American Cinematographer - February 2008 - (Page 24) Amid the desolate expanse of a playa, one of the robots studies the debris of his destroyed companion. “The lake bed reflected a lot of light; it was really bright there,” says Bangalter. “We ended up having to use an ND.9 and an ND.6 to bring the exposure down at least 5 stops. Most of it was shot at T42⁄3 in plain daylight without pushing or pulling the film.” devise clever optical illusions, including shots in which shapes and bodies appear out of nowhere and float across the room. To achieve this effect, Bangalter pushed the limits of the negative, overexposing by 2 stops in the lab and then putting the film through a quick digital grade at FotoKem in Burbank with colorist Mato Der Avanessian. “The stimuli are in the contrast,” notes Bangalter. “We wanted each scene to take you through the emotionally distinct phases of the story. Our goal with the White Room was to create a kind of Rorschach-inkblot effect that would induce the viewer to be in touch with the symbolic nature of the scene.” For a sequence later in the film, Bangalter and Homem-Christo sought to create images with just two colors, blue and black. In the scene, which was shot day-for-night, the main characters are chased out of town and walk along railroad tracks that cut across a vast desert. The filmmakers accomplished the look with nothing more than a regular Tiffen day-for-night filter and an ND.9, with Bangalter skirting the toe of the negative. He decided against using any kind of key light, lest the details spoil the effect. “You have the dark-blue sky and the silhouettes of the robots, which had to be black so as not to give off any reflections,” he says. “We had to take it to the extreme, where it’s so dark it starts to be believable.” Reflections were a persistent hurdle for much of the shoot. With the exception of one sequence, the main characters sport masks that function like curved, polished mirrors. “We had to be very tricky about it — the masks reflected everything around them,” says Bangalter. Most of the time, Bangalter and key grip Josh Linkey were able to position the camera in “dead spots” in the robots’ helmets and use a black or white sheet for camouflage. When hiding the camera was impossible, visual-effects artists at Method Studios in Santa Monica painted it out. THE BEST COLOR VIDEO ASSIST VCSC Digital 2000 EXAMPLE: ARRI 35 BL I - IV S For all film camera types on the globe 6.5MHz resolution Digital image processing and storage Digital frame masking PAL or NTSC Ground glass format adaption 16-35 mm by special zoom lens For all format options – PLEASE SPEAK WITH US! WE ACCEPT 24 www.denz-deniz.com · Tel: +49 89 - 62 98 66 0 · Fax: +49 89 - 62 98 66 20 http://www.denz-deniz.com http://www.denz-deniz.com
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