that I was working as an AC, and did really small jobs as a DP in Milan, shooting mostly commercials.

Accolades: Il Barbiere Complottista (A Conspiracy Man), Cannes 2022 Cinefondation Award winner.

Notte Romana (Roman Nights) best short film nominee at 2022 David Di Donatello and Nastri d’Argento awards, and 2021 Venice Film Festival International Critics Week.

I learned a lot at University, mostly for two reasons.

The first was that we were just six per course. I found the best people to share my three years studying cinematography, and couldn’t have asked for better.

The second was that the cinematography course was held by master cinematographer Giuseppe Lanci AIC. Google him and see what he has done in the history of cinema (a lot, trust me!). The most important thing he taught me was about the human side of the job, how to collaborate and respect other people working with you. Making movies is a collaboration between different people and departments.

When did you discover you wanted to be a cinematographer?

I don’t remember an exact moment, where I said to myself, ‘I want to become a cinematographer’. But the first photographic moment was when I was about 12, after my mum came back from the supermarket and gave me a plastic all-in-one, film camera that she won when she bought a box of beers.

After that, I just started taking pictures of everything – school trips, going out with friends. I’m from a really small village near Milan, and there was not too much entertainment for a young kid, so taking photos became something to do each day. During high-school I studied IT, but then realised it was not my dream. So I went to a high-school in Milan and did a course in cinema and TV studies.

You can have the most sophisticated tools… but without a good eye, it won’t be unique

40 JULY/AUGUST 2022 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

Also, our tutor, Sandro Camerata, is really a good guy, and helped me a lot in the making of my school short film. He has lots of contacts and at the end of my time there he helped to make things happen.

What are your favourite films?

Psycho ­(1960, dir. Alfred Hitchcock, DP John L. Russell ASC) – I know, not too original perhaps, but I love it because it is one of the first films my parents encouraged me watch. That explains a lot :)

Leviathan (2014, dir. Andrey Zvyagintsev, DP Mikhail Krichman) – I found it amazingly shot, with the framing and the lighting, and the story is something really deep.

After I watched it, I had to take a walk. I also like also Zvyagintsev’s The Banishment (2007, DP Mikhail Krichman) and all of Andrei Tarkovsky’s films.

Autumn Girl (2021, dir. Katarzyna Klimkiewicz, DP Weronika Bilska) – I simply love it!

Who are your DP/industry role models?

Darius Khondji AFC ASC – I love his attitude towards cinematography and his work. From what I have read about him, especially the beautiful interview that came out in a book called “Conversations With Darius Khondji”, written by Jordan Mintzer, I really loved what he said about the human and technical sides of cinematography.

Mikhail Krichman – I just love his work on films like Leviathan and The Banishment.

What is your most treasured cinematographic possession?

My eyes. I always remind myself that what really changes everything is the ability to give a project a unique style (whether it’s a short film, music video, documentary or a commercial). You can have the most sophisticated tools to make something really good, but without a good eye, it won’t be unique.

What was the biggest challenge on your latest production?

My biggest challenge was not on my latest production, but when we shot the short Notte Romana (Roman Nights), directed by Valerio Ferrara, who also directed A Conspiracy Man. Notte Romana was our second-year short film at Centro Sperimentale in Rome, about upper class guys who find themselves in

trouble with guys from a lower class neighbourhood, because of a possible relationship with a girl.

Tell us your greatest extravagance?

I spend money on lenses, some vintage lenses or lenses that I find on the internet in hidden places around the world.

What are the best/worst things about being a DP? Best: doing your passion as your work, and travelling to different places to shoot. I also like working with different crew and directors, I think you can learn a lot.

Don’t sit down! Shoot, explore new stuff and try We were looking for a bar in the centre of Rome to represent the social distance between the rich and poor protagonists. All the places we went to were asking for too much money, and we were late in asking permission from the local council to put a crane and all of our other filming gear on the street. Five days before starting the shoot we didn’t have the location.

After another day of location scouting we came back to university with nothing.

So I decided to have a walk around the university, to try to think of a solution. I walked and walked, and I saw a dumper in the parking lot beside the rooms of the sound department. I took a photo, went to Valerio and the production designer, Nike Paolucci, and said to them that this spot could work.

At the start they were a little scared that the place couldn’t work, but then Nike did some sketches, and after that we decided to shoot there. Of course, the university is not in the city centre, the buildings didn’t help either, but we had all the room we needed for camera movement and Valerio had all the time to have how many takes he wanted.

For me the challenges were in not only about avoiding it looking fake, but were also getting the lighting right, as the location didn’t have any street lights and was in total darkness. So we had to add everything to make it work.

I spoke a lot with Nike about using practicals, and I also used two practicals I made myself from old street lamps I found. I think at the end it worked out well. It got selected at the Venice Film Festival, so people must have believed it as a real place. That’s the magic of cinema and collaboration for you :)

Worst: I’m sure there are some, but for now I don’t know of any.

Give us three adjectives that best describe you and your approach to cinematography?

Respectful. Determined. Serious (with a dose of Fun).

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

Maybe running a bar, a place where people can meet, chat, have drinks and enjoy time together.

What are your aspirations for the future?

To shoot my first feature film, and put all my passion into it. I love narrative work. The whole process – pre, during and after the shoot – keeps my mind alive and I learn a lot.

What advice do you have for other people who want to become cinematographers?

Don’t sit down! Shoot, explore new stuff and try. I like the craftsmanship of making movies. Sometimes I find myself building lenses or building filters with broken glass.

For you, what are the burning issues in cinematography, filmmaking and cinema, that need to be addressed?

Unfortunately there are a lot of big issues, such as women who don’t have the same rights as men, and safety at work. I hope the new generation of filmmakers, which I’m part of, will change these. We have to!

What is your URL/website address? www.andreapietromunafo.com

Tell us your hidden talent/party trick?

I love meeting people. All of my friends tell me I’m the guy to take to parties when people want to dance.

Away from work, what are your greatest passions?

I love walking and getting lost. I also love making music.

How do you like to “waste” your time?

I like gardening and growing own vegetables on my small balcony. Watching something growing day-byday is really satisfying.

CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD JULY/AUGUST 2022 41

NOPE•HOYTE VAN HOYTEMA NSC FSF ASC

HOYTE VAN HOYTEMA NSC FSF ASC•NOPE

Images: courtesy and copyright of Universal Studios.

NOT OF PLANET EARTH

By Ron Prince

F

or his next and most ambitious film to date, the spine-tingling, supernatural Nope, filmmaker Jordan Peele told his cinematographer, Hoyte Van Hoytema NSC FSF ASC, that he wanted audiences to experience an event, “an immersion of awe, and a fear and wonderment, that we all had when we were kids.”

And in response to this not inconsiderable challenge, Van Hoytema turned once again to film – large format IMAX (15perf) and 65mm (5-perf) Kodak celluloid – to deliver that otherworldly experience. The eminent DP had previously shot Dunkirk (2017) and Tenet (2020), for director Christopher Nolan using IMAX and 65mm large format film cameras, and says, “They’re my favourite mixture lately.”

But Van Hoytema didn’t stop there. In somewhat of a technical and creative masterstroke, the he conjuredup something quite bold and innovative when it came to the challenges of shooting the movie’s eerie nighttime sequences, which he was bursting with enthusiasm to relay in our interview.

To begin with, however, Nope represents the first collaboration between Van Hoytema and Peele, although the pair were highly-aware of one another’s work. Peele has said, “The great Hoyte Van Hoytema is one of the best cinematographers and a mastermind behind some of my favourite films and favourite imagery, and this was a bigger adventure than I ever tried to tell, and by far my most ambitious.”

For his part, Van Hoytema, an alumnus of Łódź Film School in Poland, and the visual author of films such as Let The Right One In (2008), Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011), Interstellar (2014), 007 Spectre (2015) and Ad Astra (2019), all which were shot on film too, remarks,

“I always wanted to work with Jordan, but for silly reasons this did not happen until Nope. We had a very good chemistry when we first met. It was very exciting for me, and it hasn’t stopped being exciting ever since.”

Starring Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer, Steven Yeun and Michael Wincott, Nope follows the

Our day-for-night rig became a wonderful, crazy tool… giving us shot after shot that you probably have never seen before residents of an isolated town who witness a mysterious and abnormal event. After random objects fall from the sky, resulting in the death of their father, ranchowning siblings OJ and Emerald Haywood attempt to capture video evidence of an unidentified flying object with the help of tech salesman Angel Torres and documentarian Antlers Holst.

At press time little else was known about the storyline of the hotly-anticipated movie, but Van Hoytema was prepared to give wonderful insight into his work on the project, and his radical initiatives.

“I find filming-on-film an extremely exciting and

42 JULY/AUGUST 2022 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

positive experience,” he says. “What has been seen for years as some sort of a stubborn, nostalgic love for film amongst filmmakers, is proving to be a very viable quest to deliver incredible cinematic experiences.

“When you shoot on 65mm 5-perf film, and watch it in a cinema, you witness something that you will see nowhere else. There’s a quality and a depth to the image that is just unprecedented, and therefore so much more special. The moment you go to an even bigger format, like IMAX 15-perf film, the image depth and colour depth are even more astounding to behold.

“It was very nice working with Jordan because he just wanted the best-of-the-best for a cinematic experience, and was totally committed, 100%, to creating a spectacular event. So it was pretty much a no-brainer for us to end-up at this combination of 65mm and IMAX film.”

Nope has been described as a sci-fi horror, although this is not a label to which Van Hoytema readily subscribes.

“It’s very difficult to pinpoint a genre when Jordan presents his script to you, and it was evident from the very first line of Nope that he had a specific intention and intellectual mindset about what he wanted to make, and how he wanted to make it, which seeped through every subsequent page,” recalls Van Hoytema.

“His script was more like entering a universe, and he was interested in making something supernatural with an air of incredible suspense. So, to call Nope a sci-fi horror really does not do it justice at all.”

Van Hoytema says he and Peele checked-out hundreds of images as reference points during prep on the movie, spit-balling ideas to arrive at same visual vocabulary for the film.

“However, when somebody is looking for

something so specific and as unique as Jordan was, at some point we just sort of threw ourselves in the Jeep and started coming up with our own shit,” he says.

“Also, as a cinematographer you can easily gravitate towards what feels safe, so I constantly kick my own ass, question my motives and reassure myself that I am not choosing the path of least resistance in my photographic choices.”

That said, Van Hoytema says he and Peele did watch a B&W print of King Kong (1933, dirs. Merian C. Cooper & Ernest B. Schoedsack, DPs Eddie Linden, Vernon Walker and J.O. Taylor) as, “Thematically, King Kong has a very similar story about aspiring human beings, and was a remarkable spectacle when it first appeared.”

Principal photography on Nope took place over 80 days, starting in June 2021, in a valley near Ague Dulce, northeast of Santa Clarita, California, where the family ranch and the elaborate Jupiter’s Claim theme park, a pivotal location in the narrative, were constructed to optimise the path of the sun and the geography of the storytelling. Other set builds were at

Sunset Las Palmas Studios in Hollywood.

After the shoot, Jupiter’s Claim was carefully disassembled and transported to Universal Studios Hollywood, where it was meticulously reconstructed and now resides as a permanent attraction between the Psycho and Jaws exhibits.

“Prep is a very important time for me in order to really consider what needs to be achieved and then to figure-out how to build any stuff that we’re going to need,” says Van Hoytema.

“One of the major challenges on Nope was how we were going to shoot the night-time sequences, which were mainly all big set-pieces. When Jordan and I went on the night scouts around Agua Dulce we saw that there was no available light whatsoever, and realised there was no way we were ever going to be able to light and photograph these large expanses convincingly.

“But nature at night is very special and interesting.

As we stood there, and our pupils dilated, we started to notice very fine details in the mountain ridges and the expansive presence of the space around us, and thought it would be great to capture that essence in the film.

“Of course, we could have shot traditional day-fornight, but that has its limitations because you must have the sun exactly in the right place, or we could have tried greenscreen and CGI, but even then the results can look kind of fakey.”

Accordingly, Van Hoytema cast his mind back to some of his previous challenges and, with an inspired twist of creative thought, came up with a groundbreaking solution to shoot the night scenes and a pioneering new way of shooting day-for-night.

As he explains, “When I worked on Ad Astra, we encountered a similar problem when it came to shooting the lunar battle/chase/action sequence with Moon Rovers in Death Valley, and our inability to lightup a big area with a single light source. We needed to cover enough distance to be able to shoot the chase, but softlight or double shadows from any sources would have been an awful giveaway.

“So with the help of my friend, Kavon Elhami, who runs a camera house, we purchased two decommissioned 3D-stereo camera rigs on which we could mount two cameras. One was an ARRI Alexa,

CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD JULY/AUGUST 2022 43

NOPE•HOYTE VAN HOYTEMA NSC FSF ASC

specially-customised to capture infrared, the other a regular 35mm film camera. Instead of lining-up the cameras for 3D parallax, we found a way to align them so that both cameras were shooting the exact same image – one infrared, the other on film – and that every frame would overlay perfectly later in post production.

“The infrared camera is only sensitive to a very specific wavelength of light and the images are monochromatic. When you shoot in natural sunlight, with a slight contrast boost, it results in images that are brightly lit, however, the skies are dark. The 35mm camera contains all the vital colour and texture information, and in the perfect composite of the two images in post-production, the desert resembled the lunar surface. This meant we got close to the lighting character on the real moon.

“So for Nope, I had the idea of scaling-up that same kind rig and using it to shoot our day-for-night scenes in broad daylight – but this time using an ARRI Alexa 65, pointing upwards vertically and shooting in infrared mode, in perfect alignment with a Panavision System 65mm film camera, which was on the horizontal axis.

“However, it’s vitally-important that the different gates and lenses are identical, that you have exactly the same depths-of-field, that your focus-pulls translate in exactly the same way, and that the two images are completely in-sync.”

As part of his quest in creating the new rig, Van Hoytema necessarily visited Panavison in LA, as the company owns and maintains the small number of existing 65mm cameras.

“During the development and test phase we

worked with Dan Sasaki, the magician at Panavision, who can build whatever you want, based on his understanding of physics and what is needed artistically,” says Van Hoytema. “He made sure the twin sets of Panavision Sphero lenses we used were tuned to be identical in their performance.”

