American Cinematographer - February 2009 - (Page 48)

Dead Reckoning blacked-out tent to check his image. “Once you’re in that tent, you’re one level removed, and you can make mistakes because you’re not connected with reality. A cinematographer’s job is to run the set, dance with the actors, dance with the director and make things happen. When you stick yourself in a tent, you become like those directors who just stare at the monitor and never get out of the chair — you’re not doing your job. “When someone comes up with a digital camera that lets me see the LUT in the eyepiece, I will agree that it’s equal to working with film.” Macht and Jackson spent days tussling in an actual mud pit. Sandau explains, “We had FinnLight Toplights overhead to provide some ambience and give the mud some highlights, and we had 20Ks and 10Ks through big frames off to the sides. When we needed to get more light to someone’s face, we used what we called the projection softbox — basically a 2K with a 2- to 3-foot snoot and diffusion. It’s soft light, but it’s very controllable.” (continued from page 45) the two systems. “Panavision has focused on capturing the broadest dynamic range to satisfy cinematographers’ need for exposure,” says Maschwitz. “You can put a mattebox on the Phantom, but it’s still been designed to do ballisticimpact analysis.” To bring the cameras closer together and allow the filmmakers to see an image “that would mimic the high-contrast world of Frank Miller as much as possible,” says Pope, look-up tables were developed for both cameras that could be applied in real time on the set. (Although the LUTs were visible on the monitors, footage from both cameras was recorded raw for full flexibility in post; see sidebar on page 46.) Maschwitz explains, “Because the Phantom doesn’t have the same dynamic range [as the Genesis], it required its own treatment, and we eventually figured out a LUT that worked. The LUTs for both cameras actually suppressed green to various colors, mostly gray. We also had a version that could turn anything green into white and anything not green into black, and it could take anything red and make it pure red. We could put Gabriel in front of a greenscreen, and on the monitor we’d see a black silhouette with a bright red tie — you could see a Frank Miller drawing in real time!” (The LUT also included a Kodak Vision 2383 film-print emulation.) Pope says he had no major problems with either camera system during the shoot, but he notes one drawback to shooting digitally in general: having to retire to a Practical Solutions “Too often, I feel overloaded with color when I’m watching a movie,” says Miller. “Everything’s tutti-frutti. And since I think like a cartoonist, I tend to color like one.” “We wanted this to be a blackand-white movie, but Frank definitely wanted the tie to be red,” notes Pope, standing in his office inside Albuquerque Studios and waiting for the call after lunch. “So I said, ‘If we’re going to have a color, it needs to have a thematic thread.’” Accordingly, the hero’s red tie serves as a reminder of the blood spilled when Colt was murdered and The Spirit was born. “When bad things are happening, when there’s a splash of emotion, red plays a part,” says Pope. Emphasizing the red tie called for some clever tricks, but Maschwitz notes that it was always photographed practically — it was never a CG fabrication. When the filmmakers really wanted the tie to pop, he says, “we puppeteered a fluorescent tie from off-camera using monofilament line, and we had an ultraviolet light hitting it. That gave us the foundation for some abstracting and some rotoscoping to get the posterized color effect.” The Spirit’s black-and-white Chuck Taylor tennis shoes were similarly treated with a fluorescent paint to make the 48 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

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