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M E M B E R P O R T R A I T

Richard Rawlings Jr., ASC

W W W . T H E A S C . C O M

TO SUBSCRIBE BY PHONE:

Call (800) 448-0145 (U.S. only)

(323) 969-4333 or visit the ASC Web site

y dad was a member of

the ASC, and his dad

was an amateur

photographer, so I had a

camera in my hand by the time

I was 6. Ive been reading

American Cinematographer

for as long as Ive been able

to read.

AC is a fantastic tool,

and the information in its pages

is priceless. The key to being a

true filmmaker is to not have an

ego, to share your ideas and let

others share theirs while

working together to make a

great film. You get that sense in

the magazine.

Cinematography isnt

just a job for me; its a lifelong

love of the art form. And its

been a lifetime love affair with

AC.

Richard Rawlings Jr., ASC

M

phot

obyOwenRoizman,ASC

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The International Journal of Motion Imaging

24 Monster Out of the BoxLarry Fong and J.J. Abrams revisit childhood adventures

with Super 8

36 Ring of PowerDion Beebe, ASC, ACS explores an adventurous palette

with Green Lantern

46 Shot Down in FlamesEvan Glodell and Joel Hodge kick DIY up a notch

with Bellflower

54 A Cultural CataclysmYu Cao envisions an infamous chapter in Sino-Japaneserelations for City of Life and Death

62 Ascending Cinematographys SummitThe ASC convenes an international conference

DEPARTMENTS

FEATURES

VISIT WWW.THEASC.COM TO ENJOY THESE WEB EXCLUSIVES

DVD Playback: Gaumont Treasures Vol. 2 A Clockwork Orange Thelma & Louise

On Our Cover: Joe (Joel Courtney) gets caught up in the militarys efforts to contain adangerous creature in Super 8, shot by Larry Fong. (Photo by Franois Duhamel, SMPSP,courtesy of Paramount Pictures.)

8 Editors Note10 Presidents Desk12 Letters14 Production Slate: Larry Crowne Mortal Kombat70 Post Focus: Prime Focus New York

72 Filmmakers Forum:Jim Matlosz76 New Products & Services80 International Marketplace81 Classified Ads82 Ad Index84 In Memoriam: Gerald Perry Finnerman, ASC86 Clubhouse News88 ASC Close-Up: Bruno Delbonnel

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36

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OFFICERS - 2010/2011

Michael GoiPresident

Richard CrudoVice President

Owen RoizmanVice President

John C. Flinn IIIVice President

Matthew LeonettiTreasurer

Rodney TaylorSecretary

Ron GarciaSergeant At Arms

MEMBERS OF THE

BOARD

John BaileyStephen Burum

Curtis ClarkGeorge Spiro Dibie

Richard EdlundJohn C. Flinn III

Michael GoiStephen LighthillIsidore Mankofsky

Daryn OkadaRobert Primes

Nancy Schreiber

Kees Van OostrumHaskell Wexler

Vilmos Zsigmond

ALTERNATES

Fred ElmesRodney Taylor

Michael D. OSheaSol Negrin

Michael B. Negrin

MUSEUM CURATOR

Steve Gainer

American Society of Cine matographers

The ASC is not a labor union or a guild, butan educational, cultural and pro fes sion al

or ga ni za tion. Membership is by invitationto those who are actively en gaged asdi rec tors of photography and have

dem on strated out stand ing ability. ASCmembership has be come one of the highest

honors that can be bestowed upon apro fes sional cin e ma tog ra pher a mark

of prestige and excellence.

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Any magazine that cares about its readers conducts the occasionalsubscriber survey, and the results of our latest one indicate that were onsolid footing. The questionnaire yielded 84 pages of information andinsights, including 33 pages of comments that ranged from unequivocalapproval (The best magazine for working cinematographers and forpeople interested in the craft) to dubious business advice (Lower theamount of ads present in each issue). There was even a unique plea fromone savvy fan: Can I come bartend in your Clubhouse?

The data prove thatACis an excellent industry resource. A few of thenumbers stand out:

Almost 9 out of 10 subscribers (87%) took action in the past 12 months as a result of seeing an ad inthe magazine, with 64% visiting an advertisers website, 56% discussing an ad with others, and 33%saving an ad for reference. 93% of our subscribers influence decision-making at one or more stages of production, including 84%who impact equipment choices and 78% who influence the buying of services; 85% who help choose

rental houses and 81% who weigh in on shooting locations; and 74% who influence the purchasing ofsoftware and/or hardware during prep, 69% who impact those decisions during production, and 63%who have a say about post. A robust 88% of you keep all issues for future reference.

Some figures confirm recent filmmaking trends: 91% of subscribers use or own a digital camera.Others buck the prevailing winds in publishing: 84% read the print edition most of the time, while 16%read the digital edition.

Lighting still tops your list of interests. Coverage of U.S. studio features finished a close second,followed by articles on foreign productions and digital cinematography. New Products & Services remainsour most popular monthly department.

One common request was for more technical and/or behind-the-scenes photos. On this front,

I can assure you that our staff of three (3) editors examines everyavailable photo on everyproductionwe cover, with the key word being available. Union rules preclude us from sending our own photog-raphers to sets, so we rely upon images provided by studios and other production entities. These photosoften require personal approvals by actors, directors, producers, publicists and marketing executives whooften have specific concerns (and, occasionally, rather oblique agendas) that are not at all related to cine-matography.

Many of you requested more coverage of foreign and/or independent movies, but if you take alook at any year-end index in our December issues, you will find our track record on both fronts is solid.In 2010 alone, we covered 30 productions shot outside the U.S., and 26 productions that would qual-ify as independents. In fact, the issue youre holding right now typifies our approach; it includes featureson a Chinese film, City of Life and Death , and a very experimental indie, Bellflower, alongside articlesabout the summer tent-pole pictures Super 8 and Green Lantern.

Its worth noting, however, that ASC cinematographers, who receive editorial priority in our pages,are predominantly hired to shoot U.S. studio projects.

Your survey responses also reflected a perpetual debate over whether the magazine should focusmore on technical specifics (the how) or philosophical/creative musings (the why). I can assure youthat we keep both lines of inquiry in mind when we assign any article. Whether an article slants in onedirection or the other usually reflects the preference of that cinematographer, but we often seek outsecondary sources if we feel they will bolster an article in either respect.

Rest assured, your suggestions are always welcomed, and well do our best to honor them.

Stephen Pizzello

Executive Editor

Editors Note

8

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Great Explanation ofImportant SubjectI want to thank you and Christopher

Probst for his outstanding article in the Mayissue, Decoding Digital Imagers: Part 1.

Imaging and photonics is my world,and I found this to be a truly outstandingarticle. I am extremely impressed by thetechnical presentation, especially regardingNyquist sampling and MTF curves, and thenecessity of an optical low-pass filter. I havebeen explaining this particular topic topeople in various fields for over a decade I have a background in X-ray imaging and I have rarely found such a coherent

explanation of this very important subject.This article will, I believe, be of extra-

ordinary help to people in the field. Yousqueezed a semester of electrical-engineer-ing education into just a couple of pages,and you made it interesting and under-standable.

This topic is very near to my heartbecause my company, Tessive, has justlaunched a product for time-based pre-filter-ing for cameras. Our product is kind of likean optical low-pass filter, but for time

instead of space. Its a temporal-band-limit-ing filter for motion-picture cameras.

Thank you very much for your hardwork.

Tony DavisLos Alamos, N.M.

Cant Wait for Part 2!I greatly enjoyed Christopher Probsts

article Decoding Digital Imagers: Part 1,and I look forward to the second part. This

is the only article Ive seen that covers thecomplete imaging path. I hope to assign itas reading for my students.

I must say that I was a little surprisedMr. Probst didnt spend more time onimage-sensor noise, which ultimately puts afloor on dynamic range. CMOS censorsinherently introduce more noise becausethey have more transistors in the signal pathand because the CCD is an incredibly effi-cient charge-transfer device.

Letters

12 July 2011 American Cinematographer

we really have the last word on the choiceof format? Some lucky few might, but Iknow that I, ultimately, do not.

If I am filming in a remote area andmy camera breaks down, will I be able to fixit with my multi-tool knife, or will produc-tion have to shut down?

Can any camera an Arri 435, anArricam, a Panaflex, a Red, an Alexa or evenan old Arri BL be fixed with a multi-tooldevice by someone who has no specialtraining of that type? Perhaps a faithfulBolex can, if one is very lucky. Taking a sparebody along to remote locations seems like abetter precaution than a multi-tool device.

Who is going to be responsible formaking sure that all the metadata accumu-lated during production and post is properlylogged and stored?

