American Cinematographer - February 2009 - (Page 35)

Peter carefully balanced background practicals to remain just visible enough to describe the space but draw no attention. In a more somber sequence, Peter used a fireplace as a flickering source on Coraline, who sits alone in a dark room as the embers die. A wide shot emphasizes her isolation as the firelight grads off quickly from where she sits. Small bulbs in the fireplace were rigged to flicker in sync with off-screen focal spots under DMX motion-control. The Other living room takes on three separate characters, the first being a duplicate of the dreary night look in Coraline’s Real World. The second phase is a colorful come-on in which every piece of furniture glows as a saturated neon source. The self-illuminated props had clusters of red, green and blue surfacemount LEDs embedded throughout their translucent silicone forms. By adjusting the colors on separate DMX dimmer channels, Chris Peterson could match production art without using gels. Backlit purple walls were created with traditional gels on movie lights, but the out-ofgamut color came back bluish. We got closer by reddening them to the point where they looked completely wrong on set but just fine when photographed. The room comes to life as furniture and lamps dim up in an overlapping cascade of light cues. Steve Switaj fabricated a DMX card that could handle 48 channels, more than normally available under Kuper control, and Chris used every one of them. At one point, Coraline is thrust into a dark, dank iron-plate cell where she meets three pale-green ghost children. Chris Peterson shot the ghosts separately on motioncontrolled rods against greenscreen that covered the set walls. The same motion-control rigs repeated the movement during animation of Coraline, and this time they carried light bulbs, creating interactive light ope? tral Eur g in Cen Filmin Work, ts That er! For Shoo ket Lead ny’s Mar Germa Contact B R O A D C A ST S E R V I C E S W E ’ V E G OT YO U R B AC K . THE VERY LATEST IN DIGITAL MOVIE-MAKING MULTI-LINGUAL STAFF 24/7 TECHNICAL SUPPORT CALL +49.30.230 989 0 VISIT www.camelot-berlin.de 35 http://www.BenSemanoff.com http://www.BenSemanoff.com http://www.backstageweb.com http://www.camelot-berlin.de http://www.camelot-berlin.de

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

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