American Cinematographer - January 2009 - (Page 12)

Top to bottom: A production still showing Neanderthals cleansed by mistresses in the secret garden at Florida’s Villa Vizcaya Museum and Gardens; an orphan passes on in a color segment shot at Villa Vizcaya; a frame grab of the Neanderthals’ arrival at Villa Vizcaya, shot on Kodak Double-X 7222; a frame grab from the Quinceañera sequence, which was shot with Porst 40D Super 8 film. high-definition TVs show the “Chicago” portion of the work, set in a tenement apartment inhabited by early 20th century workers from Deering’s agricultural-equipment factory; these three scenes (each running 20 minutes) were filmed in black-and-white and focus on a family of Gypsies, a trio of Neanderthals, and French emperor Napoleon and his wife, Josephine. The third and largest room features four hi-def digital projectors showing color and black-and-white scenes shot in and around the Vizcaya estate. In these scenes, each of which runs about 30 minutes, the “Chicago” characters appear opposite a new cast of what the filmmakers describe as “anachronistic degenerates.” For the 16mm footage of the figure skater, shot inside the Chicago Ice arena, Germain used Kodak Double-X 7222 black-and-white film. He recalls that these shots were relatively uncomplicated, while the Quinceañera footage was much more involved. On a conceptual level, a lot of Triangle’s content deals with matters of extinction, and Sullivan felt it would be interesting to work with an expired film stock. Via the Internet, she discovered a subculture dedicated to obsolete Super 8 stocks, and she acquired several rolls of discontinued Porst 40D film. Germain was game, but he wasn’t sure what kind of image he would get — if any — from a film stock that went bad in 1982. His plan was to overexpose and overdevelop the film by 2 stops, and he planned to do a snip test at Film Rescue in Indian Head, Saskatchewan. Even though it was her idea, Sullivan went into the test less optimistic than Germain, but her fears were ultimately dispelled. “It looked very much like an impressionist painting,” she says. “The image broke down to these blunt formations of shapes and lines.” “When we got to the telecine [at Color Lab in Rockville, Md.], we didn’t want to correct it at all,” says Germain. “We just wanted to let it do what it was doing. The colorists were trying to get the best image out of it, and they were complaining that the grain was gargan- 12 January 2009

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - January 2008

American Cinematographer - January 2009 Contents Editor’s Note Short Takes: Triangle of Need Production Slate: Frost/Nixon, The Wrestler Close Focus An Old Soul Brothers in Arms A Cut Above Post Focus: HPA Awards, Still Me New Products & Services International Marketplace Classified Ads Ad Index In Memoriam: Robert C. Jessup, ASC Clubhouse News ASC Close-Up: Gabriel Beristain

American Cinematographer - January 2008

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