I was never concerned with the wayfilm or cassettes were logged, handled andstored by the editors and post folks in thepast. Why should I be concerned about thatnow? I trust them to do their jobs profes-sionally, as they trust me to do mine.

What is going to be the archivalelement for this project?

Isnt that something for the producerto be concerned with? As much as I wouldlike to declare to the world that I am noblyand deeply concerned about the archivalpreservation of the MOW I am starting nextweek, or the 30 or so others I have shot inthe past few years, truthfully, I am not at all.I have to deal with many other more press-ing production issues that I feel belong moredirectly in the cinematographers backyard.

Happy shooting, whatever you shootwith.

Daniel Villeneuve, CSCLongueuil, Quebec

By the way, that photo of GeorgeSmith and Willard Boyle (on page 61) showsnot just an early CCD imager, but the firstCCD camera. George showed it to mewhen he recruited me for his department.Who could resist that sales pitch?

Keep up the good work!

Marilyn C. WolfRhesa S. Farmer Jr. Distinguished Chair inEmbedded Computer SystemsSchool of Electrical and ComputerEngineeringGeorgia Institute of TechnologyAtlanta, Ga.

Questioning Gois 6 QuestionsI read Michael Gois Presidents Desk

column in the April issue with great interest,and I fully agree that just because some-thing is new doesnt mean it is better, andthat the Frankenstein syndrome he so aptlydescribes is becoming more and moreprevalent now that folks are shooting withsmart phones, DSLR cameras and otherdevices. I do, however, question his six ques-tions.

If I capture my images on thiscamera, do I have any assurance that theimages will not be accidentally erased ordeleted?

Does any camera or capture systemoffer such assurance?

Are the captured images a truereflection of what I intended them to be,should I not be around to supervise anoutput of those images at a later date?

With todays incredibly powerful posttools, is any media completely tamper

proof or shielded from the (perhaps)unwanted interventions of others?

Does this camera actually make myjob of filming this particular project easier, oris it making it harder and more expensive?

While its obvious that some camerascan make a job easier and simpler to shoot,in this world of cheap and easy hype, in theend, after we have voiced our opinion(which is often, thankfully, given seriousconsideration), other than walking away, do

American Cinematographer welcomes letters to

the editor. Correspondence must include yourname, mailing address and daytime telephonenumber. Please send letters to: Editors, AmericanCinematographer, P.O. Box 2230, Los Angeles, CA,90078. Wereserve the right to edit submissionsfor length and clarity.

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lanterns, Rousselot stayed true to form onLarry Crowne, creating a look he describesas gentle.

He elaborates, This is a film whereall the characters are nice even the

villains arent that bad. All the characters arefacing some kind of problem in life, and youempathize with them. To me, thatsuggested a gentle approach, and by that Idont just mean contrast or quality of light,but also color. Sometimes, when you wantto be more dramatic or harsh, it isnt alwaysjust hard light or shadows that can do that,but also a kind of dissonance that you cancreate through combinations of colors.Larry Crowne was really much more aboutcreating a visual harmony.

I dont do what people callcomedy lighting, he continues. I didntflood every set with light so you can seeevery detail. Actually, I dont really thinkabout the genre of a movie when Im light-ing; I approach each scene and considerthat specific situation and mood and whatit should feel like.

The characters arent always smil-ing in a comedy, so the lighting doesntalways have to be funny or bright. I triedto approach some locations, like Larrys

apartment, a little more moody than youdnormally see in a comedy. I keep a fairamount of shadows, especially in themoments after Larry has lost his job andisnt sure what he is going to do.

I do everything I can to pay respectto the actors faces thats really what itsall about, he continues. My number-onerule is to photograph the actors as well as Ican. You start to learn how to light peoplefrom the moment you meet them, and as

you work with them, you see them in differ-ent light and different situations at meet-ings, in the hallway and you start tomake mental note of what works for theirfaces and what doesnt. You store away all

that information and then decide how toapply that within the film.

Although much of the productionshot on location in and around Burbank,Calif., and the campus at California StateUniversity-Dominguez Hills (which doubledfor the fictional East Valley CommunityCollege), three primary sets were builtonstage at Paramount Studios: Crownesapartment, Mercedes apartment andMercedes classroom.

Rousselot attests that his approach

to stage lighting is very simple. For daylightoutside windows, he uses a combination ofdirect light from Nine-Light Maxi-Brutes andambient light from 6K Spacelights. He usestungsten sources for both daylight andnight looks and prefers to not utilize amoonlight feel on night interiors. I dontusually like to have light coming from thewindows at night, he explains. I think it isin conflict with any interior lighting. In reallife, when you have a lamp lit inside a room,you dont seen moonlight inside as well, so

I usually never mix one and the other.For day and night interiors, Ill start

with lighting the location. If its daytime, itssunlight coming through the windows andmaybe a little fill, created by bouncing intowhite paper on the ceiling or on stands outof frame. Then Ill think about the actors,and I often help to refine their faces byputting a Chinese lantern on a Fisher boom,like a microphone boom, and movingaround the set as they move.

Night is the same. It always starts with alogic of what practicals are on, what wouldthe light be in this situation, and then I takecare of the faces, he adds.

Larry Crowne went through the digi-

tal-intermediate process at EFilm in Holly-wood, with Rousselot supervising fromDeluxe Laboratories in London. With thefacilities linked up, Rousselot could collabo-rate with EFilm colorist Mitch Paulson viaspeakerphone as they watched identical 2Kfootage in real time. It was just like beingin the same room, except I couldnt hitMitch on the head when he went in thewrong direction! Rousselot laughs. Actu-ally, I wouldnt do that, anyway!

Tom [Hanks] and [producer] Gary

Goetzman originally wanted to warm upthe overall look and brighten the picture abit, but I showed them that look and then amuch more natural look, the way wed shotit, and they agreed that the natural look wasmuch better for the film.

Rousselot concludes, As simple asthe movie may sound, the shoot was neverboring. I get bored when Im sitting aroundand waiting for people who cant make uptheir minds. On Larry Crowne , we werealways moving, always shooting. It was a

wonderful energy and environment.

TECHNICAL SPECS

2.40:1

Anamorphic 35mm

Panaflex Millennium XL

Panavision G-Series

Kodak Vision3 500T 5219, 250D 5207

Digital Intermediate

Near right:Rousselot lines

up a shot onlocation in Los

Angeles. Far right:One of the

cinematographerssignature Chinese

lanterns helpsilluminate ascene with

George Takei.

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KombatCinematographyBy Michael Goldman

As with feature films, the reboot of apopular video-game franchise is a big deal.Thus, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertain-ment, in partnership with NetherRealmStudios, made careful choices in reworkingMortal Kombat, taking the classic title back

to its roots both visually and in terms ofstory.

In part, that meant returning tomore graphic fighting and violence, but italso returned original characters, designsand an extended narrative to the game viaa single-player story mode broken into 16chapters, interspersed with competitivegame play. Its a narrative designed by EdBoon, co-inventor of the original game, todetermine the direction and performance ofwhatever characters a player is using at a

given time. NetherRealms creative teambuilt those chapters on the foundation of aparticular range of cinematography tech-niques, which were incorporated in theanimation stage as storytelling devices,according to Dominic Cianciolo, Nether-Realms cinematic director on the project.

Cianciolo explains that the title ofcinematic director put him in charge ofdirecting the story chapters, editing themand serving as layout director of photogra-

phy for them. Essentially, he was in chargeof all camera-related aspects of the produc-tion outside of lighting. The games environ-ment unit handled lighting during creationof fight sequences specifically, setting light-ing templates that Cianciolos team

followed while building the story mode.Dave Pindara, the games environ-

ment director, says the main priority forlighting was to simply provide players withclear visual definitions of the characters andall visual effects that might come into playduring the fights. By default, each charac-ter has a pre-defined rim light built into hismaterials, which helps to place him on topof the world [where the fighting arena islocated], says Pindara. We then add a

very small amount of bounce tinting repre-sentative of the unique arena, which has towork for all the characters. Our defaultlighting rig is adjusted to match the intensityand light direction of the environment.

In all other areas, Cianciolo made

camera decisions for the narrative story,tapping his background in directing, cine-matography, animation and previsualizationwork. He notes that the basic productionpipeline for the game, which was producedover 17 months between September 2009and early this year, was fairly straightfor-ward for such a sophisticated video game.Body-movement data was collectedthrough a traditional motion-capture shoot.All previsualized imagery was built in

Top: Shao Kahngathers his

power as heprepares to kill

Raiden. Bottom:Liu Kang looks

on as Raidenreceives a visionfrom the future.

