American Cinematographer - January 2008 - (Page 69) rehearsed over and over before we went to DI,” says Wolski. “During prep, I shot my tests, and I spent quite a bit of time with [Coppleman], tweaking and changing things, until I was happy with the look.” Wolski also made a habit of sitting down with Peter Mountain, the unit still photographer, to tweak production stills to reflect the film’s look. “On weekends, I would go to Peter’s place, and we’d look at all the photos from the week’s work. We were playing with levels of desaturation, how black-and-white the film should be. It was a great way for me to think about what we’d done and which way the film was going visually.” When the time came for the DI at Company 3, colorist/managing director Stefan Sonnenfeld had a well-delineated roadmap before him. “Stefan is very fast,” notes Wolski, who also worked with the colorist on all three Pirates films. Nevertheless, says Sonnenfeld, “Sweeney Todd was a tricky DI, where every little degree of color made a big difference.” Another challenge arose when it came time to show Burton, who was mixing the audio in New York, what Wolski and Sonnenfeld had achieved in Los Angeles. Sonnenfeld explains, “We converted the film LUT we were using to a video LUT, and then we sent that to Company 3’s New York facility via satellite feed. So Tim was able to watch live while Dariusz and I [graded] in L.A., and everybody could see the same image.” With the overcast sky fading to night outside Company 3, Wolski muses, “Tim wanted to make an old-fashioned film, and I think we accomplished that. Between the performances, the art direction, the music and the whole concept, we just had to be smart and put the camera in the right place. It was a very special experience, and I’m grateful to Johnny for introducing me to Tim.” I TECHNICAL SPECS 1.85:1 35mm Panaflex Platinum, Millennium XL Primo lenses Kodak Vision2 200T 5217, 500T 5218 Digital Intermediate Printed on Kodak Vision 2383 http://www.kinoflo.com http://www.kinoflo.com
For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.