Development of the specialist rig required close cooperation between ARRI, Panavision, Van Hoytema and his special development company, Honeycomb Modular, in what he describes as “a beautiful collaboration between amazing people at amazing companies, to solve one person’s obsession to do something a little weird and nerdy.”

“In the early stages, we took a rather shabbylooking prototype rig, held together with screws, cable ties and gaffer tape, out into the desert to shoot tests.

My DIT, Elhanan Matos, is not your standard DIT, and when we do new technology like this, he’s all over it.

He helped in getting the two camera sync’d up, and although the video taps on the 65mm camera remain poor, he gave us a good on-set approximation of what the final image would look like.

“We then liaised with my DI colourist Greig Fisher at Company3 in LA, mixing those two sets of images together, and the result looked to me like an entirely plausible-looking night. In fact, using this technique you can peer much deeper into the dark expanse than we had done before on Ad Astra. And, when additional lighting effects were added in VFX, our night scenes really came alive. When you sit in the cinema, especially in an IMAX theatre, and you look around the image it’s a very, very special immersive experience.”

HOYTE VAN HOYTEMA NSC FSF ASC•NOPE

The production-ready day-for-night camera rig proved to be a sizeable, weighty and somewhat unbalanced lump, and it still needed to be motivated for visual storytelling purposes.

“We didn’t want to be limited in terms of how we would move the rig around,” says Van Hoytema. “So I worked with Dean Bailey and his team at Performance

One of the major challenges was how we were going to shoot the night-time sequences Filmworks, to work out how it could be adapted to fit on their various gyro-stabilised Edge cranes vehicles. I’ve worked with them before on Tenet and Dunkirk, where their vehicles had to drive over extremely rough terrain, and I had the same ambition to put this rig through equally rough stuff.

“They worked really hard to adapt their stabilised head for the rig, and all-of-a-sudden, we had the ability to drive everywhere – we could follow running horses and shoot other dramatic action scenes. It became a wonderful, crazy tool that was capable of giving us shot after shot that you might have thought were impossible and probably have never seen before.”

Jordan wanted to create a spectacular event, so it was a no-brainer to end-up shooting 65mm and IMAX film

44 JULY/AUGUST 2022 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

As for the ramifications for other filmmakers, Van Hoytema says, “I think it’s something that can, and probably will, be used more and more. Right now, though Honeycomb Modular, I am developing a new device that will enable you to use just one lens for two cameras, meaning that the rig can be much smaller, and any lens artefacts translate into both formats making post easier.”

Van Hoytema variously operated the IMAX and 65mm film cameras during what was mainly a single camera shoot, sometimes working on the shoulder, assisted by 1st AC Keith Davis pulling focus.

“I have operated these big cameras for several years now, and whilst they’re heavy and lumpy, they are wellbalanced. The shots are not long takes and it’s not quite as bad as people think. Keith has probably one ≠of the hardest jobs on-set, but we are like a well-oiled machine

and he had it down.

“We tried to maintain all of the action pieces on IMAX film for the spectacle, and almost all of the two last acts were filmed on IMAX. But, of course, there’s intimacy and dialogue in the film too, and on those occasions we had to go with the System 65mm, as the IMAX cameras are noisy, like coffee grinders.”

Operating duties were frequently shared with Kristen ‘K2’ Correll, who also operated B-camera. Key grip Kyle Carden headed the grip team, and the gaffer was Adam Chambers, whom Van Hoytema has had at his side on Dunkirk, Ad Astra and Tenet.

Nope was shot principally on Kodak Vision3 250D 5207 colour negative for the daytime, magic hour and day-for-night scenes, with Kodak Vision3 500T 5219 on some of the darker interiors and illuminated night scenes, plus Kodak Vision3 50D 5203 for aerials. Film processing was done at Fotokem in LA, where 8K scans were down-rezzed to 4K for VFX and post production purposes.

“I didn’t do any push or pull processing, as we were shooting in the sweet spots on the 250D and 500T

to deliver their beautiful depth of colour and natural contrast ranges. Also the levels of their grain structures were exactly where I wanted them.”

When it comes to lighting, Van Hoytema is all too

The sooner we can move towards more sustainable, battery-driven sources of power, the better aware of the new technologies, practices and roles abounding in that department.

“Working closely with Adam, my gaffer, we had Noah Shain as our lighting console programmer. He played a key role in overseeing the DMX networking and dimmer control of the lighting. Every lamp could be controlled individually, so we could adjust the illumination over large areas, or just specific fixtures anywhere around the set. We could put a light source miles away and instantaneously control it. He even gave us control over the inflatable sky dancers spread across the huge fields, that feature in the film.

“Generally, I like my lighting package to have the nicest LEDs I can find, and had the full range of ARRI Sky Panels at my disposal, as well as HMI’s for pure power,” he says. “But it’s just absurd to me that, on a film set, you still have diesel generators churning out pollution. The environment is important to me, and the sooner we can move towards more sustainable, battery-driven sources of power, the better.”

Van Hoytema concludes, “I admit to being extremely fanatic about film and like to keep pushing the boundaries. I had a wonderful time on this film, and would go out there and do it all again tomorrow morning, if somebody, especially Jordan, asked me to.”

CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD JULY/AUGUST 2022 45

ELVIS•MANDY WALKER AM ACS ASC

MANDY WALKER AM ACS ASC•ELVIS

Baz creates a special atmosphere, and everybody feels really involved with him and the filmmaking process

Images: Photo credit, Hugh Stewart. All images © 2021 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All Rights Reserved

LONG LIVE THE KING

By Ron Prince

I

t’s a fair bet that many people of a certain age will know where they were on August 16th, 1977, when Elvis Presley shuffled off this mortal coil, such was the breadth of his undeniable influence on popular culture around the world during the ‘50s, ‘60’s and ‘70s.

Simply-titled Elvis, and shot by Australian cinematographer Mandy Walker AM ACS ASC, director Baz Luhrmann’s exuberant, foot-tapping biopic of the veritable king of rock ‘n’ roll, stars Austin Butler as Presley, and tells Elvis’s cradle-tograve story from the perspective of his manager Colonel Tom Parker, played by Tom Hanks, honingin on key moments that made, and eventually put paid to, the legend.

Elvis premiered at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival to rapturous applause, and received positive reviews from critics, with praise for Butler’s performance and the mounting of the musical sequences.

For Walker, whose other big-screen credits include Jane Got A Gun (2015), Hidden Figures (2016) and Mulan (2020), Elvis represents her

second feature-length collaboration with Luhrmann, following Australia (2008), although she had also filmed a brace of short films for Chanel No.5 perfume with the director.

“From all of my previous experiences with him, I can truly say that Baz is an incredible and meticulous collaborator,” says Walker, who became a Member of the Order Of Australia (AM) in the 2021 Queen’s Birthday Honours, and who was shooting Walt Disney Pictures’ live-action version of Snow White (2023) in the UK at the time of the interview.

“Elvis himself was, and remains, an iconic figure in history and music, so the thought of shooting a biopic about his life and times was exciting to me,” she reveals. “Baz likes getting everyone together early-on – all of the different heads of departments – to share his vision and ideas, and to receive their creative and practical input, and Elvis was no different.

“My first meeting with Baz was in July 2019. He had been working on this project for ten years. He had done a lot of research and even lived at Elvis’ Graceland mansion for a year. Together with his wife, Catherine Martin, the costume/production designer and a producer on the film, plus the make-up and other heads, he had assembled a superb look book of historical and suitably-evocative stills images, documentary film and archive TV footage – Elvis onstage, his Las Vegas and Hollywood years, and private photos of Elvis in downtime with his friends and family.

“That reference proved very helpful to me, not only in setting the scene for the multitude of visual looks that

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would be needed across the time span of the film, but also in harmoniously stitching together the emotional journey from scene-to-scene that Baz envisioned.”

The sweep across those different eras involves recreating Elvis’ time at Sun Records and in the US army, his marriage, his string of movie musicals, the 1968 NBC ‘Comeback Special’, and his Las Vegas residency at the Hilton Hotel.

Walker had 16 weeks of prep on the film. As the elaborate sets began to take shape – on stages at Village Roadshow Studios, Gold Coast, Queensland, plus backlots about 30-minutes drive away – and the January 2020 physical production date loomed evercloser, Walker’s focus became more intensified on what was needed, both aesthetically and technically, as regards the cinematography.

“Along with my camera operators, gaffer and grips, I started to spend more and more time attending rehearsals with the cast,” she explains.

“This meant that by the time we were ready to shoot, we had plotted where the cameras, lighting and lighting transitions needed to be, and we could work really efficiently.”

During prep, Walker immersed herself in additional inspirational imagery, such as the photography of Saul Leiter and Gordon Parks, to support the visual story arc. She also consulted with to Dan Sasaki at Panavision, LA on her camera and lens package.

“I had already decided to shoot on ARRI Alexa 65, in 2.39:1 aspect ratio, to convey the

epic grandeur of the story, after all Elvis was ‘The King’, and to use shallow depth-of-field for the more intimate moments in his private life,” Walker confides.

“I spoke to Dan about the emotional journey through the film.

Dan is both clever and sensitive, and came up with various lens options.

After testing, which included rigorous scrutiny of the colour and texture of the costumes in different lighting scenarios, we ended-up choosing Sphero 65 lenses for the first part of Elvis’ life, and T-series Anamorphics, for his Las Vegas and later years, which Dan adapted to bring greater saturation, contrast and more vivid flares to the image, which really matched those times.”

As she had done previously on Mulan, Walker also commissioned an antique Petzval lens to frame certain sequences, such as Parker’s drug experiences and Elvis’s collapse in the corridor at the Hilton Hotel, because “the edges are quite extreme, and the focus is in the dead centre, so you feel like you’re in a vortex.”

A further consideration was how the different eras would be treated across the story arc.

“Working with my DIT, I created a whole series of LUTs for the different periods of Elvis’s life. At every location during production, Baz and I went into the DIT tent to make sure those looks were exactly right.

Then, every evening, I watched the dailies with my

dailies colourist, Kim Rene Bjørge, to check that our different scenes matched and flowed into one another, as we were not shooting in chronological order.”

Principal photography on Elvis began on January 28, 2020, but came to an abrupt halt in March following the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. Filming resumed at the end of October 2020 and wrapped 91 shooting days after it originally began, in March 2021.

“I stayed in Australia, with my husband and daughter, and we hunkered down,” says Walker, “but I was able to use the downtime do more research, and kept chatting with Baz. Despite the hiatus, we picked-up again where we left off, and continued with most of our crew.”

Jason Ellson operated A-camera/Steadicam, assisted by Luke Thomas on focus. Jay Torta was on B-camera, supported by Ron Coe on focus. The key grip was Greg Tidman, with Shawn Conway working as gaffer.

At Luhrmann’s request to bring dramatic energy and emotion to the camera, Walker says she employed the broad range of handheld, Steadicam, dolly and cranes to keep the camera moving.

“Looking back to archive footage, which Baz called our ‘trainspotting’ sequences, we even went as far as reproducing moments such as Elvis’s ‘Comeback Special’ and Las Vegas concerts in terms of camera

positions and lighting,” she says.

“For Las Vegas we had four cameras and two cranes, and shot the stage performance for a week. For the sweeping shot through Elvis’s VistaLiner motorhome, the art department created an identical mock-up to enable the crane to pull right through the vehicle, with a remote head so the

camera could pan around here and there.

“Shooting the concerts was such a special experience for everyone.

Baz is like a conductor, at any one moment he might be with the grips and the crane team, beside the camera operators

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ELVIS•MANDY WALKER AM ACS ASC

MANDY WALKER AM ACS ASC•ELVIS

Elvis himself was an iconic figure and shooting a biopic about his life and times was exciting to me

and focus pullers, or with the lighting crews, giving them visual cues. Everyone really became super-involved in the storytelling. We all knew of the songs, the timings and rhythms of the moves, and often I’d find people bopping and dancing around to the music.”

Walker says she is most proud of the set replicating the concert hall at the Las Vegas Hilton, where Elvis had his residency.

“The set itself was absolutely enormous, and we had he challenge of recreating a full-on concert lighting set-up of that time,” she says. “I discussed this in-depth with Shawn, my gaffer, and we initially considered bringing in a professional concert lighting team. But, in the end, we decided to do it ourselves, using old school directional Parcans and Fesnels, combined with ARRI Orbiters, along with other LEDs to supplement to general ambiance, which we could control off the dimmer board.”

The DI grade was conducted at a purpose-built facility for the movie on the Gold Coast, with Walker joining Lurhmann remotely from a grading theatre at Warner Bros. in LA. “The film that Baz tells you he’s making, is the one he actually makes,” asserts Walker. “Because of the meticulous attention to detail during production, the many looks from our sets and scenes transferred perfectly from our dailies into post.

48 JULY/AUGUST 2022 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

“Apart from integrating various VFX set extensions and bluescreen shots, or stripping-in a slightly different sky, there was not a lot to be done as regards the images themselves, although we add a little LiveGrain for texture here and there.”

Oscar’s buzz seems to start earlier and earlier these days, and there are already expectations from some of Walker being tipped for a statuette, the thought of which makes her chuckle and remark, “Good on them!”

“I had never done a musical, but I loved the challenge. Making Elvis was a very special experience, mainly because of Baz. He creates a special atmosphere, and everybody feels really involved with him and the filmmaking process. It’s a generous way to make movies.”

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CRIMES OF THE FUTURE•DOUGLAS KOCH CSC

DOUGLAS KOCH CSC•CRIMES OF THE FUTURE

TOMORROW’S WORLD?

Below: (l-r) BTS photo of DP Douglas Koch SCS with director David Cronenberg and gaffer ‘Fast’ Eddy Mikolic.

By Oliver Webb

M

asterfully shot in dark and amber hues, by Canadian DP Douglas Koch CSC, Crimes Of The Future marks director David Cronenberg’s triumphant return to the big screen, with a body-horror depicting a disturbing and bizarre world of post-human evolution, where ‘surgery is the new sex’.