I

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Autodesks Maya animation software andedited in Adobe Premiere Pro, with Mayaalso used for special-effects animation.Additional body and hand animation wascreated using Autodesks MotionBuilder.

Final material throughout the gamewas shot using a customized version ofthe Matinee tool (which NetherRealmdubbed Cinema) of the Unreal 3 gameengine, which essentially functions as asophisticated non-linear editor that permitsartists to assemble and edit animation,visual effects and props, and then shootthat edited data with virtual cameras.NetherRealm customized Matinee toinclude a user-friendly interface for setting

up depth-of-field and to create more accu-rate visual representations of real-worlddepth-of-field effects. The company alsoadded a Post FX tool to enable artists todo basic color corrections to imagery within

Unreal.Final scenes ended up in the game in

two basic forms either as scenes that runreal time in the game engine at 60 fps tomatch the games fighting sequences, or aspre-rendered movies that are separatelyplaced on the game disc, running at 30 fpsin order to fit the additional movie contenton the disc.

As state-of-the-art as that processwas, Cianciolo emphasizes that the nature

of the camera movement in the computerwas more sophisticated than a typical fight-ing-genre video game. Story has alwaysbeen the key element of Mortal Kombat,says Cianciolo. Even when the game wasin arcades in the early 1990s, players couldread bios of the characters, accompanied bystill imagery. Now the fights are separatedby traditional dramatic scenes that set upthe next fight, and so on, making it afeature-length interactive movie. So we

approached the cinematography as thoughit was a narrative project, and we used allavailable camera tools in Maya and Unrealto make that work with the same underly-ing cinematography principles youd applyto a feature.

I put together a style guide at theoutset and outlined the emotional journeyof each character, and how that should bereflected in the camerawork, he contin-ues. Some chapters have a still [stationary]camera on a tripod, and then we adjust the

focal length; some chapters, where there ismore action, have a constantly movingcamera, and we adjust focal length andframing from there. So, instead of doinghighly stylized cinematography, wheneverwe moved the camera, we treated it as areal camera move. Youll see Steadicamshots, crane shots, dolly shots and so onduring the course of the narrative, but eachmove is tied to a particular creative point.

Cianciolo says the goal with the

Top: Liu Kangtackles Shao

Kahn as the twoengage inmortal

kombat.Bottom: Kitana

discovers ShangTsungs hideous

cloningexperiments.

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and-tilt, and when the camera did move, it

simulated dolly movement straight,steady lines to suit his serious persona.

By contrast, Stryker is a New YorkPolice Dept. detective who has no knowl-edge of the Mortal Kombat universe untilhe is pulled into the game. Therefore, whenhe enters the narrative, he has to pushthrough a sense of confusion over thetransformations in the world, and every-thing he has ever believed, while simultane-ously fighting his way through monstersinvading New York.

We wanted the player to partici-pate in Strykers chaotic journey, so wewent for a camera style that mimickedcombat photography, says Cianciolo.That meant exaggerated movement, addi-tional camera shake and much less preciseframing. The camera also stays close to theactors, shooting with wide lenses, in orderto help create a sense of intimacy with theaction.

These creative uses of the virtualcamera lie at the heart of the success of the

interactive story within the game, accordingto Cianciolo. There is a common miscon-ception in the wider 3-D business thatanyone can do virtual camerawork, hesays. I think its important to educatepeople to understand the intricacies andthe craft that go into building shots anddeciding how to use them. There simply isno substitute for real-world camera experi-ence and education.

virtual cinematography was to mimic a

Super 35mm camera aperture in thiscase, 1.77:1. The final, actual camera aper-ture and size are determined by theprogrammers, and that was set before westarted making the game, he notes. Butcertainly, we were trying to mimic real35mm cameras visually. There was no needto attempt film grain because Ed Boonwanted the images to play back at 60 fps inreal time to make the game respond tocontrols properly. Grain wasnt feasibleunder such circumstances; we wanted a

high level of detail in the fighting environ-ments, and there is extensive blood and gorein the fighting sequences. It didnt makesense to pile too many effects on top of eachimage to render frames at that rate. We didpost-processing effects to mimic the effectsof a digital-intermediate process, and stylisti-cally, we were trying to emulate 35mmphotography.

The techniques Cianciolos teamemployed included, among other things, astrategic alternation between moving and

locked shots for the purpose of buildingemotion. They also attempted to alternatebetween dolly and handheld mounts tosubjectively capture the characters differentemotional experiences. The team alsoemployed a nuanced approach to cameraangles, Dutched framing, depth-of-fieldadjustments and focal-length changeswithin scenes.

These are standard considerationsfor traditional motion-picture work, but this

level of sophistication is still somewhat

unusual in the fighting-game world, addsCianciolo. There are limitations, of course,because its a different medium. We have tobe careful, for instance, about how muchwe move the camera, not in terms of themove, but in terms of the environment. Ifwe move the camera too much, it mightrequire building new assets [for the back-ground]. But the overall goal was to createa feel that would suggest these imageswere filmed in the real world.

Cianciolo cites a few examples

involving key characters. Kitana, forinstance, begins as a villainess and goesthrough an evolution before switching sidesin the conflict at the heart of the narrative.We arent sure of her origins, so we keptthe focal length around 75mm andincreased the amount of blur on her at thebeginning, and also added Dutched fram-ing to create an off-balance feel, Ciancioloexplains. As she changes, the amount ofDutching increases and the focal lengthgets more pronounced, and as soon as she

gets her purpose back, the framing goes toa level horizon, we bring her focal lengthback a bit, dial back on the depth-of-fieldand make a few other subtle adjustments.

For the pivotal character Liu Kang, ahuman warrior who is the defender ofEarthrealm, the goal was to showcase thecharacters stability and sense of purpose.Therefore, we stayed primarily with staticframing, says Cianciolo. We kept thehorizon level, limiting rotation to basic pan-

Raiden and

Liu Kangplead for

the interventionof the

Elder Gods.

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A military train wreck unleashes a

mysterious creature in Super 8, shotby Larry Fong and directed byJ.J. Abrams.

By Iain Stasukevich

|

Monster Outof the BoxMonster Outof the BoxS

et in 1979,Super 8is a story about the relationship betweena boy and his father, only this tale also includes a devastat-

ing train wreck carrying top-secret military cargo fromArea 51. The deadly cargo escapes and wreaks havoc on

the sleepy town of Lillian, Ohio, where the boy, Joe (JoelCourtney), and his friends are about to finish shooting theirlatest Super 8 movie.

The boys filmmaking venture, a zombie flick calledTheCase, had special resonance for director J.J. Abrams and cine-matographer Larry Fong, who first collaborated when they

were kids. Fong recalls, I had a friend who lived across thestreet from J.J., and wed make Super 8 movies while J.J. wasacross the street working on his own Super 8 stuff. Eventually,

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www.theasc.com July 2011

J.J. and I started making moviestogether. I wasnt the cameraman,

though. I remember helping him outwith special-effects makeup!

The DNA of Super 8 is thisweird, geeky obsession we had with themagic of making movies when we werekids, says Abrams. Larryhadto shootthis movie because our references wereexactly the same. We lived themtogether.

Footage from The Case appearsthroughout Super 8, and Abrams andU

nitphotographybyFranoisDuhamel,

SMPSP.

PhotosandframegrabscourtesyofParam

ount

Pictures.

Opposite: Joe (Joel Courtney) and his father, Jackson (Kyle Chandler), attempt to survive a mysteriouscreatures onslaught on their Ohio town in Super 8. This page, top to bottom: Joe and his friends set up

a scene for their Super 8 movie; Alice (Elle Fanning) and Joe study a mysterious object; Alice and theothers face their worst fears.

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Fong originally intended to return totheir roots and shoot that material onSuper 8. However, CGI had to be inte-

grated into some of the footage, and thevisual-effects team at Industrial Light &Magic found it too difficult to manipu-late the grainy Super 8 image. ILMencouraged the filmmakers to shoot35mm and create the Super 8 look inpost, but I couldnt bear the thought ofdoing that, says Fong. I asked if wecould compromise and shoot that mate-rial on Super 16 instead. It bummed J.J.and me out, but we couldnt ignoreILMs predicament.

For footage in The Case thatdidnt require CGI, Fong did shootsome Super 8, using a ClassicProfessional (a restored and updatedBeaulieu 4008) obtained from Pro8mm.For the Super 16mm material, he usedan Arri 16SR-3. He shot KodakVision3 200T 7213 and 500T 7219,matching the 35mm negative he usedfor the rest of the picture, and operatedthe camera in a loose, clumsy fashion tocreate an amateur look. Abrams even

got into the spirit of things, jumping into operate a few shots with the children.

