American Cinematographer - January 2017 - 14

Short Takes

Student Honors
By Debra Kaufman

Established to inspire the next generation of cinematographers, the ASC Student Heritage Awards are renamed annually in
memory of an extraordinary ASC member. This year, however,
marked the introduction of two designations: the Vilmos Zsigmond
Student Heritage Awards and the Haskell Wexler Student Documentary Award.
Held on Saturday, Oct. 15, at the ASC Clubhouse, the Student
Heritage Awards ceremony saw the presentation of the Graduate
Category honor to Andrew Jeric of University of Southern California's
School of Cinematic Arts, for Prisoner; the Undergraduate Category
to Emmett Sutherland of Art Center College of Design, for Closer;
and the Documentary Category to Colin F. Shepherd of Rochester
Institute of Technology, for Into the Microscope.
Prisoner
Director: Matthew Edwards
Cinematographer: Andrew Jeric
In Prisoner, a war-weary American soldier stranded behind
enemy lines takes a young German private captive in 1944. In the
process of forcing his prisoner to lead the way back to safety, both
men fight their own personal war for survival. Edwards, a fan of classic World War II films, wrote and directed the project as his thesis,
and asked fellow grad student and friend Andrew Jeric to shoot. The
two had worked together before, as Edwards had shot Jeric's thesis
film, Vicious, for which Edwards was nominated for an ASC Linwood
Dunn Student Heritage Award in 2014.
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January 2017

"We had a free-form preproduction period of about six
months, and then eight weeks of intense preproduction," Jeric says.
In that time, the filmmakers studied dozens of war movies. "Matt likes
it to feel epic, cinematic, big," he adds, noting that The Thin Red Line
(AC Feb. '99), Empire of the Sun (AC Jan. '88) and Atonement (AC
Dec. '07) were some of their references. "Especially Atonement. Every
frame was a painting. We weren't trying to trivialize war, but to do it
in a way that both captured a sense of scale and evoked genuine
emotion."
With the benefit of a Panavision New Filmmaker grant, Jeric
gained access to a Red One Mysterium-X camera. "We were ecstatic,"
says the cinematographer, who cites the help of Panavision Hollywood's Mike Carter. "We knew we'd mainly be shooting natural light
and we needed something with as much latitude as possible." They
chose a Panavision Super Speed lens package, which they used with
the Red as well as the school's Sony PMW-F3 that they employed for
B camera. "I was concerned about mixing the footage from the two
cameras, but we needed the second camera for some of the battle
scenes," he says. "At the end of the day, we spent a lot of time in color
grading at Prehistoric Digital and made it work. We were going for as
much of a polished, classic look as we could. We even incorporated a
35mm grain filter to both smooth over the footage from the two
diverse camera systems and also help the period look and feel of the
film." The cinematographer adds that the production "recorded to
128GB CF Cards. We framed for a 2.39:1 aspect ratio to help lend the
film a sense of scope."
The final grade was completed at Prehistoric Digital in Santa
Monica. "We used a DaVinci Resolve grading system and graded the
Red footage at 4K and the Sony F3 at 1080p," Jeric reports. "We
mastered in 2K ProRes 4:4:4:4."
➣

American Cinematographer

Awards Ceremony photos by Alex Beatty. Frame grabs and behind-the-scenes photos courtesy of the filmmakers.

ASC Vilmos
Zsigmond
Student
Heritage Award
and Haskell
Wexler Student
Documentary
Award finalists
and winners
pose with
Society
members in
front of the
Clubhouse in
Hollywood.

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - January 2017