American Cinematographer - February 2008 - (Page 25) One particularly thorny sequence shows the robots traversing a wide, barren playa; the production had to park its vehicles and staging areas far away from the actual location. “Being in the dry lake bed was like being in a 360degree cyclorama,” Bangalter says, adding that this was one reason movie lights were rarely used. “That’s why we were exposing for the environment — for their heads, really.” Bangalter stacked multiple ND filters in front of the lens to achieve proper exposure while keeping depth of field as shallow as possible. “The lake bed reflected a lot of light; it was really bright there. 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.” The final shot of Electroma shows a robot on fire walking in slow motion across the playa at night. The filmmakers chose to encapsulate the action in a single, lingering setup. The resultant After using his helmet’s glass visor to focus the sun and set himself on fire, the remaining robot walks across the playa. image lasts four minutes onscreen, but it was captured in about 50 seconds with the camera running at 150 fps. Even at such high speeds, the inferno was so powerful that Bangalter had to stop down to T11. “That shot took a lot of testing to get right,” he says. “There were times when what we were trying to accomplish wasn’t explained specifically in our reference material, so we needed to do a lot of experimentation beforehand. We could have used digital effects, but the result is much more satisfying and magical when you do it chemically.” “Electroma is really slow and meditative, more like a painting than an actual movie, but shooting it was actually quite the opposite of what you see on the screen,” notes Homem-Christo. “We worked a lot and slept a little. Decisions were being made in the moment, so things sometimes got really hectic. Fortunately, the crew seemed to enjoy working with us. We learned a lot, and it made for a fantastic experience.” I 25 http://www.lumapanel.com
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