Fong lit The Casewith hardware-store clamp lights with normal lightbulbs, along with vintage hard quartzlights, pointing them at the actors withdeliberate clumsiness and creatingmultiple, obvious shadows on the walls.It was fun and much less stressful toshoot that stuff, he recalls. It was likereverting to childhood. Everyone was

Monster Out of the Box

Top and middle:The kids survey

the wreckageafter a military

train crashes.Bottom: The

buddingfilmmakers put in

some work attheir school.

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laughing and smiling.The main visual reference for the

rest of Super 8was a sci-fi classic fromthe 1970s: Close Encounters of the ThirdKind, shot by Vilmos Zsigmond, ASC(ACJan. 78). The look of that movieinformed all my choices, from lightingschemes to color and lenses, as well as

the format we shot in, 35mm anamor-phic, reports Fong, who usedPanavisions older anamorphic lenses,the C-Series and E-Series, for most ofthe picture. (He adds, however, thatSuper 8 takes a distinctly modernapproach to camera movement, makingliberal use of Steadicam and

Technocrane moves throughout thepicture.)

Fongs approach to lighting Super8was different than anything hed ever

attempted, though sometimes more outof necessity than style. Most of thestory takes place at night, and our keycast of minors had a fixed amount of

work hours and could not shoot pastmidnight, he says. That meant that asmany scenes as possible had to becovered by three cameras, frequently atopposing angles. Lengthy relighting forclose-ups was not an option. Mostscenes were lit for the master shot, and

the B and C cameras might not always

obtain the most flattering light fromtheir respective angles. Day-exteriorscenes were often filmed with thesunlight shining undiffused into theactors faces.

Many cinematographers wouldprefer backlight, but we just had toembrace the fact that a lot of our shots

were going to end up frontlit, and not litas softly as we would like, he continues.Early on this was a point of discussion

with my colleagues, but when I looked

through the camera, oddly, it wasnt sobad. I just had a feeling that it would

work, and when I saw the dailies, I real-ized wed hit on something. I cantexplain it, but the vibe, the tone, wasexactly right.

Fong also discovered that a lot ofpractical sources were making their wayinto his frame, particularly in wide nightexteriors. Instead of large soft sourcesclose to the camera, we were using large

Top: Director J.JAbrams coacheshis youngcastmembers.Bottom:CinematographLarry Fong takea meter readingon location.

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In a short scene in Super 8, amateurfilmmakers Joe (Joel Courtney) and

Charles (Riley Griffiths) discover thattheir only surviving bit of Super 8mmfootage of a massive train wreck is

fogged and damaged, and they get intoa heated argument, stepping in front ofthe projector while its still running.

The simplicity of the scene isdeceptive. Because the projectedfootage would have to incorporate CGI it offers a glimpse of a mysteriouscreature escaping from the wreckage there was actually no footage to project

when the scene was shot, so the film-makers had to find a way to shoot thescene and add the projected image inpost. Visual-effects artists would also

need to apply an appropriate level ofdistortion to the image while itsprojected onto the boys.

To achieve the objective,Industrial Light & Magic visual-effectssupervisor Kim Libreri proposed whathe calls a diabolically complex posttechnique. He and his team borrowedan old Super 8 projector from theproductions props department andmodified it to use a high-powered LEDbulb instead of a standard tungsten

projection bulb. Motion-controlcameraman Steve Switaj built a boxthat generated a 48Hz signal to syncthe productions main cameras, PanaflexMillennium XL2s, with the bulb in theprojector. The shots that requiredcompositing would be captured at 48fps, and on every other exposed frameof film the LED projector lamp wouldgo off.

The result was two separate shotsfrom the same camera. Imagine play-

ing back this footage at full speed,explains Libreri. On the odd frames,

you only see the ambient light in theroom, without anything coming fromthe projector. On the even frames, theprojector light is on in addition to theambient light.

Because we were only interestedin the light coming from the projector,

we took these two sequences of images

and subtracted one image from theother, like A minus B. A is the imagethat has the projector light plus ambientlight, and B is the image with onlyambient light. When you subtract B

from A, youre left with the lightcoming from the projector.

The trick with shooting at 48 fpsis that the two sets of images didnt lineup perfectly. Libreri compares the offsetto video interlacing. Also, shooting attwice the normal frame rate meant the

XL2s shutters were spinning twice asfast, reducing the motion blur caused bythe actors movements. In post, Libreristeam used The Foundrys Kronos plug-in for Nuke to line up and add the

proper amount of motion blur to eachclip so they could be matched andkeyed.

Distorting the image when itplayed on the actors faces posedanother challenge. The solution wasstereo triangulation, says Libreri. If

you know the relative position andorientation of two cameras and drawtwo lines [to them] from a single point

in space, one through the center of eachlens to a projected point on the imageplane, you can calculate where it will bein three-dimensional space.

Two Sony PMW-EX3 cameras

triangulated the actors positions andfeatures in 3-D virtual space for thepurposes of distorting and compositingthe finished projector images back intothe scene.

With a chuckle, Libreri recallsthat shooting the scene with the strobelight going off raised a few eyebrows onset. I was trying to convince Larry[Fong] and J.J. [Abrams] that it wouldall work, and footage would magicallybe projected on the kids faces in the

end.Thats why J.J.s movies are so

great, he muses. He is a true believerin the magic of visual effects, and he washappy to let us develop a custom tech-nique for his film.

Iain Stasukevich

| ILM Projects Terror |

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hard sources a quarter of a mile away,explains gaffer Jim Grce.

The lighting package was thesame for all night exteriors: a 15-6KBebee Night Light, nine 18K LRXRaptors distributed among three 120'Condors, and a mobile LRX Piranhaarmed with six 12K HMI Pars (whichcould be interchanged with tungsten

bulbs).You have to position lights like

that way ahead of time and hope youvemade a good guess as to where thecameras going to be, because they takehours to move, Fong remarks.Sometimes you cant move thembecause theyre behind a building or upagainst a mountain. Youve only got somany choices as to where youre going toplace lights that big, and our cameras

were pointing in so many directions that

wed inevitably end up looking right atone of them.

Viewers familiar with Abramswork will recognize his trademark lensflares streaking across the screen. Thedirector even occasionally asked forlights in the frame to specifically createthe effect. We did it in the suburbs, and

we even did it in the middle ofnowhere, Fong recalls. At first some ofus were scratching our heads wed do

Top and middle:The militarymoves in toconfront theterrifying eventsthreatening thetown. Bottom:After discoveringa network oftunnels beneaththe towncemetery, ourheroes usesparklers to lighttheir path.Supplementallight sources weused to boost thillumination.


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a dolly shot, and a light would come intothe frame behind the actors heads andflare out the lens. [The light] is clearlynot the moon, and there are no street-lights or any other sources in the scene.Its obviously a movie light.

I know it sounds crazy, but a lensflare reminds me that anamorphic lensesare amazing, gorgeously designed pieces

of glass that interact with light in abeautiful way, explains Abrams. Flarescan be purposeful and additive, and atthe right time they remind me, in agood way, that Im watching a movie. Itdoesnt take me out of it. I think it drawsme in deeper.

Joe immerses himself in helpinghis friend Charles (Riley Griffiths)finish The Caseas a way of coping withthe recent loss of his mother, but after

the kids capture a spectacular train crashthat unleashes a very large passengerinto the Ohio countryside, they quicklyfind themselves playing parts in a realmilitary cover-up.

The train crash was filmed atFirestone Ranch in Agua Dulce, Calif.In the sequence, the kids are filming oneof the pivotal scenes for The Casewhen

they see a train approaching in thedistance and decide to incorporate itinto the film. They roll the camera, andas the train approaches, Joe notices apickup truck parked on the tracks. Thetrain collides with the truck and derails,smashing through the depot.

Fong says the establishing shot ofthe depot is the biggest night exterior hehas ever photographed. The depot plat-form was only about 40' long, but

Abrams wanted the tracks to extendmiles into the horizon, and the location

was actually boxed in by mountains andhills a few hundred yards away. Tosuggest the view Abrams wanted, Fonghad his crew place red lights of decreas-ing size on poles of decreasing heightalong the tracks suggested trajectory,and dot the nearby mountains and hills

with lightbulbs to suggest homes andother buildings in the distance.

Keeping the LRX and Bebeelights out of frame while lighting to ahigh-enough stop for some of the lenses

was a challenge. Anamorphics can betricky to work with at night, says Fong.For this scene and other night exteri-ors, I usually pushed 5219 by one stopbecause the longer lenses were so muchslower. I always tried to light to a



This page and opposite: Reference diagrams shows the crews approach to a cave set built on stages in Playa Vista.The instrument key for both diagrams is on the facing page.