The film is set in a grungy, bohemian, metropolisof-the-future, where people have become inured to pain and disease, and grow new and mysterious body parts. Extreme surgery has become a new artform, practiced by a duo named Saul Tenser (Viggo Mortensen) and Caprice (Léa Seydoux), who live in an abandoned industrial facility, and who host live performances to extract internal organs using a skeletal machine that slices-open human flesh as if it were ripened fruit.

The visceral film shares the same name as a previous film from the director, but was in fact originally written around 1999. It taps into

contemporary anxieties about climate change, pollution and generational friction. Cronenberg predicted that some viewers would walk out of its Cannes Film Festival 2022 debut, where it was in competition for the Palme d’Or, yet the movie still received a six-minute standing ovation.

“I never imagined that this film would come my way because David has had a 30-plus year collaboration with Peter Suschitzky as his cinematographer,” says Koch, whose credits include the award-winning feature Funny Boy (2020) and TV series Sensitive Skin (2014-16).

“They first worked together I think on Dead Ringers (1988) and Peter was unable to do this movie. Some of the people involved with this film knew of me and mentioned me to David, and he checked me out through a few directors and such.

We then met and had a lovely Zoom meeting – we knew a lot of the same people from over the years in Toronto – and we picked it up from there.”

As soon as Koch saw the script, he knew the

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title sounded familiar. “I typed it into IMDB and it came up David Cronenberg, 1970. So, I asked him about that, and although it shares the same title as his earlier film, it was not a remake as the story and concept were unrelated,” explains the DP. There was a lot of back-and-forth between Koch and Cronenberg during the pre-production process.

“Things were complicated by Covid, and we didn’t spend as much time in-person during prep as we might normally have, but were forever sending each other references we’d seen,” says Koch. “I was constantly collecting stills images, which was classic prep in that way, and discussing what was too dark for him (the answer was, there probably is no such thing!).

“I’d been so worried and concerned about working with him. I had spent a lot of time studying films he had made and that gave me a sense of what he might like and I pursued it that way. One thing I really loved about his work, and particularly with his film Spider (2002, DP Peter Suschitzky), was the use of wider lenses in coverage. I really like that

and the shots of Ralph Fiennes in that film. I asked if he’d like to do more of that and he liked the idea. I was obviously kind of sheepish and nervous!”

When it came to conversations about the look of the film, Cronenberg took a more classical approach.

“I asked about handheld shooting for instance,” says Koch. “David said ‘You won’t see any handheld shooting in my movies’. I also asked about Anamorphic lenses and he said that he doesn’t really like the look of them, or the artefacts that come from them.

“I soon realised that it was going to be very classic filmmaking, in that it was going to be more about compositions and lighting. I went back and rewatched a lot of his films to remind myself of what he seemed to be into, in terms of composition and lighting, just to get an idea. It did vary from film-to-film quite a lot, but I quickly honed-in on some basic things.”

Koch selected the ARRI Alexa Mini accompanied with Zeiss Master Prime lenses to shoot the film. DIT Petros Tsampakouris worked

alongside Koch during the pre-production stage.

“We would run around and I would take stills with my Sony A7S, shooting them in S-Log3, and then give them to Petros,” Koch remarks. “We would then play with them and experiment. As we got close to shooting, we set up a few LUTs, but nothing really too strong.”

Discussing his approach to capturing the surgery scenes, Koch notes, “The intention was always to get as much of the surgery in-camera as possible through prosthetic work. The surgical arms you see

If you can get sparkle in someone’s eyes… it’s amazing how dark you can play it

in the film were a mixture of live articulation with rods and full CGI. There were a few times when real ‘live’ work was fairly straightforward and other times when it was impossible.

“For the scene between Lea and Viggo, who was in the surgical bed, it was far too intimate to have a crew standing over them articulating the surgical arms, and it was wonderful for everyone on-set that the arms were completely CGI. The prosthetics crew did fantastic work with skin, etc., but in VFX there was the possibility to really blend synthetic and real skin perfectly and have wounds open or close surgically. In terms of lighting the surgery performance, we were able to hide strips of LEDs strategically inside the surgical machine to light Viggo.”

Speaking more generally about the lighting, Koch continues, “There is a harder light than I might usually have used on people in spaces. It was tricky at times because Viggo did the whole film in a sort of monk’s outfit. Sometimes he also has his mouth covered so you just see his eyes. So, it all became

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CRIMES OF THE FUTURE•DOUGLAS KOCH CSC

DOUGLAS KOCH CSC•CRIMES OF THE FUTURE

David is a very ‘Zen’ director

about eye-lights for him and playing around with small luminaires that were quite close to the camera and close to him. It is true if you can get sparkle in someone’s eyes, then it is amazing how dark you can play it. You really do still feel emotion from their eyes. That really played into things for sure.”

One of the more challenging locations to light involved a ship’s graveyard, as Koch details, “There were these freighters that had been ploughed-up onto the shoreline. It was interesting because off to one side was this gigantic oil refinery, or chemical complex. So, there were various angles with these big, ruined ships that looked amazing ​silhouetted by the lights of the refinery.

“However, David didn’t want to see a fullyfunctional industrial site like that; it didn’t fit in our strange and barely functioning world. My plan was to get some kind of a barge with a generator and at

least one big light. In this case, an ARRI 18K to light up the airglow in behind these big hulking ships.

When we went to scout this place at night, there was a rising, almost full moon that was in fact backlighting the air when we were there. It kind of illustrated the point of how interesting something like this could be. We used a lot of ETC Source Four ellipsoidal fixtures, with patterns and break-ups in them, to create little patches of light. That way we could selectively light bits of these ship so you could see just these big hulking masses and then you would just see little hints and bits of them. It worked really well.”

Crimes Of The Future was shot on-location in Greece over a period of six weeks during August and September 2021. “The film is set in this dysfunctional, dystopian kind of place. You are not sure when or where it is. You never see any

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cars, for example. Certain things you see are very anachronistic, and there are certain things that are quite futuristic. It is quite a mix,” says Koch.

“In the exteriors you see lots of graffiti everywhere in the alleys, which is typical of lots of big cities. We basically capitalised on that. I would describe Athens as a very ‘sodium vapour’ city.

It is very amber at night there and I played with variations of that and showed them to David, where we could kind of swing them into more yellows or greens by some trickery. In the end, he was most happy with almost what you naturally got on the cameras, the ambers and the warm tones.”

Koch concludes. “David is a very ‘Zen’ director.

The crew were really thrilled to be working on one of his movies. He obviously has a huge fanbase. The story is very unusual, and it is a cerebral piece, and the shoot was a real pleasure and joy.”

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MANUEL DACOSSE SBC•PETER VON KANT

PETER VON KANT•MANUEL DACOSSE SBC

TENDER MERCIES

By Oliver Webb Below: BTS shot of Manuel Dacosse SBC filming Grace Of God.

A

dapted from Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s stylised, theatre-esque film The Bitter Tears Of Petra Von Kant (1972, DP Michael Ballhaus ASC), Peter Von Kant marks director François Ozon’s second adaptation from the renowned German filmmaker’s canon, after his stage-to-screen rendering of Fassbinder’s play Tropfen Auf Heiße Steine into Water Drops On Burning Rocks (2000, DP Jeanne Lapoirie AFC).

In contrast to Fassbinder’s original Sapphic, psychosexual melodrama, Peter Von Kant switches the genders of the protagonists. Petra, now Peter (portrayed by Denis Menochet) serves as the brawny central protagonist of Ozon’s story, with elements of Peter’s demeanour supposedly based on Fassbinder himself.

Peter is a famous film director, living with his slavish amanuensis Karl (Stefan Crepon). After meeting a young actor, Amir (Khalil Ben Gharbia), through his friend Sidonie (Isabelle Adjani), Peter falls in love and offers Amir a place to stay and an avenue for breaking into the film industry. Much like the original, the story is a chamber-piece, with its multiple acts confined entirely to Peter’s apartment. Hanna Schygulla (who played Karin in the original) stars as Peter’s mother.

Exploring themes about ageing, mortality, sex, loneliness and sadism, and brought to life in colourful hues by Belgian DP Manuel Dacosse SBC, Peter Von Kant was nominated for the Golden Bear at the 2022 Berlin International Film Festival, where its homage of one filmmaking maestro to another was widely praised.

“Five or six years ago, François called me about a film that would turn out to be the first movie I ever shot in France, and our collaboration started that way,” explains Dacosse. “I shot two movies with him, L’Amant Double (Double Lover) (2017) and Grâce A Dieu (By The Grace Of God) (2019). After the

the Cooke Varotal 18-100mm T3 and Panavision SLZ11 24-275 mm T2.8 lenses. I shot on the

second film I decided to take a break, as François shoots very fast. He’s prolific, and every year he is shooting something. He shot two other movies with Hichame Alaouié SBC Summer Of ‘85 (2020) and Everything Went Fine (2021), and called me back for Peter Von Kant.

Alexa Mini because I really trust it and know I can push it to the limit. There was a discussion about shooting on the Sony Venice, but I don’t know the camera so well yet.

The film, a single camera shoot with Ozon operating himself, was made over a period of four weeks, and was shot on a set that was constructed inside an old school the suburbs of Paris.

“It was really a small budget for François, around €2 million,” remarks Dacosse. “There were only two exteriors to shoot, one street behind the building and then the exterior of the building. The main room itself was very big, and it was cool to work in there. The only problem was that it had a huge window and sometimes the sun reflected in from another building opposite, so I had to fight quite a bit to balance that and protect the light.”

An additional, and interesting, proposition for Dacosse, was that Ozon likes to operate the camera himself. “François loves being at the centre of the set

I had to fight quite a bit to balance and protect the light “François wanted to take a fairly different approach to this film, in that the gender of the protagonist was switched, and wanted me to shoot this film for him, because I understand and know his work process.

“He also wanted it to be very colourful, and certainly more colourful than Fassbinder’s original film. I think that’s why he chose me for this project when you consider our previous work together.

Working with François is quite simple because he has always has a really strong idea of what he wants – the concept and vision of the production design – and then you just have to follow him.

“During pre-production, he showed me a lot of movies made by the master German filmmaker Douglas Sirk (1897-1987), who was, of course, a big influence on Fassbinder. That was the initial approach to Peter Von Kant,” says Dacosse. “Obviously, François is a big fan of Fassbinder’s work, but I didn’t know his work so well, so he also pushed me to look at more of those films.

“I watched the original The Bitter Tears Of Petra Von Kant during prep, shot by the renowned DP

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Michael Ballhaus ASC. When you look at the movie, it’s a really character-driven piece set, filmed almost entirely in a small set, and there is even a shadow of the camera. We had a huge set compared to the original. We also had a glossy wall to contend with in terms of the light and handling reflections.”

Dacosse selected ARRI Alexa Mini, shooting at 160 ISO, fitted with zoom optics for the production.

“François loves to work with zooms, so I went with

and being close to the actors. He also gives pace to the shoot. So my work was very much focussed on making it easy for him to move the camera around the actors, and frame the action with the appropriate freedom and lighting.

Working with François is quite simple because he always has a strong idea of what he wants “I was never far away, observing with a monitor, and course we had the first AD on the-set, but you always listen to François. Some directors work with a monitor, but François is the only one I know who operates the camera.

“However, the main problem when François is framing is that he is often ready-to-go, but you are not always ready with the lights, so you have to work quickly. But I love working quickly and enjoy a good pace on-set. I think he enjoys working with me because we don’t talk so much and I just follow him. I don’t ask too many questions. That works well for both of us.”

One shot proved to be particularly challenging to complete, as Dacosse notes, “There

was a long take, when we start in the bedroom and finish in the living room, and we have to pass through a corridor. The bedroom was full of sun and in contrast, the corridor was really dark and the living-room was in shadow. This meant we had to played with the T-stop on the camera and had to put some 18k outside of the living room, as there were occasionally clouds and so we had to adjust strength of the 18K during the take.”

As for injecting colour into the film, Dacosse says that, “For the night scenes, for example, François wanted a very blue full-moon atmosphere, so I really pushed the blue which added a feeling of warmth.

The whole movie in that sense is very colourful, except for the daytime scenes, which were more problematic. I tried to bring some colour to those scenes in a variety of ways, such as in the design of the wall and other things like that in the set dressings and design.”

Dacosse says he paid great attention to lighting the actors, such as Isabelle Adjani, who despite being 60, looks as if she could be in her 30’s

in the film. “I balanced strong front light on them with strong colour behind to always keep a

good contrast, with full red and full blue on the walls, an ARRI SkyPanel behind the actors, whilst being careful with the gloss of the wall.

“The while lighting set-up was controlled from an iPad, so when the camera was moving I could dim some lights, or push up others lights to maintain the contrast. This proved challenging sometimes, but new lighting control technology it is very helpful because you can change the illumination during a shot and you don’t really feel it changing. All of the lighting gear we used came from TSF France.”

Recalling his experience and learning experience of shooting Peter Von Kant, Dacosse concludes, “Don’t be afraid of the dark. Always follow the director. Trust them when they push you to take risks and follow your instincts.”

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LE OTTO MONTAGNE (THE EIGHT MOUNTAINS)•RUBEN IMPENS SBC

RUBEN IMPENS SBC•LE OTTO MONTAGNE (THE EIGHT MOUNTAINS)

MOUNTAIN MEN

By Darek Kuźma

Covid, so when we arrived in Nepal, we travelled with donkeys for almost four weeks, shooting documentary-style, discovering the film along the way. It was obviously on top of what was in the script and what we discussed during the prep, but there was a lot of freedom in doing it that way. Also for our actor, Luca Marianelli, who plays Pietro.”

Aspect ratio was yet another thing they discovered along the way.

“We didn’t want to be overly-romantic, but the spectacular views begged for a widescreen treatment. We started prepping that way, but gradually realised a narrower frame would serve the story much better, so that the characters are informed by what surrounds them, but are not overshadowed by it,” notes Impens.

“We persuaded the producers to go with the 4:3 Academy aspect ratio and shoot spherically on ARRI Alexa Mini LF. It was perfect for the film’s visual grammar. We often see the characters stuck in their lives, so we found it interesting to have them stuck in the frame as well. The shots are mostly static, and when the characters move, they move in and out of the frame.”

