American Cinematographer - February 2009 - (Page 24)

Above: Laforet took creative advantage of the depth-of-field characteristics inherent to the 5D’s full-frame sensor. In this shot, a 400mm lens turns tungsten lights into a pleasing background effect. Below: Reverie filmmaker Laforet. diffusion. There’s a bit of backlight from the headlights of my Jeep. On the tight headshot of her, we used a flashlight and the brake lights from my car.” Laforet even used Adobe Photoshop to light a scene. “For the scene with the model’s face lit by the TV, we plugged the DVI cable from the laptop into the HDMI port of my TV, loaded a gray slide into Photoshop CS3, and messed with the lightness parameter slider to create the flickering blue light,” he explains. The full-frame sensor size of the 5D allows for beautiful depth of field, and Laforet took full advantage of that in many shots. In one example, a silhou- etted scene, the lights in the background go deeply out of focus to create a nice bokeh effect. “That’s a 400mm lens focused in as close as you can with just two normal tungsten lightbulbs in the background,” he says. “The tungsten lights were probably 20 yards behind her, and I was maybe 6 feet from her.” The scenes from the helicopter are among the most impressive in Reverie. “The shot I wanted from the moment we started on this was the sunglasses reflecting the Empire State Building,” says Laforet. “It took quite a few years of flying to know the exact time to take off to get that perfect balance. We took off about 15 minutes before sunset. For the shot of the model, I had a 15-35mm lens, and my assistant was holding the LED light on a monopod behind me. Everything and everyone was securely safety harnessed and wired.” The post process on Reverie was easy because the Mark II records in H.264 compressed QuickTime format. “You stick the CF card into your computer, drag the files onto your desktop, drag them into Final Cut Pro and then edit,” says Laforet. “There’s no rendering.” Three ASC members recently weighed in on Laforet’s observation that the Mark II is a “game changer” for cinematography. “Faster sensitivity is not always a cure-all in low light,” notes M. David Mullen, ASC. “Dynamic range is also a factor because you don’t want bright areas to overexpose too quickly and unnaturally.” Curtis Clark, ASC says he would welcome the ability to shoot at a very high ASA as long as there aren’t detrimental trade-offs in the images. “Obviously, using small lights is a lot cheaper than using large ones. In artistic terms, being able to increase the depth of field affects not just photographic style but also the ability to render details within the scene, and that, of course, would impact set design and art direction.” Stephen Goldblatt, ASC, BSC finds the idea appealing but notes that film technology is advancing to meet the challenge posed by digital formats. “Shooting Vision3 [500T] at 400 ASA and T2 gives you superb results at night in the streets,” he says. “It would be great to be able to shoot at T2.8 or at T4, but I’m not super-excited about it because ASA is just part of the equation.” That’s not to say Goldblatt can’t find a use for the technology, however. “I use Canon digital cameras to take reference shots of every set when I’m doing a movie,” he says. “Ending up with an MPEG file that you could adjust quickly on your computer at the end of the day would be fantastic. Generally speaking, stills do the trick, but sometimes they don’t. This is like another arrow in the quiver. “I think Reverie looks so beautiful because it’s a full-frame sensor with a very, very shallow depth of field, and Laforet was using lovely Canon lenses wide open,” adds Goldblatt. “And let’s not forget there’s a very good eye behind the camera. Not everybody can go out with that camera and get those results.” TECHNICAL SPECS 3x2 High-Definition Video Canon EOS-5D Mark II Canon lenses I 24 February 2009

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - February 2009

American Cinematographer - February 2009 Contents Editor's Note Short Takes: Circus Production Slate: The International Reverte 2 Worlds in 3 Dimensions Dead Reckoning Embracing Anamorphic Citizen of the World Post Focus: Restoring Manhatta New Products & Services International Marketplace Classified Ads Ad Index Clubhouse News ASC Close-Up: Peter Suschitzky

American Cinematographer - February 2009

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.