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T413. Thats a lot of light, but in the endthe focus pullers didnt mind the deeperstop!

There was only one chance to getthe train w reck, and although thesequence featur es a lot of C GI, thespecial-effects team had to build a trackand pull a r ig through the depot like abattering ram. The stunt was covered bynine cameras, with Fong remotely oper-ating one on a crane arm. The Acamera, operated by P hil Carr-Forster,

was on a 50' Technocrane. B-c ameraoperator Colin Anderson was on aspeeding dolly, as was C-camera opera-tor John Skotchdopole. Some Arri 435s

were strategic ally placed ar ound theaction, and two loc ked-off Eyemos incrash bo xes wer e positioned near theplatform.

After two day s of scouting , prepand rehearsal, the destruction itself onlytook about five seco nds. Most of the

pressure was on the special-effectsartists because they had to tr igger theram that destroyed the building, notesFong. They also rigged fireballs and aircannons loaded with safe debr is. Theonly thing we had to keep c lear of wasthe ram as it was pulled thr ough thebuilding, which was pr e-scored for thedestruction. They cut halfway thr oughall the lumber, so we kne w what pieces

were going to br eak and wher e theywould land. We had stunt doubles for

the kids r unning away fr om the depotand used a long lens on one of thecameras to make it look like they wer ecloser to the explosions than they r eally

were.Soon af ter the crash, strange

things start happening around town dogs disappear, motors go missing fromcars, and ther e ar e my sterious radiotransmissions and electr ical distur-bances. The kids begin to suspect that

these e vents ar e r elated to the traincrash, specifically to the grainy impr es-sion of something mo ving in thefootage they c aptured. (See sidebar onpage 28.) The military soon reaches thesame conclusion, and soldiers arr ive totake the children captive in a militar y-prison bus.

Night driving scenes on the buswere accomplished with poor man sprocess, with a r eal bus placed on ablacked-out stage. Fong approached the

lighting practically, working with Gr ceto make the vehic le essentiall y lightitself. The bus s existing light fixtur es

were swapped out for LiteGearLiteCard 8s, flexible , adhesive-bac kedLED array s measur ing about 2 12" x412" and about as thin as a cr edit card.

The LiteCards wer e installed in twoparallel rows running the length of thebuss roof and wired through the chassisto a po wer sour ce in the floor . The

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fixtures could also be stuck to magnetsand quickly applied to the vehiclesmetal interior.

The LiteCards made movingaround in the bus really easy, says Fong.They gave us a lot of light for their size.

We were able to shoot at around a T4,and all we had to do to for an additionalkeylight or eyelight was come in withmore LiteCards or a small Kino Flo.

When the creature attacks thebus and knocks it off the road anight-exterior stunt staged in SimiValley, Calif. the creature itself ismostly unseen, its presence teased with

interactive lighting effects. A chasesequence was programmed into wirelessDMX dimmers to control theLiteCards output in order to suggest anelectrical disturbance caused by thecreature. With their captors temporarilydistracted by the accident, the childrenescape and flee back to their neighbor-hood.

Back in town, the kids find thatmilitary tanks have taken control of the


A large rig designed by gaffer Jim Grce, rigging gaffer Roger Meilink and key grip Gary Doddwas used to simulate the array of lights emanating from a spacecraft hovering over the

towns main street.

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streets in order to confront the creature.The attack was shot on location inWeirton, W. Va., and the crew spentseveral nights lighting wide swaths of

the neighborhood with the LRX andBebee lights. The production evenbought a couple of vacant houses in theneighborhood for the express purposeof blowing them up. We drove tanksup and down their streets and fired offrounds in the middle of the night, andinstead of complaining, the residents

would bring out the lawn chairs andblankets and quietly enjoy the show,says Fong. They even clapped when J.J.said Cut! Everyone was so cooperativeand generous. We couldnt have done it

without them.Because of the tight schedule,

every scene, from big action sequencesto intimate dialogue scenes, was metic-ulously planned and pre-rigged a tallorder for a film in which action often

transitions from interiors to exteriorswithin a single scene, night and day, indifferent cities, weeks apart. We werein multiple locations every day, and ourrigging gaffer, Roger Meilink, was amaster at the logistics of rigging and

wrapping multiple locations at once,says Grce. Having wireless DMXcontrol over all of our dimming was ahuge time saver, because we used a lot ofinteractive lighting throughout theshoot to [suggest] explosions, burninghouses, electrical disturbances and soforth.

One of the scenes that worriedFong the most called for a seeminglysimple lighting effect: after the kidsdiscover a network of tunnels beneaththe town cemetery, they explore it usingonly Fourth of July sparklers to lighttheir way. When I first read that in thescript, I panicked, because the tunnelscene is meant to be pitch black except

when a sparkler is lit, and I knew a realsparkler was not going to put out any

light, says Fong. But Jim and his guyscame up with a way to simulate theeffect.

The actors carried real sparklers,which burned out within minutes, andto simulate their effect, Grces crew


Fong leads the charge of the light brigade.

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Green Lantern is a movie that deals directly, intimately and

constantly with the issue of color. After all, its a comic-book-sourced movie, and, as cinematographer DionBeebe, ASC, ACS notes, color is an integral part of the

comic-book canon.In this case, however, Beebe is referring to far more than

the title or lead character (played by Ryan Reynolds), acommon human who earns the right to wear a powerful,energy-emitting ring to fight the forces of evil as part of anintergalactic organization. Rather, Beebe is referring to thestrategic use of color for thematic and story purposes. It wasthe challenge of how best to design, capture and then modify

Dion Beebe, ASC, ACSand his collaborators

weave palette into plotfor Green Lantern.

By Michael Goldman

|

Ringof

P

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fear? These decisions were madetogether with [director] MartinCampbell, [production designer] GrantMajor and [costume designer] NgilaDickson.

I took a slightly more vibrantapproach to color and lighting, he adds.At times, we were also more graphic

with lighting a little more defined, a

little more high-contrast than somethingI would apply to a drama. Creating adynamic aesthetic in this genre was defi-nitely a major challenge.

Beebe wasnt the only one feelingchallenged, given that Green Lantern is atentpole picture full of visual effects(about 1,500 shots) that were still being

worked on a few weeks before the filmsrelease. I read the script and loved thestory, but I was also horrified by the chal-

lenges of the technical process, recallsCampbell, whose recent credits include

Edge of Darknessand Casino Royale(ACDec. 06). We had a lot of bluescreen todeal with, we created an entire planet[called Oa], and our main character hadto wear a virtual uniform. It can be over-

whelming at the beginning, but you getthe best people to help you, and you

learn as you go along. For me, GreenLanternwas an amazingly dense learn-ing experience.

Although the extensive CGIprompted the filmmakers to considershooting digitally, they decided on filmafter testing the available digitalcameras. We really liked what we wereseeing on film in terms of contrastrange, and in our testing we were look-ing at high-key situations, says Beebe.

HD stood up well in most situations,but in firelight and high-contrast scenar-

ios 35mm looked even better.Another consideration was that

Martin has always worked with film, andthere did not seem to be reason enoughfor him to acclimate to HD for thisproject, he adds.

Beebe chose Kodak Vision3 500T5219 for all stage work and night exteri-ors, Vision3 200T 5213 for most dayexteriors, and Vision2 50D 5201 for dayexteriors set during flashbacks to whenHal Jordan (the Lanterns alter ego) was

a boy.Working with Panaflex Millen-

niums and Platinums and Arri 235s,Beebe used Panavision Primo prime andzoom lenses and an Angenieux Optimo15-40mm lightweight zoom. Accordingto 1st AC E.J. Misisco, the workhorselenses were a 90mm Primo Macro (forclose-up ring shots and inserts), a 10-90mm Primo Compact Zoom (for allthe crane work, including plates for flyingsequences), and a 24mm Primo prime

(for classic hero push-ins), of which thereare fewer than a dozen in service world-

wide.Misisco asked Panavision to

reserve one of the 24mm Primos forBeebe early on, and he notes thatCampbell fell in love with the lensbecause of his preference for shootingclose to actors with wider lenses. Also,the production used a Panavised CenturySwing/Shift System for flashback

Ring of Power

Right: A fatefulencounter with

Abin Sur (TemueraMorrison) changes

Jordan's destiny.Below: Jordan

experiments withhis ring at home.

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sequences to help give that footage aunique look.