There is camera movement in The Eight

B

elgian cinematographer Ruben Impens SBC followed his recent winningstreak with Felix Van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch’s mesmerising, Italian-language drama, The Eight Mountains.

Although Impens enjoyed the greatest international recognition of his career, with Julia Ducournau’s Cannes Palme d’Or-winning Titane (2021), he has been shooting compelling films for over a decade, lending his considerable cinematographic skills to tales that defy easy categorisation, but which invite repeated viewings.

Among them are the emotionally-charged films of Belgian auteur Felix Van Groeningen, with whom Impens initially worked in 2000 for the short debut 50CC, before shooting all of Van Groeningen’s subsequent features, including the Oscar-nominated The Broken Circle Breakdown (2012).

Impens was, hence, the only choice for Van Groeningen and actress-turned-director Charlotte Vandermeersch, when it came to translating Paolo Cognetti’s celebrated novel of the same name – about friendship, family and life’s poignant beauty – into meaningful images on the big screen. The Eight Mountains earned the Jury Prize at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, as well as five-star reviews for its rich, breath-taking and heart-breaking contemplation on the human capacity to love.

Some are born to sweet delight, whilst others are born to endless night in this decades-long story of the bond between two boys who grow-up into estranged adults, only to find that sometimes living in the unbearably ephemeral moment is the only purpose you get.

Pietro and Bruno first meet as 12-year-old boys during an idyllic summer in the mid-1980s in a small Alpine village under the clear blue sky. Their friendship becomes disconnected, but fate reunites the pair as adults, when they decide to spend the summer building a shack in the mountainous valley that will be their special place for reconnection.

“The beauty and the challenge of this project

was that it was not plot-driven. Little happens in terms of plot, yet a lot happens in how the story evolves,” says Impens. “The drama is in the way the characters lose track and then find each other again, only to realise that what they loved in one another is somehow gone.”

I wanted to embrace the mountains as a separate character… and longer lenses work better for this purpose So, how to best shoot an image-driven story that asks the audience for their patience? The answer: by taking your time and exploring the possibilities, almost as if in defiance to the way feature films are often developed in this day and age.

“Most of The Eight Mountains is set in the north of Italy, in the Alpine valley of Aosta. We went there to scout, and stayed for a while to discover the film through what the mountains would give us,” recalls Impens.

“Sure, we had to check a few boxes off of our list and plan for different seasons, but when we found a great area, we were ready to embrace its unpredictability. We considered that there would be differences in vegetation in spring and autumn

56 JULY/AUGUST 2022 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

at different altitudes, and that the blossom would come from the valley up. We really wanted to capture nature’s cycles.”

When Pietro and Bruno reconnect for the first time, rekindling their friendship and reliving the family traumas of their respective childhoods, they decide to build a stone hut in the mountains.

“In the beginning, the intention was to build the exterior in the valley we were in, and shoot the interior in a studio,” Impens explains. “But we realised along the way that we would not have that flexibility, because the weather changes so fast: you can be above clouds and three hours later be covered in thick mist.

“So we decided to build the whole set there.

That way, if there were poor atmospheric conditions, we went inside, and shot by candlelight or by a fireplace. We didn’t have a single day in a studio.

We shot on location even in winter. It was an experience that translated perfectly into the film.”

Starting prep in April 2021, the film went into production in the Italian Alps, the city of Turin, and then Nepal, over the course of seven months, before wrapping in December. The Eight Mountains refers to the octet of Nepal’s loftiest peaks, themselves enigmatic metaphors of earthly ambition and conquest. It is Pietro, always restless, who goes to Nepal to fulfil a lifelong dream and maybe – just maybe – find some inner peace.

“I don’t even remember how many shooting days we had, I lost track at a certain point. I’m sure it was more than 60,” considers the DP. “We couldn’t scout other locations because of

Mountains, for example in a motorbike scene in a city that was shot from a rigged car, but Impens was adamant on not distracting the audience with too much visual stimuli other than what is within the frame.

The same reasoning applied to how he shot landscapes. “I wanted to embrace the mountains as a separate character. When I shot Beyond The Steppes (2010, dir. Vanja d’Alcantara) in Kazakhstan, I realised that longer lenses work better for this purpose. There’s more to discover in a pan with long zoom lens than with a wide-angle lens,” he declares.

“I shot most of this film with Zeiss Supreme Primes with some softening filters. They worked wonders with the Alexa Mini LF for interior lighting set-ups, but the mountains I shot with an Angénieux Optimo 36435mm Full Frame.”

This approach enabled Impens to cover spectacular Alpine vistas with slow pans of Pietro, Bruno and other characters hiking through the wilderness, and to create shots that define them better than words ever could.

“We used drones to give more scope to their travels, and Steadicam for some following shots

when they reach a mountain peak, but we mostly shot handheld and played with sort of deframing people in 4:3 spaces. The advantage of this aspect ratio is that you can get creative with compositions.

Whether it’s a man standing very low in the shot with a mountain towering above him, or highlighting the red colour in Pietro’s gear and clothing against the nature’s greens and yellows and greys, the shots give you something to think about.”

Pietro and Bruno meet beautiful women, get married and go on with their lives, but they never seem to reach the purity of the bond they struck up when they were kids. Impens did not use many light sources for emotional and logistical reasons.

“The idea was to immerse the audience in their world and there isn’t much glamour to it, at least not in the way big film lamps work. Natural light enhanced by negative fill did most of the work outside, whilst the Alexa’s sensor along with the Zeiss Supremes, LiteGear LiteMats and DMG Lumière Mini Mix LED lighting, were more than enough for the interiors,” he notes.

“Charlotte and Felix were also conscious about the mise-en-scène. We either had a character sitting by an

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CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD JULY/AUGUST 2022 57

LE OTTO MONTAGNE (THE EIGHT MOUNTAINS)•RUBEN IMPENS SBC

Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden is the ultimate production facility and a first choice for filmmakers worldwide. Shaped by industry experts and open to all types of productions, it’s a place where state-of-the-art facilities meet worldclass service delivering everything you need to create the very finest film and TV productions. Home to 19 sound stages, a virtual production stage and a 150-acre backlot complete with exterior tank, as well as on-site set lighting and rigging services and post production facilities.

The advantage of 4:3 aspect ratio is that you can get creative with compositions

open door, or used the hut’s three windows to diversify the light when the weather conditions were favourable.

It was really simple stuff that grounded the story.”

The grade, done with colourist Veerle Zeelmaekers covering for Covid-stricken Peter Bernaers, turned out to be quite an intensive experience.

“You’d think the final grade was just about finetuning what was shot, but there were a lot of things to consider,” Impens explains. “Should we subtly separate different time frames in terms of light and colours? Should we re-grain some of them?

“We eventually decided to do it as one consistent thing, but it was a process. There were a lot of things to tweak, too. Like fading-out fresh greens to make it look like the end of a summer. Or, pushing a sunset to be a bit warmer so as to follow the emotions of a character. It didn’t help that we were selected for

Cannes main competition and had to rush with the DI while they were still finishing the editing.”

All-in-all, Impens is extremely satisfied with The Eight Mountains and the many offbeat choices they made to deliver the project as it is.

“I knew the novel before, when Felix told me about the adaptation, and I was a little terrified.

How to translate such a character and emotiondriven story, in which it’s hard to pinpoint where the tension and the drama come from? In literature it’s easier. But I think we managed to do it justice and make something of our own. The film just flows and you’ve got to let it take you to places.”

He concludes, “This was a completely different experience to Titane, or basically anything I’ve shot before. It was another way of filmmaking. I embraced that as much as I could. And I think I’d like try something like this again sometime.”

THE STUDIOS

SET LIGHTING AND RIGGING

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LEAVESDEN PARK BUILT BY FILMMAKERS FOR FILMMAKERS

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EUROPE•INDUSTRY LENS

INDUSTRY LENS•EUROPE

EUROPE… THE NEW HOLLYWOOD?

Almost every EU territory offers financial incentives for international producers

By Geoffrey Macnab

J

ump back in time to Hollywood in the late 1950s. Concerns are mounting inside the major studios about the number of new films being shot far away in Europe.

“Labour unions contend that between 35 and 50 percent of feature films turned out by American producers are made abroad,” the New York Times reported on October 4 1959 as the volume of what were then called “runaway productions” began to soar.

Hollywood epics such as Solomon And Sheba (1959, dir. King Vidor, DP Freddie Young OBE BSC), Ben-Hur (1959, dir. William Wyler, DP Robert L. Surtees ASC) and El Cid (1961, dir. Anthony Mann, DP Robert Krasker BSC ASC) were all filmed in Spain and Italy.

There were obvious reasons for the studios to set up camp in Rome and Madrid. Sound stages were cheaper to hire. And, if you wanted to stage chariot races or epic battles, armies could be commandeered and extras could be recruited in their thousands.

Flash forward to the summer of 2022 and you find what British Film Commissioner Adrian Wootton calls, “an unprecedented production boom.” Post-pandemic, the demand for content seems unquenchable. The US studios and the streamers, Netflix, Amazon, HBO and Apple to the fore, are fuelling a massive growth in production activity. In the process, Europe has been turning into the new Hollywood and is now arguably the centre of global filmmaking. France, Italy, Spain and the UK are all in the top 10 markets worldwide by feature film production between 2017 and 2021.

In spite of Covid, the UK has reported eye-watering statistics for inward investment production. The spend for film and high-end TV was at £5.64bn in 2021, as existing studios scrambled to expand their facilities, and plans were announced for massive new spaces.

Whether it is Disney at Pinewood, Netflix and Amazon at Shepperton, or Warner Bros. at Leavesden, the major US entertainment companies have been ensconcing themselves in the UK on a long-term basis.

Across the Channel, on mainland Europe, an extraordinary surge in production levels has also been

underway. In late May 2022, the legendary Cinecittà Studios in Rome (where Ben-Hur was shot) announced to the trade press that it was running at ”full occupancy” with a wide range of new film and TV series, everything from Angelina Joilie’s new feature Without Blood (DP Seamus McGarvey BSC ASC) to the latest art-house drama from Nanni Moretti, Il Sol Dell’Avvenire (DP Michele D’Attanasio), booked-in to shoot. A record 340 feature films were approved by the CNC in France in 2021, while German production spend reached a record high of €740mn in 2021 (source: European Audiovisual Laboratory).

There is more co-operation than competition… because there is so much going on Look around other major studios across Europe and it is a similar story. Long-established facilities, such as Bablesberg in Germany and Barrandov in the Czech Republic, remain very busy. Malta, famous for its water tanks, had hosted both the new Jurassic World: Dominion (dir. Colin Trevorrow, DP John Schwartzman ASC) movie and Ridley Scott’s Napoleon epic (DP Dariusz Wolksi ASC).

“The production boom is nothing that should have surprised us. It is all about the evolution of the internet,” suggests Pavlína Žipková, national film commissioner at the Czech Film Commission. “Simply put, the global increase in audiovisual production is due to the development of the internet as an entertainment distribution channel leading from the producer directly to the consumer.” As she points out, 4.42 billion people, or more than half of the globe, now use the internet, and are looking for filmed content to stream.

A hunger for audiovisual content has been fuelled

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yet further during the pandemic lockdowns.

“Our feeling is that there was a traffic jam in production over the last two years, due to Covid,” suggests Bas van Der Ree, the Netherlands film commissioner since 2014, who was earlier this year elected chair of the Association Of Film Commissioners International.

Even before Covid, though, the streamers had started to produce their own content, often in local languages.

A production boom across Europe was already well underway.

Industry observers have long talked about the “arms race” between countries in Europe competing to attract inward investment from the US majors and streamers.

There is a lot of soft money floating around. Almost every EU territory with the slightest interest in film offers financial incentives for international producers. EU state aid rules are intended to ensure a level playing field, but some countries have increased their rebates so that foreign producers can claim back 40% or more of their eligible “spend” wherever they are shooting. Regional film funds and film commissions have also sprung up to service foreign productions – and often to invest in them too.

Germany is one of the few major European filmmaking countries which doesn’t try to lure runaway production with strong fiscal incentives. Instead, the country offers modest rebates and funding through the

German Federal Film Fund and German Motion Picture Fund – but these are small by comparison with what is available elsewhere.

Some within the German industry fret that the country is losing out to its neighbours as a result. Others, though, point to the chastening experience 20 years ago, when, around the year 2000, many German media companies went public on the short-lived Neuer Markt in Frankfurt – and Hollywood took advantage. There was a period when German money was financing a large number of US studio blockbusters, but without obvious benefit to the local industry. The German companies originally raised billions through their public offerings, which allowed investors generous tax write-offs, yet the system backfired disastrously – the companies posted massive losses and the Neuer Markt was soon closed down.

Now, even without tax breaks as bait, Germany is attracting significant amounts of international production.

“Word has spread that you can get very good skilled personnel in Germany, and there are great places to shoot good films in Germany,” points-out leading German producer Peter Hartwig, whose recent credits

include the multi-award winning Netflix show System Crasher (DP Yunus Roy Imer).

“A big part of production for the streamers is also produced by independent German production companies,” agrees Simone Baumann, managing director of promotional outfit German Films. “That’s why on, one hand, they are benefiting. They have more projects, more turnover.”

The downside is a looming skills shortage crisis.

Equipment and studio space are both at a premium.

In Germany, producers require a lead-time of at least a year on any new project to ensure they can find the facilities and personnel they need. Streamer production has become part of everyday life. The platforms’ overall production volume is large and gives many filmmakers long periods of work.

“That’s not a bad thing in itself either – people have good things to do and can pay their rent,” Hartwig observes. The other side of this coin, though, is that costs are shooting up. The streamers are putting talent on longterm contracts. That takes them away from independent producers.

“Recession, inflation, high energy and gasoline costs are having a significant impact on production costs.

Fees are rising over-proportionally and supply is driving demand,” Hartwig adds.

Almost every part of Europe is facing the same squeeze on resources. The challenge facing the region is how to service all those big US studio and streamer projects, whilst also ensuring local filmmakers have the resources to make their movies and build their businesses too.

