American Cinematographer - January 2008 - (Page 28) Right: Tolson gets his point across to (from left) Samantha (Jurnee Smollett), Henry (Nate Parker) and James (Denzel Whitaker). Below: Tolson enjoys an exchange with James’ father (Forest Whitaker), a towering presence at Wiley. look for influences outside the field of the film, in this case East Texas and the South,” he says. After a pause, he adds, “Staying in Shreveport for a few months certainly changes your way of seeing things.” Rousselot chose not to use filters and lighting or lens tricks to denote period; he used diffusion only for close-ups. “Men saw the world with similar eyes then, and I thought the sets and costumes carried the sense of period well enough that it didn’t need to be underlined any further by the photography,” he says. He credits production designer David Bomba with “elegant and carefully balanced” work that influenced his own approach. “Photographs from the period are always important sources of information, but in this case, most of them were black-and-white pictures and rarely a model for the cinematography. The reality of the landscape and the sets and costumes were my source of inspiration. There is so much beauty in the South, even in its less glamorous parts. I tried to let myself be taken in by it and follow its guidance.” Rousselot filmed The Great Debaters in anamorphic 2.40:1. “Denzel and I liked the format on Antwone Fisher, particularly the fact that one uses longer lenses in anamorphic than in spherical,” he notes. His camera package comprised a Panaflex Platinum, a Millennium XL, a set of C-Series anamorphic lenses, a lightweight 40-80mm zoom, and an ALZ11 48-550mm Primo Anamorphic Zoom. “We used the C-Series lenses for lightness and economy and used the zooms mostly on the B camera,” 28 January 2008
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