Green Lantern was shot in andaround New Orleans in early 2010, withtwo main challenges constantly loomingover the production. The first was how tobest use the signature color green inlighting, photography and visual effects.

The second was how to visualize theGreen Lanterns full-body suit, which fitslike a second skin and constantly emitslight. The suits emissive green energy isa visual effect that constantly interacts

with real and virtual environments,essentially becoming a bluish-green aurathat subtly goes white in the middle asthe intensity of the beam grows.

The question of how much greenlight should be used on actors and props

in those scenes was always at the fore-front of the filmmakers discussions.

They eventually concluded that theydidnt want to over-egg the pudding, inCampbells words. The temptation wasto light everything green or texturedgreen, but we resisted that temptation,says the director. We figured white,neutral light would be a better approach.

Beebe elaborates, We ran testswhere I played around with the idea ofinteractive light emanating from the

Lanterns ring and body, and we realizedthat lighting people with green light on a

film set doesnt work. You end up withan overall wash of green thats distractingand doesnt flatter any actors face. [Thismethod] also would have tied us to aspecific green gel color, which wouldhave limited our ability to manipulatethe shading in the DI. So we decided tonot apply any green [light] during theshooting process at all, and instead useneutral white light to give ourselvesmaximum flexibility in post. We used aslightly cool, white light to create inter-active elements that the visual-effectsteam could combine with [CG light] asneeded.

Beebes gaffer, John Buckley, callsthis creating an open palette so that our

work would not interfere with colortransformations that would becompleted in post. Our neutral white a 20K through Full Grid at about3,200K worked nicely for thispurpose.

As for the Lanterns suit, the film-makers immediately ruled out a practicalcostume and opted to make it entirelyCG for the whole picture. In prep, theytested using latex and silicon pieces ofthe suit in combination with CGI, but it

was too complicated to get the materialto move according to the storys needs,according to Kent Houston, a visual-effects supervisor who was on setthroughout the shoot.

Sinestro (Mark Strong, top photo) addresses a gathering of the Corps and warns of an impending threat to the universe.

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When the suit was static, itlooked quite nice, but there were prob-lems with motion and with the conceptthat it emits its own light, explainsHouston. We found that the way thematerial folded, the time it took Ryan toput it on, and Ryans own comfort levelall weighed against [using a practicalsuit]. We also knew that in the end, wed

have to do a lot of digital work on it,anyway. We decided wed have morecontrol with a fully CG suit; that wouldenable us to sculpt Ryans physique tothe character, and give us full controlover lighting and color without worryingabout folds in the elbows, armpits andknees.

Sony Pictures Imageworks, the

films lead visual-effects house, createdthe virtual suit, and Beebes teamphotographed elements for it in collabo-ration with Jim Berney, Imageworks on-

set supervisor. For this work, Reynoldswore a gray marker-tracking outfit andwhite LED necklace that providedemissive light elements that could beused to build the light-emitting GreenLantern logo on the characters chest.

Determining how to film thecharacter on set evolved out of researchinto the Simulcam approach that wasemployed on Avatar (ACJan. 10),according to Beebe. We looked atSimulcam, which is basically an intricate

system of witness cameras that lets youtrack what youre doing on the studiofloor and matches virtual moves to it,almost like real-time comping, herecalls. But you have to build a 360-degree virtual environment in thecomputer that they can use to track withthe camera on set, and generating thosebackgrounds wasnt practical for us.

Instead, we used a sort of scaled-down witness-camera setup, which


Ring of Power

Right:

Hammondhatches his evil

schemes in amassive

laboratory.Below: For

flyingsequences,

Reynolds wassuspended in

front ofbluescreen

while thecamera

mounted on aTechnocrane

moved aroundhim.

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facial motion, but also neck motion.Imageworks tweaked a version of

its facial-movement-tracking software to

work for neck movement. Eventually, theteam shot separate face-capture andneck-capture sessions of Reynolds andlater combined that data with data from

whole-body shots, tracking the CG suitup the actors neck.

Green Lantern required a range ofother lighting effects and light-capturetechniques. The biggest set piece is agiant government lab designed to housea large, mysterious machine that scansaliens. Buckley used a 60' 12-strand rope

light configured out of pieces he found inChina to build 12 separate but identicalcircuits that could be set to pulsate inunison with the pounding of the giantscanner. Dimmer-board operator BrianBooth controlled the lights through a

Whole Hog 3 during filming.Other techniques were employed

to capture real-world light elements touse in various combinations to buildinteractive light. For wide shots thatshowed entire environments being

impacted by a light blast, Beebe had hiscrew place lights on poles, controlled bydimmers, so that cameras could trackswirling, radiant light around charactersto enhance the effect of the GreenLantern.

Actually, the idea got bigger,Beebe notes. With the help of key gripDon Reynolds and his crew, we rigged a10K bulb to the end of a 50-foot

Technocrane. That allowed us to reach


Ring of Power

involved Sony PMW-EX3 prosumercameras that were synced and gen-locked

with the film cameras, and would shoot

off-angle whenever we had Ryan in hissuit or Sinestro [played by Mark Strong]in his suit, which is also virtual. That gavethe visual-effects artists the informationthey needed to build the dimensionalsuit.

The white LED necklaceReynolds wore for this work an LEDribbon controlled by 9-volt batteries was custom-designed for the produc-tion by LiteGear. We needed a lightsource that was alive on Ryan to help us

feel the pulsing energy of the suit, saysBuckley. The LEDs were perfectbecause they could move with him. Weattached them with Velcro and gelledthem with Minus Green. They gave usgood interactive light elements.

For shots of the Lantern, Beebeand his camera team had to carefullyframe Reynolds mid-chest area, wherethe pulsating Green Lantern logo wouldbe added in post. [A-camera operator]Peter McCaffrey and I talked constantly

about focal lengths, Misisco recalls. Wehad to know if we should be seeing the

whole symbol or only half of it. Someclose-ups would stop under his chin, andthen we would have to get creative aboutframing the symbol in or, in some shots,out.

As the project rolled on, specialmotion-capture shoots of Reynolds in histracking suit became routine. Typically,six witness-camera operators worked in

concert with Beebes camera crew, buttook direction on framing, camera posi-tion and angles from Berney.

Part of their challenge was filmingReynolds face and neck so thatImageworks could create what Berneycalls the blend line, where the suitmerges into the characters neck. There

is no suit collar or hard edge to glom thehead onto, says Berney. Close to the

camera, you see the suit as part of theskin, a natural transition to real skin. Toachieve that, we had to come up with atechnique to mimic or duplicate all themuscle movements of the neck andthere are more muscle movements andcombinations on the neck than in theface. So we put tracking markers onRyans face and neck to get movements

where we could do a one-to-one corre-spondence and extrapolate not only

Fueled bywillpower, the

power ring cancreate whatever

Jordan can imagine.Much of the

interactive lightfrom the ring and

energy suit wascreated with

an LED ribbon.

We needed alight source that

was alive on Ryan tohelp us feel the

pulsing energy ofthe suit.

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across the frame and move with theaction. It became a real dance involving

lighting, grip, camera and the actors.Berney says the visual-effects

team tapped the Spherocam high-dynamic-range-imaging system tocapture real-world light elements on setto utilize for first-pass lighting work in

post. The Spherocam let us do first-passlighting that, not so many years ago,

would have required eight passes to doright, he notes.

It used to be that integratingelements was 90 percent of the work,and making it look good was the last 10percent, Berney continues. With this

camera, its the other way around. We cangrab the HDRI light and apply it tocharacters within a day, and then spendthe rest of our time doing whateversnecessary to make it look cooler.

The Spherocam was importantfor the neck blend because we had to mixCG skin with real skin, and that requiredspot-on lighting, he adds. Its basically a

video camera with a fisheye lens thatspins around and grabs 22 stops of data.

You can do it at just about any resolution[up to 50 megapixels], and it gives yougreat range. On a tripod, you can use it intwo positions and, with Spherons soft-

ware, triangulate points and quickly buildrough geometry for match-movepurposes.

With CGI playing such a central

role in the picture, the productions previ-sualization work was exhaustive, encom-passing storyboards, 3-D previs (createdby Pixel Liberation Front), and an exten-sive concept-art display created by Major.

The production designer calls the latter

Ring of Power

4

Green Lantern and Sinestro speak with a Guardian of the Green Lantern Corps.

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the concept room, explaining that hestrategically arranged the key hand-drawn and computer-generated conceptart and storyboards so that crewmembers could literally walk through,learn about the virtual environments, anddiscuss the nature of those shots. Themovie had a huge amount of conceptartwork done, says Major. About a thirdof the story takes place off Earth, so it

was really important to give everyonesome idea what those environments

would look like. The concept roomenabled us to give an overview of the

whole film in artwork. It helped every-one, cast and crew alike.