Striking this balance has always been a priority for Carlota Guerrero Bernaus, manager at Catalunya Film Commission. Like everywhere else, Catalonia has seen rates of production shoot up, but Catalan films themselves are now increasingly visible on the international stage. Director Carla Simon’s Alcarràs (DP Daniela Cajías AEC) won the Golden Bear in Berlin this year, while Albert Serra’s Pacifiction (DP Artur Tort) was one of the contenders for the Palme D’Or in Cannes.

The streamers like HBO, Amazon and Netflix have shot their big international projects, for example Game Of Thrones prequel House Of Dragons, in Catalonia but they’ve also invested in local projects. For example, Marçal Forés’ Through My Window (DP Elías M. Félix)

Opposite: (clockwise from top) – a greenscreen set-up at Studio Babelsberg, Berlin; Sir Ridley’ Scott’s Napoleon; Through My Window; and Cinecittà Studios, Rome This page: (clockwise from top) a street setting at Cinecittà Studios, Rome; Alcarràs; Pacifiction; two views of Studio Babelsberg, Berlin

filmed and produced in Catalonia, is currently one of the most popular non English language titles on Netflix.

“It was commissioned by Netflix Spain and has travelled incredibly well globally,” Guerrero Bernaus points out. “So far, we’ve managed to balance between local and international production. It’s true that at certain periods, it is a bit tight, but we’ve been lucky enough to be able to help people make it up through the ranks of the production hierarchy…I am not saying it is super-easy, but we are managing.”

As Europe adjusts to what is expected to be longterm production growth, new facilities are being built everywhere. Training initiatives are also being hatched.

If enough is invested in research, talent development and better facilities now, public funders hope that local industries will become robust enough to survive when, and if, the inward investment dries-up. Major companies like LucasFilm and Warner Bros are prepared to invest in training programmes for the simple reason that it’s in their interest to do so.

When indie producers work for the streamers and studios, it’s generally on a gun-for-hire basis: they’re paid generously, but don’t own the underlining rights to the projects. That’s why many see it as vital to ensure that European producers don’t have to rely exclusively on their Hollywood patrons, but also make film and TV dramas on which they own the IP. At the moment, as Europe begins to look more and more like the new Hollywood, there is obvious camaraderie between different filmmaking regions.

There is enough work for everyone.

“I would say there is more cooperation than competition,” suggests Guerrero Bernau. “There is space for everyone because there is so much going on. We will see what happens if the production boom slows down and we need to fight for projects. Now that there is an abundance of projects, I would say that we are all very good friends!”

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EURO CINE EXPO 2022•ROUND-UP BVB (BUNDESVERBAND BELEUCHTUNG & KAMERABÜHNE):

SHOWSTOPPERS ...

As the national organisation for set electricians, gaffers and grips in Germany, the BVB (Bundesverband Beleuchtung & Kamerabühne) works closely with other industry associations to support education and training for its members, so they can knowledgeably handle the latest technological advances in the field.

A new trend on-set is the use of telescoping forklifts, which are being increasingly used in addition to cherrypickers. In order to make sure that these machines are operated only by qualified staff, the BVB financially supports its members in on-going vocational training.

The association has also amended the contracts of lighting technicians so that they may not be held responsible for the electro-technical security of the entire set. Most recently, the BVB is developing a workshop that deals with the new requirements for green film production.

LEITZ:

The renowned lensmaker announced Elsie, a new series of full-frame fixed focal lengths in 2021. The name of the series is a reverence to Elsie Kuehn-Leitz, a philanthropist, patron, lawyer and daughter of Ernst Leitz II. The Elsie Primes offer high optical quality that doesn’t quite match that manufacturer’s top-of-the-line Thalia series, but the Elsies are less expensive and also smaller and lighter.

Leitz covers a focal length range of 15 to 150 mm with the Elsie series. Leitz has announced a total of twelve Elsie lenses, and the first seven are scheduled for launch this year. Rainer Hercher, Leitz’s managing director, emphasises that the lenses feature T 2.1 almost across the board, deviating only in the extreme focal lengths.

Designed and manufactured in Germany, the Elsie lenses feature a warm look and high resolution for which other Leitz lenses are known, according to the manufacturer.

Offered with an LPL mount, the Elsie lenses support Cooke/i and LDS-2 lens interfaces, and are designed for the lower flange depth of the LPL standard, which allows for greater design flexibility and higher performance without taking mechanical or optical properties to extremes. Leitz says the lenses are nearing delivery.

Reporting by Christine Gebhard, Gerd Voigt–Müller, Birgit Heidsiek and Dylan Bruce.

T

he inaugural Euro Cine Expo took place in Munich on 1st and 2nd July 2022. During the two days of the exhibition, where 2,800 visitors registered to attend, over 100 exhibitors from countries around the world presented their latest innovative technologies for cinematography and filmmaking.

CVP: The exhibition itself, at the Zenith, near MotorWorld, was complemented by an extensive programme of seminars and panel discussions, taking place in the adjacent Kesselhaus, during which leading cinematographers – including triple Oscar-winner Vittorio Storaro AIC ASC and leading German DP Armin Franzen – plus technology and industry experts passed on their incredible knowledge and inspiring insights. The nearby Kohlebunker hosted networking events.

CAMERA, LENS AND GRIP: ARRI:

L

ittle surprise that Munich-HQ’s ARRI was one of the big draws at the new. The focus at the booth was, of course, on the new Alexa 35 camera. This S35 camera offers 4K resolution and is equipped with a newly-developed sensor in 4:3 aspect ratio.

In addition to high image quality at 4K and 120 fps, ARRI highlights the Alexa 35’s new camera’s 17 stops of dynamic range, as well as its high ISO sensitivity up to 6,400 ASA and Enhanced Sensitivity mode, which is said to allow for a clean image even in low light.

What many customers find particularly impressive is the rich colour reproduction provided by the camera’s new Reveal Color Science. ARRI itself is confident that the new camera, including filmic textures, will delight filmmakers with exceptionally natural, cinematic-looking images. Ease-of-use, robust design, new accessories and a completely new mechanical support system round out the new Alexa 35 platform.

ARRI’s other new product offerings included Trinity and Artemis stabiliser systems. ARRI has completely redesigned these and was showing version 2 of each system. A quick and easy upgrade allows the purely-mechanical Artemis 2 to be transformed into the hybrid Trinity 2, which adds electronic stabilisation for even more movement and perspective.

About 80-percent of the second-generation systems’ components are shared between Trinity 2 and Artemis 2, illustrating ARRI’s modular approach. However, the new modular system has been redesigned down to the smallest details and now offers improvements in camera motion, connectivity, power management, user interface, balance options and product longevity, ARRI elaborates.

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BAND PRO:

A

Euro Cine Expo will return next year, and dates for the second edition of Europe’ leading expo for cinematography will be announced soon. Here are some of the highlights from the 2022 edition... and see Shooting Gallery for Euro Cine Expo 2022 extras!

mong other things, Band Pro showcased new products from Angénieux and presented the Optimo Ultra Compact 37-102 zoom lens, which recently became available.

Angénieux also has Optimo Primes in its line-up; according to the manufacturer, they capture the “distinctive Angénieux look” in a complete prime lens set. The complete set of these full-frame prime lenses includes 12 lenses that are fast at T 1.8.

The manufacturer has developed a very special innovation for this series with the ‘Integrated Optical Palette Technology (IOP)’. IOP allows some lens elements to be exchanged, including the rear filter. This means that rental houses can adapt the lenses for their customers’ particularly demanding productions - and ultimately they can take the whole thing to the extreme with special, completely customised filters. Currently, the three aperture elements Triangle, Oval and Nine Blade Iris are available for IOP, as well as a Vintage Rear Filter. Further elements are to follow successively.

Having just opened its new facility in Belgium, to cater for customers across Europe, CVP took over the main stage at the Expo, and put on a tremendous, handson display of the newest production technologies. Camera solutions included those from leading manufacturers such as Sony’s Venice 2, FX9 and HDC F5500, ARRI Mini LF, Red’s V Raptor and Komodo, Canon‘s C300 MKIII and DJI Ronin 4D. The CVP Lens Bar featured an impressive display of new and used lenses from brands such as Angénieux, ARRI, Atlas, Canon, Cooke, DZO, Fujinon, Leitz, Sigma, Tokina, Tribe7 and Zeiss. The monitor wall display allowed attendees to view over 30 of the best monitors the industry currently offers, ranging from 5” to 31”, all displayed side-by-side and synced with the same imagery via a video router to enable like-for-like comparison.

CVP has also collated the most recent developments in camera moving gear including wearables, such as Easyrig, Ready Rig, Tilta, remote heads / stabilisers from ARRI, DJI, Freefly Systems and, grip kit in the form on Flowcine and Movmax, as well as the new DJI Ronin 4D.

GFM – GRIP FACTORY MUNICH:

Munich-based GFM presented several interesting innovations and revisions to existing products, which, according to the manufacturer, are constantly being incorporated into the product range.

For its cranes, GFM now offers The Swivel, which provides a smooth, quick change of camera position from high-to-low or bottom-to-top in seconds.The Primo Dolly has been significantly improved and can also be supplemented with the new Swivel. This means the Primo Dolly can now be used in an even more versatile way.

Another highlight was the Slider system, which features enormous stability. The modular system can be used largely without tools, and can easily support even the heaviest camera set-ups and move them smoothly across the slider. The slider is available in eight lengths and its modularity allows it to be used in countless setups. It is also quiet, smooth and stable.

The interchangeable rails are drilled with 3/8” holes spaced 1” apart, allowing for easy attachment of accessories. The slider is relatively lowprofile and can also be used extremely low, even directly on the ground.

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ROUND-UP•EURO CINE EXPO 2022 PANTHER:

Munich-based grip developer, Panther, showed several products from the range, including the S-Type dolly, which is powered by an electric motor.

Among several other features, it is characterised by the fact that it can easily be driven directly on rails, and it is not necessary to lift it onto the rail. Various wheels allow clean dolly rides with low rolling resistance.

With Easy Rider, Panther has developed a vehicle that can be used in the standard Rickshaw version, which is operated manually. Using another module, it is possible to turn it into a vehicle reminiscent of a trike, powered by low-noise electric motors. In this mode, the operator can accelerate the ride by thumb lever, or even change the direction of travel. There are various add-on parts and conversion options. The Easy Rider can also be moved quite quickly at 30km/h if required.

The manufacturer has completely overhauled the Panther Tower, which now offers a whole new dynamic. With electrically driven rides and remote control, the tower is particularly well suited for dynamic car shots with a remote head.

RED DIGITAL CINEMA:

The company showed the V-Raptor XL, a new model of this 8K camera, at the Teltec and Xinegear booths. The V-Raptor XL uses the same 8K VV sensor as the V-Raptor, but is slightly larger, offers additional I/O and internal ND filters.

Thanks to the 8K multi-format sensor, it’s possible to shoot in 8K with the camera or create S35 footage in 6K as well. This makes the camera tremendously versatile. The camera’s sensor offers a dynamic range of over 17 stops. In addition, the camera can record Redcode Raw, which means you can record 16-bit Raw and use the appropriate Red workflow for it.

Unfortunately, the V-Raptor XL could not be seen in operation at the Euro Cine Expo, it was only shown behind glass. The naked body of this camera is priced at $39,500 US dollars (for comparison: the basic version of the V-Raptor costs €23,950 euros). In a ready-to-shoot version, the V-Raptor XL is to be offered at a price below €50,000 euros.

RONFORD-BAKER:

The Academy Award-winning manufacturer of tripods and fluid heads, relies on its philosophy of designing durable products. The Ronford Baker Heavy Duty Tripod, with a telescoping 4-tube design, has not changed much since its development in the early 1970s, but it has been improved with a new foot casting and a larger spike.

The internationally-patented Billet Bazooka provides a stable build platform, but cameras like the Sony PMW-F55, the Alexa, and the Red Epic still need a solid head. The Atlas, a completely new design for a tripod head with a patented counterbalance system, is suitable for camera packages weighing up to 50Kg. It incorporates 15 stages of fluid power, and both pan and tilt can go into ‘free’ mode. The Atlas40 Fluid Head offers seven stages of fluid power, whilst the new modular Atlas7 Fluid Head has a third axis set-up with a roll-over wheel.

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EURO CINE EXPO 2022•ROUND-UP P+S TECHNIK:

P+S Technik has added the Technovision 1.5x series of Anamorphic lenses to its lineup, offering the special, classic look of Technovision lenses from the 1970s. In addition to the five focal lengths already available (40, 50, 75, 100 and 135 mm), P+S Technik showed two new telephoto lenses: a 150 mm with T2.5 and a 200 mm with T3.2.

In addition, a second series will join the already available lenses of this series: Technovision AproXima.

The special feature of the Anamorphic AproXimas is that the minimum object distance has been minimised for these lenses: objects that come within a minimum distance of 457.2 mm (1ft, 6inches) of the plane of focus of the respective camera can still be focused. In the case of the 100 mm lens in the Technovision AproXima series, this is two hand widths in front of the foremost lens.

According to P+S, the Anamorphic elements are placed at the front of all Technovision lenses, creating a unique anamorphic bokeh. High contrast and intentional flares define the character of this lens series. The AproXimas will go on sale at a list price of €25,800 euros each. Focal lengths of 40, 50, 75 and 100 mm will be manufactured, and the first units should become available in three to four months.

SCHNEIDER KREUZNACH:

Schneider Kreuznach used the stage of Euro Cine Expo to present Isco4all, a set for Anamorphic and spherical shots. With the lens set and the corresponding Anamorphic adapter, it is possible to quickly and easily turn spherical cine lenses into Anamorphic lenses.

Stand-alone spherical cine lenses are combined with a matching Anamorphic front adapter. The Iscorama 54 CU-1.5x adapter is the modern remake of a classic – with upgrades such as a 0.8 gear ring and an improved close-up range of 1.4m. The three compact cine lenses called Iscosphericals A+ with focal lengths of 43, 58 and 85 mm and a T-stop of 2.4, make up one part of the set. You get a special amber coating (A+) that produces very nice flares and complements well the vintage look of the Iscorama 54 CU-1.5x adapter.

The set is available with EF mount and retails for around 6,000 euros.

VANTAGE FILM:

This international developer and manufacturer of film lenses and full-service rental provider of camera equipment and film technology, is producing optical tools to complement its wide range of Anamorphic and spherical lenses. The Vantage One T1 spherical lens series is now available in nine focal lengths from 15.5mm to 120mm. The Hawk lenses are designed to enable filmmakers to translate their artistic visions into compelling visual statements.

Precisely-cemented optical filters and perfectly calibrated diopters, built with high-index Ohara glass, are available in every grade and size. The original Vantage BlueVision adds the distinctive blue horizontal streak, whilst maintaining sharpness in the entire image. The colourtransition within the streak is very natural and mimics the coating flares of older American anamorphic lenses. Designed by the Hawk optical laboratories, the original Vantage Bethke filters refract light in unusual ways. Well worth a look!

SONY:

Over at the Sony stand, there were a host of new products, including the muchanticipated Sony Venice 2, FX line of cinema cameras, plus some newer lenses in the G-series range.

Being Sony’s first expo in Germany for a long time, they were keen to put on a show for the visitors. This was quickly achieved, with Sony being the only stand to present a small, virtual production stage.

With a set built in the fashion of a coffee shop, Sony showed the impressive capabilities of their B-series Crystal LED wall. This is a virtual wall that features a 1.58mm-1.26mm pixel pitch, an anti-reflection matte finish and higher brightness than it’s C-series counterpart, in order to showcase astonishingly realistic images with a wide colour gamut. Visitors were invited to operate the original Sony Venice, with the Crystal LED Wall proving its ability to work with transparent and reflective elements, something greenscreen has historically struggled with.

ZEISS:

Zeiss introduced a new 15-mm lens, the latest member of the Supreme Prime family. At T 1.8, it is very fast and completes the series, whose individual lenses are known for their light weight and a versatile look.

Zeiss now covers focal lengths from 15 to 200 mm with a maximum aperture of T1.5 to T2.2 with its 14-piece Supreme family. The new 15mm lens adds an extreme wide-angle fixed focal length to the lineup and offers and a maximum aperture of T1.8.

The manufacturer describes its Supreme Primes as having a “cinematic look” characterised by subtle and harmonious focus and warm and soft bokeh. The Supreme lenses are very popular. For example, cinematographers Armin Franzen and David Higgs relied on this Zeiss lens series in the third season of the Sky series “Das Boot”.

Another Zeiss innovation that could be seen at the booth was the CinCraft Mapper. Behind this is a digital service that provides frame-accurate lens distortion and vignetting data for the VFX industry. This data is essential for digital compositing and matchmoving to achieve the most realistic and accurate results.

Usually, so-called lens grids have to be recorded and processed to obtain this data. This is time-consuming and also error-prone. CinCraft Mapper now provides this data directly based on the metadata (lens type, focus distance, aperture) of the respective shot - with just a few clicks. Lost clip metadata can also be easily re-entered. This means a general simplification and acceleration of the entire compositing and matchmoving process.

TIFFEN:

As a leading American manufacturer of photographic filters, The Tiffen Company received an Academy Award for technical achievements for its production of high-quality, durable, laminated colour filters for cinematography.

Among the latest developments were the DJI Mavic 3 filters that enable drone pilots to enhance their images.

Another new product was the innovative Rifa LED solution that gives new life to legacy Rifa EX lights by updating them with the new state-of-the-art LED Bulb and Diffuser.

“You can keep your unit and convert it to LED“, says Danny Hallet, director of sales for professional markets. “The Rifa LED Bulb Retrofit allows legacy Rifa 55, Rifa 66 and Rifa 88 lights to be repurposed at a low cost with the latest LED technology. Saving you from reinvesting in new lights and providing a path forward for a price that is similar to the cost of a few traditional Tungsten bulbs. Plus, the LED bulb provides a much longer life.”

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POWER: CINEGREEN:

The Swiss-German company CineGreen premiered NXTGEN 25 and 145 mobile power solutions, based on Li-Ion battery technology. Whilst diesel generators on-set are polluting the planet by burning fossil fuels for lighting, base camps and catering, the CineGreen power unit is charged with electrical energy from the grid. It runs silently without producing fumes or heat and can even be operated indoors. The system, having already been successfully used by the construction industry in Switzerland, provides a stable power source with 25kWh and 145kWh and can be fully-charged in four hours.

“Due to its technical infrastructure, the unit can even cope with 150% overload because of the power distribution to the cells”, stressed Maher Maleh, founder of CineGreen Germany. Whilst diesel generators always produce a certain output, the battery solutions only provide the power which is actually needed. “This is an economic advantage because the system saves about 30% on energy” added Dr. Krzystof Drabik, Techno Economic Advisor.

EURO CINE EXPO 2022•ROUND-UP

LIGHTING: APUTURE:

In Aputure’s Light Storm range, the 1200D Pro was showcased in a four-light array.

This array is currently unreleased, but with four 1200W daylight LED heads, each capable of producing 83,100 lux at 3m with the narrow hyper reflector, it is guaranteed to pack a punch. The relatively new 1200D Pro is optimised for professional productions where powerful, high end LED’s are a must-have.

The Amaran line, which is more focused on prosumer content creators, the T2C and T4C LED tubes were popular at the show. These tubes support RGBWW colour tuning, as well as integration into Aputure’s Sidus Link wireless ecosystem.

Finally, the new Aputure MT Pro was in prize place at the front of the Aputure stand.

This light is an entirely new addition to Aputure’s LED tube family. It provides 7W RGBWW full-colour output, with 36 individually controllable pixels and a 105-minute battery life at maximum power. It also includes Lumenradio CRMX control for ultimate adaptability.

CHIMERA:

Standing tall at the Chimera stand was the DayLite Octa 7, a huge seven-foot octadome with a soft silver interior. This octadome has been handcrafted at Chimera’s HQ in Colorado and provides a brilliant soft light option for powerful HMI’s including the M18 and M40. The vents built into the octadome allow for efficient internal cooling for a 4KW fixture and it is compatible with Quarts / DayLite OP Rings. It comes with the options of full, half and quarter diffusion. The DayLite Octa 7 is shipping now. Alongside this new product was the time-tested Panel Frames and the Dinkum System’s brand.

DE SISTI:

The Rome based lighting company presented the “Muses Of Light”, a collection of visually striking bi-colour LED lamps. This family of LEDs was designed in collaboration with renowned cinematographer Vittorio Storaro AIC ASC, his daughter and architect Francesca Storaro, and De Sisti. This partnership is based on the ten geometrical shapes, following the concept of analogy between Primary Elements and Geometric Forms, from One to All. Notably, the final LED fixture in the series is the Aurea (The Circle), which is an incredibly powerful 2,400W LED lamp that features a narrow beam angle of 11 degrees. The combination of power and a narrow beam makes it the perfect fixture to use with mirrors and reflectors. Alongside this, a range of Vari-White/full colour fresnel and soft lights are introduced, widening De Sisti’s arsenal of fixtures.

DEDO WEIGERT:

A new line of LED hard lights were on show. These LEDs cleverly feature one model of ballast for each wattage of lamp, building upon the design of the classic Tungsten Dedolight heads. The 90W Bicolour DLED7N-BI was popular amongst visitors, featuring a linear and exponential dimming curve that goes as low as 0.1%.

Containing the new Neo-colour LED technology was the SETDLED7N-C+ lamp head. This is a cutting-edge RGB, Amber, Cyan and Lime LED hard light. It features extreme colour accuracy and utilises Dedolight’s long-standing precision optics.

Dedolight caters its products to a wide range of audiences, including professional film sets, commercial lighting and infrared lamp heads for the police force.

POWER GEMS:

Power Gems showcased a range of HMI ballasts. The portfolio included a lightweight, 12/18K, high-speed ballast that can operate any lamp in the range from 6kW through to 18kW, with 300Hz operation as standard.

“Most clients still work with HMIs”, said Patrick McGuane, director of sales at the company, which serves clients all around the world, including the big studios in Hollywood. “We look at the prior wattage of all available LED products. It is a competitive marketplace, but Asian products tend to really stop at 500W. At 600W, we are alone because the design starts to get a bit more complicated.“ Among the latest innovations is a new controller which is designed for LED fixtures. The PWM40 is a combined 3kW power supply and 40-channel LED driver for sound stage use. “We offer full-service, and we can do repairs too if required”, emphasised McGuane. Power Gems holds large stocks of factory replacement parts and spare PCBs if needed.

ARRI:

Along with the Alexa 35 camera, another highlight at the ARRI booth was a new Fresnel lens for ARRI’s Orbiter LED projector. The Orbiter Fresnel lens is a useful addition to the Orbiter open-face lenses already available in 15°, 30° and 60°. The new stepped lens produces a precise circle of light with a soft shadow.

The light output is comparable to that of ARRI’s L10 L-Series and True Blue ST2/3 fixtures with 2000W incandescent lamps. A few days after the show, ARRI also introduced new software for the Orbiter: LiOS 2. New modes and features now enable closer collaboration between the headlamp and camera.

ASTERA:

SWIT:

Worldwide manufacturer of broadcast and film-industry products, presented its ‘Solutions With Innovative Technology’ that cover monitor, wireless transmission, battery and lighting product lines. Among the new products was the B-mount, a new battery interface standard endorsed by ARRI. SWIT has developed a series of B-mount power systems. This includes the B-mount battery, B-mount fast charger, and the B-mount hot-swap plates for ARRI’s Alexa SXT/LF/65 and Alexa Mini/Mini LF cameras. Thanks to the B-mount hot-swap plate for the Alexa SXT/LF/65, the camera doesn’t need to be switched-off while the battery is being charged. The latest innovations include new DV batteries with USB-C and the normal 12V D-Tap, which can be used to power laptops, tablets and smart phones.

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Asteras showcased the new HydraPanel. This is a 17W beam-shaping, portable panel light that features RGB Mint+Amber colour tuning. It features six lighting modifiers and a large range of mounting options. The full-spectrum Titan LED Engine generates an impressive 1300 Lumen output whilst running on battery power for just under two hours. Furthermore, it is built in a solid waterproof housing. You can combine up to four of these panels, providing individual control of over six segments per panel.

An exciting new LED solution, the HydraPanel has just started shipping having only been launched in May 2022.

Alongside the HydraPanel were the ever-popular Astera Tubes, featuring the three sizes; Helios, Titan and Hyperion.

The new tubes now contain Bluetooth Bridge, a technology that Astera has integrated into products such as the NYX Bulb, PixelBrick and AX9. This allows you to connect your phone or tablet directly to the tube, without the need for an Astera Box.

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ROUND-UP•EURO CINE EXPO 2022 DOP CHOICE:

The new, aptly-named Fat Rabbit was a real eye catcher. Currently unreleased, this is DoPchoice’s largest softbox yet with 12 sides. It fits comfortably over LED fixtures as large as the ARRI Skypanel S360. The modular design of this soft box allows for a range of diffusion textiles with a number of sides to fit the Fat Rabbit. This is done by adjusting the poles and velcro tabs in the soft box itself.

DoPChoice also showcases its new Rabbit Rounder Universal mounting system, which allows you to mount a variety of DoPchoice Snapbags, Octas and Lanterns to a range of fixtures with the industry standard Bowens Mount.

EURO CINE EXPO 2022•ROUND-UP THE LIGHTBRIDGE:

The Light Bridge stand was consistently busy, with the company showing some new features in its renowned CRLS kits. The 2.0 version of the GO Kit comes with a pair of extra mounting pins, extending the grip options, and allowing you to rig additional mirrors in a variety of ways. The C-Drive, C-Move and C-Go kits were all lined-up at the stand. The effect of the mirrors was cleverly depicted with a miniature living-room set. With a selection of tiny mirrors you could play with, visitor’s were able to get an idea of the different reflective strengths and the changes in light they create.

The CRLS kits are rented out to a wide range of productions, including prosumer and professional. The company often sees the C-Drive and C-Move kits being personally bought by cinematographers due to their endless versatility.

PROLIGHTS:

Prolights had an impressive host of lighting fixtures on display. Popular was the EclPanel TWC, a compact 2x1 LED soft light that provides a beautiful, wide source of soft and precise colours. It allows for quick and accurate local adjustment of light through three rotatory knobs with three fully-featured modes: CCT with +/- green shift, HSI for total control of hue, saturation, and intensity and FX mode to access the onboard pixel cinema effects. This soft light comes with a wide range of filters and modifiers. The panel format now comes in a smaller compact design in the EclNanoPanel, as well as an unreleased larger format. Prolights caters to both high-end film and TV productions such as Bridgerton and James Bond, as well as theatre and music events.

ROTOLIGHT:

At the Rotolight stand, visitors were very impressed with how lightweight the AEOS 2 was without any compromise in power and durability. Also, the popular Titan X2 now features the new SmartSoft technology. This allows one to electronically adjust the light’s diffusion, focus and spread without the need for gels. Consequently, it was no surprise that people were excited for the debut of the SmartSoftBox diffuser for the AEOS 2 at the Euro Cine Expo. Rotolights have been used in productions such as Ozark, Ghostbusters: Afterlife, Dancing on Ice and 2022 Netflix Movie, Boo!

K5600 LIGHTING:

K5600 Lighting, a company that focuses on high-quality, bi-colour LED and HMI Units, presented its popular Alpha LED Line. Notably, the unreleased Spacebeam a300/a800 adapter was rigged at the stand.

This system concentrates the beam of an Alpha LED 300W or an Alpha 800W HMI to a three-degree angle, multiplying the output of the lamp up to four times. This results in an impressive 78,000 lux at three meters with the 300W Alpha LED. All the LED units have their own 300W ballast, however you can also run four on a 1200W ballast.

The company’s most popular kit, the Joker 800, drew lots of attention. These Jokers are found on a vast array of professional film sets and come available in three forms; Bug, Beamer and Zoom. Cleverly, the Joker LED and HMI fixtures share the same accessories, allowing for plenty of flexibility.

NANLUX & NANLITE:

Nanlux were showcasing a range of their trustworthy, powerful LED fixtures. This included the Dyno 1200Cs and 650Cs. These soft lights have a variety of colour modes, such as HSI, RGBW, Gels and XY options. Alongside the soft lights was the popular Evoke 1200, a powerful 1.2kW daylight LED COB, comparable to that of 1.8kW PAR or 2.5kW HMI Fresnel.