McCaffrey recalls, The entirecamera crew would walk through theretogether. That kind of reference material

always helps when you have to shoot leadactors against screens. The concept roomgave us a solid idea of the final product,and it gave us a great understanding ofthe scale of the scenes and the sizes ofdifferent characters, some of which are

aliens and bigger than humans. It reallyhelped me with simple things likeeyelines and composition.

Among the other things film-makers had to visualize was how, exactly,to make Green Lantern fly he canliterally soar through space. That was alot of Technocrane work, saysMcCaffrey. We suspended Ryan infront of bluescreen and created dimen-sional moves below, around and abovehim by pushing the camera toward oraround him, so that the background willseem to move in post, where they canfurther dimensionalize it. We essentiallygave them a body and a face to combine

with the virtual suit.At press time, Beebe was grading

the picture at Technicolor Hollywood,

where he was working with coloristMike Hatzer. We did a lot of testing inpreproduction to arrive at a visualscheme, and the DI gives us the oppor-tunity to really refine it, says the cine-matographer. And, of course, its a great

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tool for ensuring that all the CGI blendsseamlessly with the live-action material.

I am working closely with Miketo find the right tone, he concludes.One of our many challenges is makingsure the integrity of all these very specificcolors, especially green, remain consis-tent and relate back to the comics.

45

TECHNICAL SPECS

2.40:1

4-perf Super 35mm

Panaflex Millennium,Platinum; Arri 235

Panavision Primo, AngenieuxOptimo, Century Swing/Shift

Kodak Vision3 500T 5219,200T 5213; Vision2 50D 5201

Digital Intermediate

Stereoscopic Conversion

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B

ellflower, the feature debut of director/writer EvanGlodell and cinematographer Joel Hodge, tells the famil-iar tale of a young man who meets a girl, falls in love, has

his heart broken and must come to terms with the fallout.How it tells the tale is another thing entirely.Glodell plays Woodrow, who, along with his best friend,

Aiden (Tyler Dawson), spends his days paying homage toLord Humungous from Mad Maxand preparing for a globalapocalypse by outfitting his 1972 Buick Skylark (dubbedMedusa) with a flamethrower. After Woodrow becomessmitten with Milly (Jessie Wiseman), Aiden and theirboyhood warrior fantasies soon take a backseat to his new rela-tionship. But all things must end, and although a global apoc-alypse never arrives, Woodrows world is annihilated whenMilly betrays him.

Glodell finished the first draft of the script forBellflowerin 2003, around the same time he met Joel Hodge, who was

working in the same building in Camarillo, Calif. Glodell wasproducing local commercials at a startup company, and Hodge

was working as a camera operator for a production companyacross the hall. The two quickly realized they shared an inter-est in making movies.

The five years that passed before they actually rolled onBellflowerwere filled with small projects such as music videosand commercials, which helped them sharpen their skills andmuster the resources to start production. Every time we

gained access to someone who could help us, we said, Wevegot this script, but nobody really seemed to care, recallsGlodell. Finally, we decided wed just have to make it

ourselves.Glodell, a tinkerer and avowed camera geek, started

developing what would become the Coatwolf Model I, ahand-built 2K digital camera. His first experiments weresparked by the popularity of 35mm cinema adapters forconsumer video cameras; he was excited by the possibilitiesthey offered but deterred by the high price tag. Despite a lackof experience with camera optics, he relished the challenge ofbuilding a comparable solution for a fraction of the price, andstarted picking up surplus optics wherever he could find them.

I started cutting up glass and messing around withthings until I had something that worked, explains Glodell.

My first test version was hacked out of some camera from the1940s.

It was a lot of work, but by the time I was finished, Idtaught myself how all the different elements affected eachother, he continues. It was a real obsession. I realized thatusing your own lens mounts and your own focusing mecha-nisms opens up a lot of doors, creatively speaking.

By the summer of 2008, Glodells R&D had yieldedfive different iterations of lens mounts, each an evolution overthe previous model: one would add a tilt-shift bellows, whilethe next would enlarge the focal plane. A turning point came

Director Evan Glodelland cinematographer

Joel Hodge bringindie ingenuity to a

wild romantic ride withBellflower, shot with

cameras Glodellcreated.

By Iain Stasukevich

|

ShotDowninFlames

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when he heard about Silicon ImagingsSI-2K Mini, which is essentially amachined aluminum box with a 23"2048x1152-pixel CMOS sensor much more customizable than SonysCineAlta or Panasonics VariCam. Ikept begging [Silicon Imaging] to letme test the camera, recalls Glodell.Finally, they sent us one, and it had a16mm C-mount, so I started collecting

vintage 16mm lenses at thrift and junkstores.

Knowing that the Mini would befar less forgiving of photographic errorsthan even the best consumer-level HDcamcorders of the time, he set aboutdeveloping a cleaner, more robustcamera system. The Model Is anatomycame to include the SI-2K imaginghead, a corrective group, an imagingsurface, a lens with a focusing mecha-nism, and proper spacing through thebellows to the taking lens by way of aNikon mount.

The imaging plane, a spinningground glass powered by AA batteries,is between 35mm and 4" in size.(Many of the specs are a product ofexperimentation.) Proper spacingbetween the corrective optical groupand the imaging plane is achieved byadjusting the two along a pair of rails onthe cameras base. Glodell purchasedused Nikon doublers at camera stores,chopped the mounts off and then

Opposite: Best budsWoodrow (EvanGlodell, left) andAiden (Tyler Dawsonarm themselves for tapocalypse inBellflower. This pagetop: The duos arsena

also includes a vintagBuick Skylark equippwith flamethrowers.Middle: Woodrowsinfatuation with Milly(Jessie Wiseman) leadhim to a dark place,both emotionally andphysically. Bottom:Cinematographer JoeHodge shot most ofthe movie with theCoatwolf Model I, ahand-built 2K digitalcamera.

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attached them to the back of the lenses

he wanted to use.The Model I was designed to

accept a mix of lens sizes with slightmodifications. Glodells lens-selectionprocess was meticulous and discriminat-ing, but followed instinct more than anytechnical mandate. Once you get intoit, you start to learn which lenses willgive you the right look, he explains.We used some Linos, a couple ofFujinon industrial-application lenses,and optics meant for still cameras, scien-

tific applications and military applica-tions. I think some were designed for oldsurveillance cameras. We even usedphoto-enlarging lenses and projectionlenses. Sometimes we didnt know whata given lens was originally made for, anda lot of them dont even have focusingmechanisms.

The easiest ways to describe theimages captured by the Model I aresoft and hyper-saturated, butGlodell prefers to use the term

emotional. He adds, The main thingto understand about the cameras is thattheyre aesthetic devices. The way theyredesigned, you can point it at somethingand think it looks either sad or weird.

Joel and I arent educated about cine-matography in any formal way; weve

just been experimenting for a longtime.

The filmmakers wanted the firstpart ofBellflowerto look rather dream-

Shot Down in Flames

Top: Woodrowand Milly take

an impulsiveroad trip that

jump-starts theirrelationship. Thisframe illustratesthe soft, hyper-

saturated imagesproduced by the

Model I, althoughdirector Glodell

prefers todescribe theaesthetic as

emotional.Middle: Whileshooting the

movies climax,Glodell and

Steadicamoperator Ari

Robbins (a.k.a.Steadi J) set up

the CoatwolfModel II,

designed with anoptical systemthat included

photocopier andphoto-enlarger

parts to producean unreal look

that nobody hadseen before,according to

Glodell. Bottom:The filmmakers

kluge together acar rig while

road-testing theirmethodologies.

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like, the middle to look more gritty andreal, and the end to look hyper-unreal.

The Model I was used for everythingexcept night exteriors, for which Hodgeoperated a stripped-down Mini outfit-ted with only a C-mount lens to makethe most of the chips base-level 250

ASA. (These scenes were manipulatedin the color correction to match the lookof the rest of the film, the only effectsnot produced in-camera.)

An entirely different camera, theCoatwolf Model II, was built for themovies feverish climax. Hodge recallsthe birthing process: Evan was in a littleroom for months, trying to make thiscamera perfect. He was so focused onthe insides that the [camera body]

would be this giant thing, and Id say,

How am I supposed to pull focus whenthe knob is on the front of the cameraand its a doorknob?