Alongside these fixtures was the newer TK line. Perfect for TV, film and broadcast applications, these slimline LED soft-lights are energy-efficient and have a low-profile panel design. They are available as a compact 160W and 280W 2700K - 7500K bi-colour fixture or a more powerful 240W and 450W daylight unit.

With Nanlux covering the larger scale productions, Nanlite offer LED fixtures for the prosumer and content-creator audiences. Only a few weeks old is the Pavo Tube T8 - 7X. This is an LED tube with all the RGBWW features of the Pavotube II’s, but in a much lighter format. Alongside this was the brand new Forza 60C, an LED hard light equipped with an RGBLAC six-colour system. It has built on the strengths on the 60 and 60B with hardware and colour fidelity improved considerably.

LCA – LIGHTS CAMERA ACTION:

LCA is expanding, with outlets across Europe, and a real eye-catcher at the stand was the new Auroris overhead lighting fixture by LiteGear.

This full-colour, modular LED light source combines high-quality colour rendition and precision control. It is built with 24 large format pixels, creating a pixel-mappable source that can cover a 100-square foot area with just one fixture. Available for pre-order, it comes in square and rectangular components. The 3m x 3m Auroris X is ideal for overhead rigs, whilst the newer, unreleased, 1.5m x 3m Auroris V is perfect for floor-supported lighting setups and smaller overhead rigs.

The renowned Australian company, Creamsource were also showcasing their new LNX system, a rigging solution to mix any variety of its Vortex panels into a larger system consisting of multiple panels. The LNX system is a baseplate with pins on one side and rail clamp on the other, allowing for exceptional modularity and safety.

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OPERATING UNDERWATER•BRADEN HAGGERTY

BRADEN HAGGERTY•OPERATING UNDERWATER Main picture: Braden Haggerty shooting on Altered Carbon, photo by Herb DeWaal.

Opposite: filming on Pachinko, photo by Connor Lucas.

PLUCKY DIPPER

By Michael Goldman

D

espite the obstacles she overcame as a woman of colour in the largely male-dominated field of underwater cinematography, Vancouver-based Braden Haggerty has “found a satisfying corner of the market in British Columbia” as one of the most sought-after underwater camera operators.

Haggerty started in the industry first as an extra, then in stunts, then in safety diving and as a camera assistant, and now works routinely as an underwater operator on major projects in that part of the world. She has a long list of credits, including recent TV series such as Apple TV+’s Pachinko (2022, DP Florian Hoffmeister BSC/Ante Cheng), Netflix’s Breathe (2022, DPs Jon Joffin ASC/Alicia Robbins), and Disney’s feature Peter Pan & Wendy (2022, DP Bojan Bazelli ASC)

Haggerty emphasises that none of this would have been possible without a solid base from Concordia University’s film production programme (in Montreal) and the mentorship of underwater cinematographer Pauline Heaton CSC, the first female underwater cinematographer in Canada to routinely work on major film productions.

“When I went to film school, I worked in the equipment room, and really got to learn the film cameras of that era,” Haggerty recalls. “But I also loved being in the water and had my diving certification. I wondered if I could put that together with cinematography, and a friend told me to look up Pauline when I went back home to Vancouver. She ran a company called Watervisions, and that is where I started my underwater training in the early ‘90s.”

Haggerty points out that underwater cinematography has evolved significantly

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since those days.

“Back in ‘90s, the underwater assistant worked in the water because you pulled focus right off the housings,” she recalls. “The system I use nowadays has the operator pulling focus from the surface remotely from a cable – they don’t even need to be a diver.

Instead of being hands-on the camera, the assistant is wireless at a distance.

“I was fortunate to work alongside the camera when I was assisting, and that gave me extra water time to hone my diving skills and be a part of what was happening underwater.

“Today, for the most part, when I’m in the water, there is the main cinematographer involved, and that person is working off an image sent from the underwater camera through a video cable to a calibrated monitor where they can manage their light levels and other things with the help of a DIT and gaffer.

I’m in the water operating the camera and helping to coordinate putting the shots together with the talent and

the underwater crew.

“I used to be a lot more involved with the lighting, as I would have to take all light meter readings. But really, for me, the biggest difference from when I started is that you now know what you have exactly – like focus and exposure – at the time of the shoot, just the same as on land, because it is all digital and you don’t have to wait for dailies to show up.”

How hard was it as a woman of colour to break into this specialised industry sector?

I have been fortunate – it has been very egalitarian for the most part. I remember early in my career, in the mid-90’s, being on Highlander, and I did not know either the director or the DP – both of whom were male. They came to me and said it was time to do the underwater sequence, and plainly said, ‘You tell us what to do.’

Underwater work is such a mystery to so many people, and they showed a lot of respect because

I knew what had to be done. But you have to be confident in what you tell them. As you get more experience, and things get more complicated, you have that behind you and you speak with more confidence. I think that is where the respect came from.

I’ve always gone about it with mutual respect. There may have been times, I suppose, where I was not hired, and a man was chosen instead simply because of gender. But here in Vancouver anyway, I haven’t really felt that way much.

But I do wish I had been more aggressive about promoting myself. When I talk to women in this industry, one thing I realise is we are not as good as we should be at self-promoting, even when we work really hard to show we know what we are doing. But it has changed for the better in terms of more opportunities for women in the last five years or so.”

Is your attention simply on the creative job of filming actors in the water?

I like to come in as sort of an underwater coordinator and help production in early meetings and come up with a plan of attack. What is the best-sized pool? What depth should the tank be? It can be hard to find tanks, so you have to figure out what body of water you can use. And then, you have to work through all the potential safety concerns.

Another big thing is working with the art department. If they don’t have a lot of experience with underwater sets, I can help guide them in a lot of very important directions, so you don’t end up with a set that doesn’t work. I’ve seen, in the past, sets made of Styrofoam or wood, which don’t sink. And certain materials can really impact visibility. You need to avoid those problems ahead of time, and it’s best to use your underwater expert to help coordinate those things. As much as possible, I try to be included in those conversations.

I’m also involved in making sure the tank is prepared correctly. We recently found a new fabric

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OPERATING UNDERWATER•BRADEN HAGGERTY Image – filming on Somewhere Between, photo by Herb DeWaal.

to black out a pool, for instance, and it’s been a real game-changer. It’s a fabric called Cinemattex, from Best Films in Vancouver. We love it, because it is easy to work with and does not degrade in chlorine.

Originally, it was used on Airwall partitions, but I think we are the first to use it in chlorinated pools for extended periods of time.

What about camera housings in the digital era? What system do you use?

I work pretty much exclusively with a HydroFlex housing. Everyone has their own system that they like, and some build their own. For me, the HydroFlex system, from engineer/underwater cinematographer Pete Romano, works great because it will take any camera, any time, and will adapt to pretty much any lens system. It’s a bigger housing, but I like swimming with something a little bigger that has more drag in the water, because it is easier to stabilise.

I didn’t want to get into making my own housing.

When you do that, as the years go by and productions get fancier, with more Anamorphic and cameras change, there are always modifications you have to make for each show. HydroFlex is already set-up to adapt the housing for multiple camera and lens combinations. Every time a new camera comes out, they build a new shelf for it, but it retains the same exterior structure.

What are your thoughts about the challenges of underwater light refraction and colour absorption?

Basically, you have a dome port and a flat port.

The dome port corrects for refractions in the water, so you have to understand how those work. For the majority of the jobs I do, we like to be on the dome port to avoid distortion. As you get into longer lenses, though, you probably are going to end-up on a flat port, because your depth-of-field becomes less forgiving with the dome as the lenses get longer.

So, you can get to a point where you end-up with the flat port, and you are also accommodating for when you go to Anamorphic lenses and end-up using diopters. Often, you are on the longer lenses to start, because your wide shots are done with those.

So, in those cases, you might be using the flat port more. Really, it’s just about working with those different combinations.

As far as colour absorption goes, I’m pretty-much a narrative filmmaker, and the majority of the time, we are actually in a tank rather than the open ocean, so

we don’t too often get to a depth where we have a lot of colour loss due to absorption. A lot of what I do involves the bright beam of light that everyone loves coming into the water from the surface. So deep-water colour rendition issues don’t affect my work too often.

If you are a nature or documentary filmmaker and are going to greater depths, then people often like to use filters, or video camera lights, or whatever other lighting set-up you have available, but that is more for an open ocean situation.

How do you approach underwater safety challenges?

I come from a stunt background and also have a background in water safety, so all that has been really helpful in figuring-out solutions that keep everybody safe. I’m very close to the lead safety person on each job, and we always have at least two to three regular scuba safety people that we work with on typical projects.

I get very involved in terms of liaising with those people and the stunt coordinator. I’ll tell them where I want to place my camera, so they know what skills to train the actors in — like scuba or breath-hold, and so on. But we always try to keep it shallow. If something has to go deeper, we’ll train them to do scuba, but if they aren’t comfortable, we’ll bring it up shallower.

Sometimes, if the job requires deeper work, due to the regulations in British Columbia, actors are required to become certified scuba divers, so ahead of time, the production will get the talent certified. But the point is, I’ll be involved in a lot of the conversations with the stunt coordinator and dive safety personnel, so that I can give my perspective on how we can shoot what we need for the director’s vision, and they can design a protocol for safety that fits, or if we have to change things for additional safety, we’ll do that.

But safety isn’t just in the water. In terms of camera, we deal with electrical, so we always have safety meetings about that. Once, I saw a hair dryer right over the water, melting wax. The safety coordinator asked me if I thought that device was properly plugged into the interrupter system, designed to automatically shut-

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off electrical circuits. I wasn’t sure, so that was an alarm. I followed the extension cable, and sure enough, it was plugged into house power. If it had fallen in, it could have electrocuted people in such a small body of water.

We made them change it, of course.

So, you have to be really diligent, and make sure all the safety suggestions are being followed in and out of the water. In British Columbia, the government safety board is called WorkSafeBC, and their regulations are very tight, especially where diving is concerned, so naturally, we do our best to maintain a good relationship with them.

PIXIPIXEL•ON TOUR

ON TOUR•PIXIPIXEL

JOINING THE DOTS

By Dylan Bruce

A

s soon as one steps through Pixipixel’s doors, nestled under the railway arches in Hoxton, London, you are confronted with the striking blue, pink and yellow dots that make up the company’s brand identity, and are quickly made aware that this is no run-of-themill rental house.

With an incredible amount of environmental consciousness and intrinsic philosophy for supporting DPs, gaffers and productions throughout the shooting process, this is one of the few UK independent rental companies to offer both camera and lighting hire.

For a bit of an origin story: the business was founded in 2002, predominantly as a photographic rental company, and functioned during the transitional time from shooting on film to digital. It wasn’t until 2017, when the former-founder of Direct Digital, Steve Knight, was brought in as chief operating officer, that the business shifted towards television dramas and commercials work. Within a few months of his arrival, Pixipixel supplied its first TV drama, the BBC’s Informer.

As Knight explains: “The whole business for us, is about relationships”, a statement that rings true, with Pixipixel having supplied equipment to a whopping one-hundred TV dramas since 2017, 55 of which have been since the coronavirus lockdown.

To name just a few: Sky Atlantic’s Gangs Of London 2, Apple TV’s The Essex Serpent, Netflix’s Anatomy Of A Scandal and Heartstopper. The list expands with a multitude of music promos, commercials and features including: Persuasion (2022, gaffer AJ

Walters), True Things (2022, DP Ashley Connor), The Courier (2021, gaffer Brian Beaumont), Boiling Point (2021, gaffer Max Hodgkinson), Ammonite (2020, DP Stefan Fontaine AFC & gaffer Andy Cole), and Mogul Mowgli (2020, DP Annika Summerson BSC).

From one railway arch, to six railway arches, the growth of Pixipixel’s camera branch in East London has been impressive to say the least. The three coloured dots that have come to depict the company’s brand

Pixipixel is no run-ofthe-mill rental house now stretch far down the road. Inhabiting a space of 6,500sq/ft, the camera branch is equipped with a large format projection room, testing bays, DaVinci Resolve grading suite and a multitude of other services.

As Vince Wild, director of cameras at Pixipixel, and ex-founder of Take 2, explains, “We cover everything from Super 35 through to large format, with an inventory of ARRI Alexa Minis, Alexa Mini LFs, Venice 2s and, very soon, the brand new Alexa 35”.

With a wide selection of cameras and grip equipment to choose from, Pixipixel has matched this with an even larger selection of lenses, both modern

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and vintage, with Wild going on to explain that, “It’s all about being able to offer a variety of looks and styles to cinematographers and directors.”

During our chat, he mentioned the venerable name of Renos Louka, explaining that, “Renos has brought a huge amount of his technical experience to the company”, and it wasn’t until I met Renos myself that I fully-understood the gravity of this statement!

On the upper level of Pixipixel’s camera department, the genius himself works diligently to create bespoke lens modifications and camera rigging solutions for the various DPs that step through the doors.

Louka arrived at Pixipixel with 45 years of experience under his belt. Starting his career at Samuelson Film Service, better-known as ‘Sammy’s’, where he met weird and wonderful challenges, such as fitting cameras to lawn mowers. He eventually moved and rose through the ranks at ARRI UK to become managing director. Having been at Pixipixel for the last four years, leading the technical development in the camera division, Louka explains the invaluable philosophy adopted early in his career: “If you want it, we’ll make it!”

Aptly named, and stylishly on-brand, Mechanix and Optix are two projects that Louka has been working for the last six months. Mechanix deals with all bespoke mechanical creations, such as a particular body-rig or custom grip cart over at the lighting branch. Whilst Optix deals with all things concerning lens modification, including the work he and the engineering team did on the popular TV Drama, Anatomy

Of A Scandal.

Together, Louka and cinematographer Balasz Boygo BSC HSC worked to modify several sets of lenses to achieve a particular, dream-like look for the show. This was so successful, that the lens went from being needed for a single scene, to all the flashback sequences in the series.

Owen Tanner, camera floor manager, also took the time to show me the grading suite and projection room at Pixipixel, something he is largely responsible for. This fantastic facility gives DPs the opportunity to instantly review camera and lens tests on a 55-inch OLED screen.