Or a wrench, adds Glodell.The Model II, like the Model I,

was constructed from scrap photo-graphic parts. Glodell used anglegrinders, saws, files and a Dremel tool,which works surprisingly well forcutting glass, he observes. He describesthe result as a large-format still-photography camera. The imaging

plane is something like 4 inches diag-onally. Ive since made one thatssubstantially bigger, but Im still tryingto get it to look right. Weve shot acouple things with it, and the resultslook cool, but its not ready.

Glodell explains that his goalwith the Model II was not the clean,crisp images produced by high-qualitylarge-format photo lenses. Instead, hechose to utilize photocopier and photo-enlarger parts in the optical system.

Taking lenses were mounted to a square,metal plate and fixed to the front of thecamera with four bolts. We can useinsane projection optics with a shorterback-focus distance, says Glodell.Because the camera has no physicalshutter, you can go right up to the focalplane, or you can crank the bellows outto use more traditional lenses with alonger back focus. The whole idea wasto get an unreal look that nobody had

The director and his crew tinker with the Model I. Note the duct tape holding the cameratogether. Cinematographer Joel Hodge is seated on ground at left in bottom photo.


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seen before.The shot for which the Model II

was devised is a simple setup: a mediumshot of Woodrow walking down thestreet towards the camera, his face andshirt soaked in blood, as Courtney(Rebekah Brandes) looks on in terror.

The scene is a decisive moment for allthe characters involved, and the shot of

Woodrow is its focal point. It looks likeit was shot on a telephoto lens from 200feet away, says Glodell, but the camera

was right in front of me on a Steadicam[rig].

Glodell and Hodges were soexcited by the resultant look, they had tofight the urge to use the Model II forevery scene they shot after that. In theend, they used the camera for just one

other sequence, a montage of beachscenes.

Operating the Model I is easy,says Hodge. We spent a lot of timetrying to make it compact, says thecinematographer. It sits easy on yourshoulder. Its lightweight. The focus isright where it should be.

Because the Model II is morespecialized, it is more difficult tomaneuver, he continues. With anyother camera, you can put it on your

shoulder, and all the controls are whereyoud expect them to be. But the ModelII is rough, and you cant grab it incertain areas because youd crush it.

Hodge controlled the camerasexposure, shutter, frame rate, look-uptables and recording functions witha 15" MacBook Pro runningSiliconDVR. The computer was linkedto the cameras via CAT-5 Ethernetcable, and files were recorded to thelaptop hard drive in Cineform Raw.

The image was monitored on a 7"monitor through the MacBooks VGAoutput, but the laptops port went bad afew days into production, so the laptopitself was used to frame shots. Thismeant that handheld and Steadicamshots required an assistant to walk withthe laptop tethered to Hodge orSteadicam operator Ari Robbins. Oneparticularly awkward setup requiredHodge to hang out a car window while

Shot Down in Flames

Scenes set inWoodrows

house were shotwith different

versions of theModel I. In thetop photo, the

camera isequipped with a

Silicon Imaging

2K imaging head,and in the

bottom photo itsrigged with the

SI-2K Mini.

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strapped to the roll cage with a belt,with one hand operating the cameraand the other operating the laptop on

the car roof.We finally gave up and bolted

the laptop to the camera, says Glodell.The Model I is a big aluminum frame,and when you bolt the laptop to it, thescreen is right under your face.

Color and exposure settings werebaked into the image on set usingcustom presets in SiliconDVRs built-inIridas color-management system.Glodell and Hodge made up most ofthe presets on the spot. Because we

knew the mood of the film inside andout, we could go to a scene and playaround with the image until we got thefeeling that fit, says the director.

The lighting package consisted ofwhatever the production could borrowthat week: Kino Flos, a couple of 650-

watt Fresnels, a Redhead and a smallselection of dichroic Fay lights.

Lighting was always a treat, aswe always seemed to be just short a lightor some necessary item and had to rig

something up with what we had onhand, says Hodge. Our gaffer, PaulEdwardson, and Evan and I wouldusually make something work.

In the finale of the film, theresan intense scene that takes place inMillys kitchen, and we wanted it tohave an unreal, crazy feel. For most ofour interior setups, we used natural lightand reflectors we had one reflectorand a white board or bathroom mirror

Top: In a shotcaptured with thModel II,Woodrow embaron a bloodyrampage. MiddleRobbins works o

a shot with thecamera mountedon a Steadicam riBottom: Thecameras exposurshutter, frame raand look-up tablewere controlledwith a 15"MacBook Pro.


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Shot Down in Flamesto move light around where we wanted.But we really wanted this scene to bespecial, so we grabbed every light wecould find to fill all the windows andentrances with light. Then we realized

we were short on diffusion, so a coupleof us pulled off our white T-shirts, and

we used those. I think it turned out to beone of the coolest shots in the movie. Irecommend always wearing a whiteundershirt, cause you never know when

you might need it!Principal photography lasted 90

days and was achieved with a crew ofvolunteers, with pickup days and post-production taking place throughout thefollowing year. The filmmakers contin-ued to tweak the images after Bellflower

was accepted at this years Sundance

Film Festival, where it was screened onHDCam-SR tape.

Hodge notes that two drawbacksof the Coatwolf cameras DIY architec-ture are dirt and light leaks. If you wereoutside for 10 minutes, youd get dirt inthe camera, he recalls. Its just the

Glodell ponders his options while assembling one of the cameras on a workbench.

2

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nature of the cameras, but at some pointwe decided we liked it and that was theway it was going to be.

Unfortunately, that point cameafter they had carried out the colorcorrection and picture cleanup at TunnelPost. Glodell explains, When the filmgot into Sundance, we borrowed moneyand called in a favor from a friend at

Tunnel to get it as perfect as possible forthe festival because we thought it wasour big break. Tunnel did a wonderful

job cleaning up the dirt and did a fullcolor-correction pass. But when we sawthe final product, it seemed wrong, eventhough it was beautifully done.

Tunnel stayed with us andhelped the whole way; they set us up inone of their editing bays with a properly

calibrated monitor and let us go crazy,he continues. We did the final pass oncolor in Final Cut Pro, swapping shotsout [for] some of our old stuff that was[corrected] in FCP, [Adobe] AfterEffects and in-camera with looks[LUTs] made in Iridas. We were going

in and out of FirstLight, changing looksand tweaking using Final Cut plug-ins

and whatever other plug-ins were onthe machine in the editing bay.

It was a huge, expensive learningexperience for us, Glodell concludes.But I think we did what was best forour movie.

TECHNICAL SPECS

2.40:1

Digital Capture

Coatwolf Model I, II;Silicon Imaging SI-2K

Customized lenses/lens assemblies

Another view ofthe camera, thistime equippedwith a military-style handgrip.

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characters: Lu Jianxiong (Liu Ye), who leads the fight todefend Nanking; Miss Jiang (Gao Yuanyuan), a youngteacher in the city; Kadokawa (Hideo Nakaizumi), a morallyconflicted Japanese soldier; and Mr. Tang (Fan Wei), ahusband and father who collaborates with the enemy in thehopes of keeping his family safe.

Released in China in 2009 (under the title Nanjing!Nanjing!), the film polarized audiences; some were outragedby the sympathetic portrait of Kadokawa, who becomes

increasingly distraught over the atrocities committed by hisfellow soldiers. The picture also won numerous prizes, includ-ing best film awards at the 2009 Asia Pacific Screen Awardsand the 2009 San Sebastian International Film Festival, andcinematography prizes at those festivals as well as the 2010

Asian Film and Golden Horse awards.The filmmakers began a full year of preproduction in

October 2006. The first decision Lu and Cao confronted waswhether the picture should be black-and-white or color. Caoworried that the massacre scenes might be too much for audi-ences to bear in color. He also questioned whether so much


Chinese cinematographer Yu Cao remembers the exactday that director Chuan Lu first mentioned his interestin making a film about one of the most infamous eventsin modern Chinese history. It was 2003, and Chuan

and I had just completed the last shot on Kekexili:MountainPatrol,when he turned to me and said, I want to make a filmabout the Nanking Massacre. As he described the story, mymind filled with faces the faces of those who survived the

war and those who did not.

City of Life and Death would, indeed, become a filmabout faces, but because of the politically sensitive nature ofthe subject matter, Lu and Cao would have to wait four yearsbefore exposing a single frame. The events collectively knownas the Rape of Nanking took place in 1937, during the secondSino-Japanese War, when the invading Japanese Imperial

Army laid siege to the city. During the first six weeks of theoccupation, an estimated 300,000 Chinese half the popu-lation were slaughtered. More than 20,000 women andgirls were raped and murdered.

City of Life and Death is told through the eyes of several

A CulturalCataclysm

City of Life and Death ,shot by Yu Cao,re-creates a tragic

chapter i

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