The success in Pixipixel’s innovation is plain to see, and the arsenal of lenses is quickly growing. As Steve Knight had mentioned to me earlier, “Renos is constantly buying donor vintage lenses, and he’s got a five-year road plan for how to rehouse all of these lenses”. With this approach, Pixipixel proves itself as a serious competitor in the lens rental business.

After an insightful tour of the camera branch, Steve Knight and Kristine Mladenova, the company’s marketing manager, took me on a trip to Pixipixel’s lighting warehouse in Tottenham. Just as the railway arches went from one to many, the lighting branch has swelled from a single unit to growing 75% in size, and now inhabits 25,000sq/ ft of North London land. There are around 25 trucks on the premises with 70 to 100 vehicle movements a day.

TV and film productions are managed by David

Oldroyd, an ex-gaffer, whilst commercial and music promo projects are managed by Fras Saied. This is supported by an extensive transport team, who work tirelessly to check delivery locations and routes. Nobody wants the surprise of carrying a lighting package up three flights of stairs!

Knight made it clear to me with a simple statement, “It’s very important the kit on our shelves is ready for rental”. This was quickly apparent as we stepped into the loading bay and I saw that all the lighting equipment is barcoded, and that immediate alerts are created when something is missing, damaged or needs to be removed from a certain order.

With a vast array of LED, HMI and Tungsten fixtures, plus stands and grip equipment, leaving the warehouse every day, it was obvious that this detailed approach has been a major component in Pixipixel’s fast-growing success.

Not only is the lighting branch a particularly well-oiled machine, the trucks and generators at Pixipixel now run on HVO fuel, an environmentally-friendly method of using hydrotreated vegetable oil instead of fossil fuels. This reduces carbon emissions by a massive 90% and, with around 25 trucks

If you want it, we’ll make it!

constantly on the move, this has a massive impact on reducing Pixipixel’s carbon footprint.

“Roxy Erickson, who’s been a friend for 15 years and our sustainability consultant for the last three, has always been key to me for driving this through,” says Knight.

The company’s proactivity in this department is particularly admirable, with the consistent monitoring of lighting consumables, the push towards LED equivalents for Tungsten fixtures, and use of renewable energy throughout the facility all aiding Pixipixel’s future goal of becoming a net zero carbon organisation by 2030.

This provides Pixipixel with a carbon neutral certification through offsetting, making it one of the first rental companies that can offer camera, lighting and generators to achieve this impressive milestone.

As I said goodbye to the team at the lighting branch, I got a sense of the real pride the company takes in all aspects of its work, from bespoke services to ensuring a greener future.

With the company’s imminent expansion on the horizon, the ellipsis of three-coloured dots that have come to depict the rental house take on a new meaning, as we wait with anticipation to see what Pixipixel have in store for us next!

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GAFFERS CAFÉ•MARTIN SMITH

MARTIN SMITH•GAFFERS CAFÉ

SHINING A LIGHT Age// Born// Training// Early career// Lives// Hobby//

Selected Filmography (as gaffer unless otherwise indicated) Mission: Impossible 8 Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning – Part One (2023) Top Gun: Maverick (additional photography) (2022) The Witches (2020) 6 Underground (2019) Mission: Impossible – Fallout (2018) Transformers: The Last Knight (2017) Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (second unit) (2016) Doctor Strange (second unit) (2016) The Brothers Grimsby (second unit) (2016) 13 Hours (2016) Mission: Impossible ­– Rogue Nation (second unit) (2015) It’s all about teamwork Lighting is all about building a team where everyone has a job to do and feels responsible for the end product. The aim is not about finding the most complicated, high-tech route to lighting a scene, but the simplest, best-suited and safest way. If we achieve that, then we’ve cracked it.

I’ve worked with best boy Lee Eldred since Harry

It’s great to try and stay half a beat ahead Potter And The Sorcerer’s Stone (2001), and he is my No.1. I wouldn’t do any films without Lee and the minute he retires, so will I. Gary Owen is charge-hand on the floor for 7am and Joe Chapman charge-hand for 8am. My rigging gaffer, seasoned pro and mate, is Greg Thomas. The madness and constant changes of any film never seem to faze him. HoD scaffolder is

42 Brighton, UK City & Guilds - Full Electrical Apprenticeship Electrician at Sovereign Electrical Shoreham-by-Sea, West Sussex Flying

the solid Steve Fell, and my practicals HoD, Joe Tooke, is the best in the industry, totally pioneering all the new technology.

Never has a position on a crew changed so much over the last five years as that of the desk op, and Dan Walters is without doubt the best programmer. He’s my connection to the world of lighting control. Colour science, lighting control and lighting design are at the forefront of everything I do, and Dan is the brains behind all of this. Without a good programmer these days, the gaffer is no-one.

Dead Reckoning Part One. It meant a lot of sleepless nights, and an insane amount of planning. My rigging crew, headed-up by Greg Thomas and local gaffer Working with DP Fraser Taggart on Elvis Pascal, supported by a talented mix of UK and Mission: Impossible movies local Italian crew, worked tirelessly for weeks, moving Fraser is the DP on Mission: Impossible – Dead tons of equipment by boats between districts.

Reckoning – the seventh and eighth films, shot backWe rigged a lot of different lights, all LED, to-back. We have great chemistry, built-up over the positioning them around the rooftops, on people’s course of more than ten second unit shoots together balconies and apartments to enable us to shine light previously, all large units in their own right. into the canals and streets below. Our practicals He’s simply the best DP I’ve ever worked with for department worked overtime, making replicas of the these type of movies. I try to take the burden off the DP authentic Venetian street lights. We made the glass when it comes to lighting, which is much easier when fixtures, brackets, 3D printed housings, and put them you already have an established relationship. If I can on our own scaffold poles so we could position them get 80% of the work done it gives the DP time to work where we wanted them, all wireless-backed and on the camera side and spend time with the director. fed by batteries. It was a massive effort done on an unprecedented scale.

The Mission: Impossible look Dan Walters and rigging desk op Simon Willett Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning is, without designed a system with a Grand MA2 console into doubt a stylish, elegant, cool and powerful-looking a backpack, transmitting eight universes, running off a movie. We have achieved this largely because small 12v battery.

This gave us full control on the iPad, of the open collaboration between MQ, Fraser, fully-mapped to over 70 CRMX receivers, rigged production designer Gary Freeman and all the main across important buildings for instant control of all departments. Flat is something Fraser and I are both fixtures.

Our shooting packages and generators were allergic to. We really try and create something, all moved around vast locations on boats. It was different and tasteful, but with excitement. super-exciting to do, but without doubt was the most Shooting Mission: Impossible in Venice stressfully challenging location.

Venice has never looked as good on-camera as in the sequences we shot for Mission: Impossible –

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On working with Tom Cruise Tom is the ultimate professional. He gives 100% and expects that from the crew. Tom and MQ have their own style of collaborating and at times things can change pretty quickly. Our lighting always needs to be totally adaptable and insanely fast. Basically I always try to think of the unimaginable as normally things do change and it’s great to try and stay just half a beat ahead.

Tom and I have a mutual interest in flying. On-set I mentioned to him I’d got my pilot’s licence and he suggested a trip in his famous WWII fighter, the P-51 Mustang which appears in Top Gun. So far I’ve flown in helicopters and a C17 cargo plane with Tom, and I’ll hold him to that Mustang flight!

Best new lighting kit Moving lights have come a long way and I use them a lot, when appropriate. The Ayrton range is IP-rated and programmable, with fantastic optics, good LED engines and great colour-mixing glass.

You can do fantastic work with them when rigged from a distance. They are also fast and extremely controllable, like a Source Four lamp on steroids; a useful high quality addition to the toolbox.

Gaffers have generally adapted well to new LED technology, and I’m constantly trying-out new lights.

We still use ARRI SkyPanels, but these have now been largely superseded with CreamSource products. I’m a big, big fan of the Vortex8 and Vortex4, which are low-power, high-output and have fantastic colour, as well as being IP-rated. We used them around Venice on Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning taking 100 to rig on rooftops, balconies, out of windows, on boats, up bell towers. We even paid for 20 of them to go up St Mark’s Campanile. This allowed us to light the roof on the adjacent Doge’s Palace for a beautiful scene.

I’m also a huge fan of Fiilex lights. Fraser was always on at me to give him a classic light with a lens.

The Q range from Fiilex, headed-up by the Q10, gives us everything we need in terms of superb colour control, and satisfies Fraser’s need for an old-school Fresnel.

I’m most proud of… … the growth of the International Cinema Lighting Society (ICLS). Founded during the first lockdown – by myself, Mike Bauman and Raffi Sanchez – and managed by our superb and tireless associate director, Bea Patten, the ICLS has grown into something quite formidable, and now represents a diverse and connected group of global technicians, dedicated to the promotion of the art and craft of film lighting.

Some solid advice!

It takes a long time to become a gaffer, at least if you want all the necessary knowledge to do a big movie. My advice is to take it slow – you’ll end up being more respected. I’d recommend becoming an electrical qualification, working as a trainee in a lighting rental house or with an experienced crew as a trainee for a few years. Work up through the ranks as a rigging electrician, then work on a few movies

Colour science, lighting control and lighting design are at the forefront of everything I do as a shooting electrician before stepping up to best boy, so as to learn about logistics, budgeting, labour forecasts, risk assessments and equipment rental costings. It took me over ten years working as an electrician and best boy on features and commercials before accepting gaffer positions.

Director Christopher McQuarrie says: I’ve known Martin since we worked together on Edge Of Tomorrow (2014, DP Dion Beebe ACS ASC).

That film was particularly challenging, with 36 pages of pick-ups in just 12 days (essentially shooting a third

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This page: Martin Smith pictured with Rob Hardy BSC ASC Opposite: Superstar Tom Cruise during production on the Mission: Impossible franchise.

of the film in one tenth of the schedule). There was simply no way the film would ever have been finished were it not for the combination of speed and talent we’ve come to count on from Martin and his team.

On Mission: Impossible – Fallout (DP Rob Hardy), Martin became an integral part of the core creative team and someone with whom I interacted as much as the cinematographer. He’s unflappably calm, gracious and fun to work with. He is also an exacting perfectionist with an impeccable sense of prediction.

There are simply no other movies more demanding or complex than those of the Mission: Impossible franchise, with scenes that are often improvised on the spot, regardless of their scale or complexity. Whatever we throw at them, Martin and his team are always ready – almost as if they knew what we were going to do before we did.

Cinematographer Fraser Taggart says: I’ve put up with Martin Smith for over ten years, but I love working with him now, haha. We have the greatest working relationship, it’s just one of those chemistries that worked from day one. He thinks ahead, and always has a plan in place before we have even discussed a set or location. But beyond his skills as a gaffer, he is the greatest pleasure to spend the long days and months with, great humour and great care for everyone, which means that he draws in the best crew that a team could have.

Cinematographer Claudio Miranda ASC says: I used Martin for London reshoots on Top Gun: Maverick. I sent him a drawing of what I had in mind and when I showed-up to the set, the rig was perfect. It was my first time working with him and he understood exactly what I needed. I had no hesitation asking him to gaff my next movie.

STUDIO LOCATION FEATURES COMMERCIALS DRAMA TELEVISION EQUIPMENT GENERATORS TRANSPORT SUPPORT INNOVATION SAFETY SUSTAINABILITY 12/01/2022 11:18

CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD JULY/AUGUST 2022 77

SHOOTING GALLERY•EURO CINE EXPO EXTRAS Here are some of outtakes from the seminar sessions at Euro Cine Expo 2022, and an evening at the ARRI Festival, which took place at ARRI’s impressive HQ.

Poseurs – Reegan Köster, ARRI corporate communications manager, with Ron Prince (l) and Alan Lowne (r), at ARRI Festival

Leaders – Dr. Matthias Erb (l), chair of ARRI Executive Board and Dr. Michael Neuhaeuser (r), ARRI executive board member, at ARRI Festival

New era – ARRI’s brand new 4K Alexa 35 cameras getting ready to ship worldwide

Green panellists – (l-r) Fabio De Sisti of De Sisti Lighting, Birgit Heidsiek moderator/Green Film Shooting, DP & Professor Matthias Kunert, Rainer Hönig of Betteries, Anna Piffl of P+S Technik, and Maher Maleh of CineGreen

Seminar Team – (l-r) Ron Prince, John Daly BSC, Ellie Johnson, Alexander Mayr, Robert Weisner and Florian Goller

A huge thank you to our exhibitors and visitors that attended the first edition of Euro Cine Expo held this July in Munich You made it a great success and we are already planning edition 2 for 2023! Follow us on our website and social media to keep updated.

Illuminating – Jakob Ballinger founder of The Light Bridge lit up the stage

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ARRI hero – Franz Kraus, former ARRI executive board member, with Alan Lowne, at ARRI Festival

Maestro – the one-and-only Vittorio Storaro AIC ASC speaking ‘live’ from his home in Rome

Brothers-in-arms – Ron Prince and DP Armin Franzen at the Red-sponsored Das Boot 8K seminar session

Cinegirl panellists – (l-r) art director Babett Pönisch, Cinegirl editor Fran Zerenghi, DP Sanne Kurz, Cinegirl ambassador/SMPTE board member/Anna Valley virtual production director Christina Nowak, DP Carla Muresan, DP Britta Mangold and DP/ Cinegirl ambassador Bebe Dierken 78 JULY/AUGUST 2022 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD

Lens flair – Flavia Calaianu, marketing & sales manager at Band Pro, presenting new Angénieux optics

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THE European event focusing on the technologies and craft of Cinematography

Uniting the film industry across 2 days of exhibition & seminars

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Virtually there – Berti Kropac (l) of Kropac Media and Sebastian Leske (r), European product manager news & cinematography, presenting Sony Crystal Wall technology

Happy days – GFM’s Derek Magee with Alan Lowne on the showfloor

Orchestrators – Claire and Rob Saunders of SCS Exhibitions, organisers of Euro Cine Expo

Photos courtesy of Christine Gebhard/ Gerd Voigt-Müller, John Daly BSC and Ron Prince.

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SEE YOU IN 2023!

For more information contact us on +44 1428 609 382 or email info@eurocineexpo.com